The Internal Linear Collider proposal is a massive new undertaking of the world's particle physics community. The ILC plans to be the world's largest particle accelerator with two facing linear accelerators, each 20km long, colliding beams of electrons and positrons at the highest energies ever.
The ILC is a huge project that will push the boundaries of technological innovation. To meet those goals, ILC Global Design Effort has issued a number of technological challenges. Among them, produce very fast, high-power electrical pulses that can rise repeatedly to 5000v in only 6ns (billionths of a second), stay for 14ns, and drop again in 6ns. This capability will be required for the future ILC "kickers" which will transfer the particle beams from one part of the accelerator to the other.
Upon hearing of the challenge from the GDE's North America regional coordinator, the TRIUMF kicker group (Gary Wait, Mike Barnes, and Daryl Bishop) accepted the challenge and have since risen to it. Their first promising results are now highlighted in the ILC Newsletter.