BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
RHIC operation as the polarized proton collider presents unique challenges since both luminosity and spin polarization are important. With longitudinally polarized beams at the experiments, the figure of merit is LP4. A lot of upgrades and modifications have been made since last polarized proton operation. A 9 MHz rf system has been installed to improve longitudinal match at injection and to increase luminosity. The beam dumps were upgraded to allow for increased bunch intensities. A vertical survey of RHIC was performed before the run to get better magnet alignment. The orbit control has also been improved this year. Additional efforts were put in to improve source polarization and AGS polarization transfer efficiency. To preserve polarization on the ramp, a new working point was chosen such that the vertical tune is near a third order resonance. The overview of the changes and the operation results are presented in this paper.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
Testing a single hardware unit of an accelerator control system often requires the setup of a graphical user interface. Developing a dedicated application for a specific hardware unit test could be time consuming and the application may become obsolete after the unit tests. This paper documents a methodology for quick design and setup of an interface focused on performing unit tests of accelerator equipment with minimum programming work. The method has three components. The first is a generic accelerator device object (ADO) manager which can be used to setup, store, and log testing controls parameters for any unit testing system. The second involves the design of a TAPE (Tool for Automated Procedure Execution) sequence file that specifies and implements all testing and control logic. The third is the design of a PET (parameter editing tool) page that provides the unit tester with all the necessary control parameters required for testing. This approach has been used for testing the horizontal plane of the Stochastic Cooling Motion Control System at RHIC.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
Power Supply checkout is a necessary, pre-beam, time-critical function. At odds are the desire to decrease the amount of time to perform the checkout while at the same time maximizing the number and types of checks that can be performed and analyzing the results quickly (in case any problems exist that must be addressed). Controls and Power Supply Group personnel have worked together to develop tools to accomplish these goals. Power Supply checkouts are now accomplished in a time-frame of hours rather than days, reducing the number of person-hours needed to accomplish the checkout and making the system available more quickly for beam development.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
An alarm system is a vital component of any accelerator, as it provides a warning that some element of the system is not functioning properly. The severity and age of the alarm may sometimes signify whether urgent or deferred attention is required. For example, older alarms may inadvertently be given a lower priority if an assumption is made that someone else is already investigating it, whereas those that are more current may indicate the need for an immediate response. The alarm history also provides valuable information regarding the functionality of the overall system, thus careful tracking of these data is likely to improve response time and remove uncertainty about the current status. Since one goal of every alarm display is to be free of alarms, a clear and concise presentation of an alarm along with useful historic annotations can help the end user address the warning more quickly. By defining a discrete set of very specific alarm states and by utilizing database resources to maintain a complete and easily accessible alarm history, we anticipate a decrease in down time due to more efficient operator response and management of alarms.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
As part of the search for a phase transition or critical point on the QCD phase diagram, an energy scan including 5 different energy settings was performed during the 2010 RHIC heavy ion run. While the top beam energy for heavy ions is at 100 GeV/n and the lowest achieved energy setpoint was significantly below RHICs injection energy of approximately 10 GeV/n, we also provided beams for data taking in a medium energy range above injection energy and below top beam energy. This paper reviews RHIC experience and challenges for RHIC medium energy operations that produced full experimental data sets at beam energies of 31.2 GeV/n and 19.5 GeV/n.