Design and measurements of a damping ring kicker for the ILC

The International Linear Collider (ILC) requires ultra fast kickers for the damping ring. The modulators must produce pulses of plusmn5 kV magnitude, with rise and fall times of 6 ns or less depending on the final configuration [1]. The deflector plates will be configured as a 50 Omega stripline, charged to opposite polarities, providing a potential difference of 10 kV. The pulse magnitude must be repeatable to a high accuracy. The need for 3.25 MHz burst mode operation, at 5 Hz, gives an average repetition rate of up to 16.3 kHz [2]. This paper describes a novel design for a pulse generator for the damping ring kickers, in which two stacks of 1 kV FETS will be combined to generate the fast pulses. Each stack of FETs is a 100 Omega driver: the two stacks form a 50 Omega pulse generator as this is preferable to one 50 Omega stack. Measurements and calculations are presented on the present state of the TRIUMF prototype pulse generator.