PCaPAC2012 - List of Keywords (laser)

Paper	Title	Other Keywords	Page
WEPD23	Design & Implementation Of LabVIEW^TM Based GUI for Remote Operation and Control of Excimer Laser for Plasma Wakefield Accelerator Experiment	GUI, ion, controls, plasma	46
	K.K. Kizhupadath, R.A.V. Kumar, K. Mahavar IPR, Bhat, Gandhinagar, India S. Joshi, A. Sharma Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India
	The paper describes the development of GUI based control software for control/operation, maintenance and data logging of a Coherent CompexPro 102 Excimer Laser (ArF, 193 nm) using LabVIEW^TM instrument control software. Excimer laser will be used to generate the lithium plasma for the Plasma Wake Field Acceleration (PWFA) experiment which is currently being pursued at the Institute for Plasma research, Gandhinagar. The LabView^TM drivers for the system were developed and various control modules for laser control & operation, maintenance (gas refill), energy calibration as well as logging were developed and integrated into a single screen GUI. Automated calibration of the internal energy meter with an external one has also been implemented. The modules can be used independently or as an integrated system. The laser is interfaced to the control PC through a RS-232-to-USB interface.
	Poster WEPD23 [0.898 MB]

WEPD28	Re-envisioning the Operator Consoles for Dhruva Control Room	controls, status, acceleration, monitoring	62
	S. Gaur, M.P. Diwakar, P.M. Nair, C.K. Pithawa, P. Sridharan BARC, Trombay, Mumbai, India N.C. Gohel Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, India
	Control Room design is undergoing rapid changes with the progressive adoption of computerization and automation. Advances in man-machine interfaces have further accelerated this trend. This paper presents the design and main features of Operator consoles (OC) using new technologies for Dhruva control room. The OCs have been designed so as not to burden the operator with information overload but to help him quickly assess the situation and timely take appropriate steps. The consoles provide minimalistic yet intuitive interfaces, context sensitive navigation, display of important information and progressive disclosure of situation based information. The use of animations, 3D graphics, and real time trends with the benefit of hardware acceleration to provide a resolution-independent rich user experience. The use of XAML, an XML based Mark-up Language for User Interface definition and C# for application logic resulted in complete separation of visual design, content, and logic. This also resulted in a workflow where separate teams could work on the UI and the logic of an application. The introduction of Model View View-Model has led to more testable and maintainable software.
	Poster WEPD28 [1.777 MB]

WEPD34	A Low-Cost High-Performance Embedded Platform for Accelerator Controls	controls, free-electron-laser, survey, electron	68
	S. Cleva, A.I. Bogani, L. Pivetta ELETTRA, Basovizza, Italy
	Over the last years the mobile and hand-held device market has seen a dramatic performance improvement of the microprocessors employed for these systems. As an interesting side effect, this brings the opportunity of adopting these microprocessors to build small low-cost embedded boards, featuring lots of processing power and input/output capabilities. Moreover, being capable of running a full featured operating system such as GNU/Linux, and even a control system toolkit such as Tango, these boards can also be used in control systems as front-end or embedded computers. In order to evaluate the feasibility of this idea, an activity has started at ELETTRA to select, evaluate and validate a commercial embedded device able to guarantee production grade reliability, competitive costs and an open source platform. The preliminary results of this work are presented.
	Poster WEPD34 [1.005 MB]

THIA02	Current Status and Upgrade Plan of the Data-Acquisition System at SACLA	photon, status, free-electron-laser, electron	90
	T. Sugimoto, A. Amselem, Y. Furukawa, T. Hirono, Y. Joti, T.K. Kameshima, A. Kiyomichi, T. Ohata, M. Yamaga JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken, Japan T. Abe, R. Tanaka RIKEN SPring-8 Center, Innovative Light Sources Division, Hyogo, Japan T. Hatsui, A. Tokuhisa RIKEN SPring-8 Center, Sayo-cho, Sayo-gun, Hyogo, Japan
	This paper presents current status and upgrade plan of a data-acquisition (DAQ) system for SACLA user experiments. The X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility in SPring-8, SACLA, has achieved first SASE lasing in June 2011, and has delivered X-ray laser beams to users from March 2012 [1]. For the user experiments at SACLA, a dedicated DAQ system has been developed. The DAQ system is currently capable to operate with maximum 10 sensors of multiport Charge-Coupled Device (MPCCD) for X-ray detection. With this configuration, the MPCCD generates 10 MBytes data per accelerator beam shot, which is equivalent to 5 Gbps data rate at 60 Hz beam repetition. During the first experimental period from March to July 2012, the DAQ system carried out 25 experimental proposals that covered atom, molecular and optical physics, ultrafast science, material science, and structure biology. In this paper, we present an overview of the DAQ system with special emphasis on the high-speed data cache, and data visualization by on-site PC clusters. An upgrade plan of the DAQ storage more than 3 PBytes and the on-line data-analysis with the off-site 10 PFlops supercomputer ("K computer") are also discussed. [1] T. Ishikawa et al., "A compact X-ray free-electron laser emitting in the sub-angstrom region", Nature Photonics 6, 540-544 (2012).
	Slides THIA02 [2.989 MB]

THCB03	Using Memcached as Real-time Database in the SPARC Control System	controls, power-supply, status, undulator	112
	E. Pace, G. Di Pirro INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma), Italy
	The first implementation of the SPARC control system was based on a distributed TCP/IP data server: each front-end CPU had its own server to distribute data to the console. We decided to move the system to a NoSQL key value database. We decided to use an open source database Memcached. This is a database that is high performance key-value cache optimized for speed only. For this reason we could use Memcached not for storing data, but as a channel of communication between front-end processors and consoles. The first object that we have installed is the camera system. We chose this class of elements because the amount of data is high; cameras are at least 640x480 with 8 bit. In this first installation we made some speed test: we increased the speed transfer and the data transfer is now independent from the number of high level CPUs that are using the same image. The success of this installation convinced us to bring the entire data transfer of SPARC control system to use Memcached as data server.
	Slides THCB03 [3.283 MB]

THCD05	A Flexible and Testable Software Architecture: Applying Presenter First to a Device Server for the DOOCS Accelerator Control System of the European XFEL	controls, PLC, undulator, GUI	131
	A. Beckmann, S. Karabekyan, J. Pflüger XFEL. EU, Hamburg, Germany
	Presenter First (PF) uses a variant of Model View Presenter design pattern to add implementation flexibility and to improve testability of complex event-driven applications. It has been introduced in the context of GUI applications, but can easily be adapted to server applications. This paper describes how Presenter First methodology is used to develop a device server for the Programmable Logic Controls (PLC) of the European XFEL undulator systems, which are Windows PCs running PLC software from Beckhoff. The server implements a ZeroMQ message interface to the PLC allowing the DOOCS accelerator control system of the European XFEL to exchange data with the PLC by sending messages over the network. Our challenge is to develop a well-tested device server with a flexible architecture that allows integrating the server into other accelerator control systems like EPICS.
	Slides THCD05 [0.590 MB]

THPD22	Controls for a 10 Petawatt Class Laser Facility	controls, target, status, monitoring	190
	D.A. Pepler STFC/RAL, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, United Kingdom
	Funding: Science & Technology Facilities Council, UK Computerised controls are vital to the operability and flexibility of large-scale physics facilities (such as accelerators, synchrotrons and high-power lasers) in providing fundamental services, for example, automatic configuring of specialist hardware, motion control, firing of shot sequences, enabling precision trigger distribution, vacuum monitoring and control, data acquisition and analysis. The proposed 10PW Laser facility, in line with other major physics facilities around the world, will require a complex computer control system. This is expected to be modeled on the existing Vulcan Laser[1] control system and consist of a dozen or so Windows based PCs each of which will be running a separate and dedicated application to control a particular area or function of the facility. This paper will present an overview of the existing Vulcan laser and provide a status report on the development towards the 10PW which will require the control system to be designed to allow autonomous operation of the 10PW facility as well as to be fully integrated with the existing Vulcan laser controls for combined and synchronized 10PW plus 1PW operations. [1] www.clf.stfc.ac.uk/Facilities/Vulcan/12248.aspx
	Poster THPD22 [1.219 MB]

THPD44	The CS framework as a Control System for the HITRAP Facility at GSI	GUI, controls, ion, LabView	219
	D. Neidherr, D.H. Beck, H. Brand, F. Herfurth GSI, Darmstadt, Germany
	At the GSI accelerator complex in Darmstadt Germany the linear decelerator HITRAP is currently under commissioning. The aim is to provide highly charged ions up to bare uranium at cryogenic temperatures for various experiments as for instance tests of the theory of quantum electrodynamics. The ions are delivered with kinetic energies of about 4 MeV/u from GSIs experimental storage ring (ESR) and are slowed down in several steps until they are trapped and cooled down in a Penning trap. Whereas for the ESR as well as for the first sections of the linear decelerator the GSI accelerator control system is used the cooler trap as well as the subsequent transfer section to the experimental area are controlled with the LabVIEW based CS-framework developed at GSI. This framework is an object-oriented, event driven and multi-threaded framework with SCADA functionality, which is currently in use at many different experiments world-wide. For the HITRAP facility additional features like an online beam monitoring, realized with the integration of a LVOOP class capable of reading out IMAQ cameras, as well as a new GUI were implemented, which allows automatic scans of beam elements.
	Poster THPD44 [1.319 MB]

Paper

Title

Other Keywords

Page

Design & Implementation Of LabVIEW^TM Based GUI for Remote Operation and Control of Excimer Laser for Plasma Wakefield Accelerator Experiment

GUI, ion, controls, plasma

46

K.K. Kizhupadath, R.A.V. Kumar, K. Mahavar
IPR, Bhat, Gandhinagar, India
S. Joshi, A. Sharma
Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India

The paper describes the development of GUI based control software for control/operation, maintenance and data logging of a Coherent CompexPro 102 Excimer Laser (ArF, 193 nm) using LabVIEW^TM instrument control software. Excimer laser will be used to generate the lithium plasma for the Plasma Wake Field Acceleration (PWFA) experiment which is currently being pursued at the Institute for Plasma research, Gandhinagar. The LabView^TM drivers for the system were developed and various control modules for laser control & operation, maintenance (gas refill), energy calibration as well as logging were developed and integrated into a single screen GUI. Automated calibration of the internal energy meter with an external one has also been implemented. The modules can be used independently or as an integrated system. The laser is interfaced to the control PC through a RS-232-to-USB interface.

Poster WEPD23 [0.898 MB]

WEPD28

Re-envisioning the Operator Consoles for Dhruva Control Room

controls, status, acceleration, monitoring

62

S. Gaur, M.P. Diwakar, P.M. Nair, C.K. Pithawa, P. Sridharan
BARC, Trombay, Mumbai, India
N.C. Gohel
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, India

Control Room design is undergoing rapid changes with the progressive adoption of computerization and automation. Advances in man-machine interfaces have further accelerated this trend. This paper presents the design and main features of Operator consoles (OC) using new technologies for Dhruva control room. The OCs have been designed so as not to burden the operator with information overload but to help him quickly assess the situation and timely take appropriate steps. The consoles provide minimalistic yet intuitive interfaces, context sensitive navigation, display of important information and progressive disclosure of situation based information. The use of animations, 3D graphics, and real time trends with the benefit of hardware acceleration to provide a resolution-independent rich user experience. The use of XAML, an XML based Mark-up Language for User Interface definition and C# for application logic resulted in complete separation of visual design, content, and logic. This also resulted in a workflow where separate teams could work on the UI and the logic of an application. The introduction of Model View View-Model has led to more testable and maintainable software.

Poster WEPD28 [1.777 MB]

WEPD34

A Low-Cost High-Performance Embedded Platform for Accelerator Controls

controls, free-electron-laser, survey, electron

68

S. Cleva, A.I. Bogani, L. Pivetta
ELETTRA, Basovizza, Italy

Over the last years the mobile and hand-held device market has seen a dramatic performance improvement of the microprocessors employed for these systems. As an interesting side effect, this brings the opportunity of adopting these microprocessors to build small low-cost embedded boards, featuring lots of processing power and input/output capabilities. Moreover, being capable of running a full featured operating system such as GNU/Linux, and even a control system toolkit such as Tango, these boards can also be used in control systems as front-end or embedded computers. In order to evaluate the feasibility of this idea, an activity has started at ELETTRA to select, evaluate and validate a commercial embedded device able to guarantee production grade reliability, competitive costs and an open source platform. The preliminary results of this work are presented.

Poster WEPD34 [1.005 MB]

THIA02

Current Status and Upgrade Plan of the Data-Acquisition System at SACLA

photon, status, free-electron-laser, electron

90

T. Sugimoto, A. Amselem, Y. Furukawa, T. Hirono, Y. Joti, T.K. Kameshima, A. Kiyomichi, T. Ohata, M. Yamaga
JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken, Japan
T. Abe, R. Tanaka
RIKEN SPring-8 Center, Innovative Light Sources Division, Hyogo, Japan
T. Hatsui, A. Tokuhisa
RIKEN SPring-8 Center, Sayo-cho, Sayo-gun, Hyogo, Japan

This paper presents current status and upgrade plan of a data-acquisition (DAQ) system for SACLA user experiments. The X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility in SPring-8, SACLA, has achieved first SASE lasing in June 2011, and has delivered X-ray laser beams to users from March 2012 [1]. For the user experiments at SACLA, a dedicated DAQ system has been developed. The DAQ system is currently capable to operate with maximum 10 sensors of multiport Charge-Coupled Device (MPCCD) for X-ray detection. With this configuration, the MPCCD generates 10 MBytes data per accelerator beam shot, which is equivalent to 5 Gbps data rate at 60 Hz beam repetition. During the first experimental period from March to July 2012, the DAQ system carried out 25 experimental proposals that covered atom, molecular and optical physics, ultrafast science, material science, and structure biology. In this paper, we present an overview of the DAQ system with special emphasis on the high-speed data cache, and data visualization by on-site PC clusters. An upgrade plan of the DAQ storage more than 3 PBytes and the on-line data-analysis with the off-site 10 PFlops supercomputer ("K computer") are also discussed.
[1] T. Ishikawa et al., "A compact X-ray free-electron laser emitting in the sub-angstrom region", Nature Photonics 6, 540-544 (2012).

Slides THIA02 [2.989 MB]

THCB03

Using Memcached as Real-time Database in the SPARC Control System

controls, power-supply, status, undulator

112

E. Pace, G. Di Pirro
INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma), Italy

The first implementation of the SPARC control system was based on a distributed TCP/IP data server: each front-end CPU had its own server to distribute data to the console. We decided to move the system to a NoSQL key value database. We decided to use an open source database Memcached. This is a database that is high performance key-value cache optimized for speed only. For this reason we could use Memcached not for storing data, but as a channel of communication between front-end processors and consoles. The first object that we have installed is the camera system. We chose this class of elements because the amount of data is high; cameras are at least 640x480 with 8 bit. In this first installation we made some speed test: we increased the speed transfer and the data transfer is now independent from the number of high level CPUs that are using the same image. The success of this installation convinced us to bring the entire data transfer of SPARC control system to use Memcached as data server.

Slides THCB03 [3.283 MB]

THCD05

A Flexible and Testable Software Architecture: Applying Presenter First to a Device Server for the DOOCS Accelerator Control System of the European XFEL

controls, PLC, undulator, GUI

131

A. Beckmann, S. Karabekyan, J. Pflüger
XFEL. EU, Hamburg, Germany

Presenter First (PF) uses a variant of Model View Presenter design pattern to add implementation flexibility and to improve testability of complex event-driven applications. It has been introduced in the context of GUI applications, but can easily be adapted to server applications. This paper describes how Presenter First methodology is used to develop a device server for the Programmable Logic Controls (PLC) of the European XFEL undulator systems, which are Windows PCs running PLC software from Beckhoff. The server implements a ZeroMQ message interface to the PLC allowing the DOOCS accelerator control system of the European XFEL to exchange data with the PLC by sending messages over the network. Our challenge is to develop a well-tested device server with a flexible architecture that allows integrating the server into other accelerator control systems like EPICS.

Slides THCD05 [0.590 MB]

THPD22

Controls for a 10 Petawatt Class Laser Facility

controls, target, status, monitoring

190

D.A. Pepler
STFC/RAL, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, United Kingdom

Funding: Science & Technology Facilities Council, UK
Computerised controls are vital to the operability and flexibility of large-scale physics facilities (such as accelerators, synchrotrons and high-power lasers) in providing fundamental services, for example, automatic configuring of specialist hardware, motion control, firing of shot sequences, enabling precision trigger distribution, vacuum monitoring and control, data acquisition and analysis. The proposed 10PW Laser facility, in line with other major physics facilities around the world, will require a complex computer control system. This is expected to be modeled on the existing Vulcan Laser[1] control system and consist of a dozen or so Windows based PCs each of which will be running a separate and dedicated application to control a particular area or function of the facility. This paper will present an overview of the existing Vulcan laser and provide a status report on the development towards the 10PW which will require the control system to be designed to allow autonomous operation of the 10PW facility as well as to be fully integrated with the existing Vulcan laser controls for combined and synchronized 10PW plus 1PW operations.
[1] www.clf.stfc.ac.uk/Facilities/Vulcan/12248.aspx

Poster THPD22 [1.219 MB]

THPD44

The CS framework as a Control System for the HITRAP Facility at GSI

GUI, controls, ion, LabView

219

D. Neidherr, D.H. Beck, H. Brand, F. Herfurth
GSI, Darmstadt, Germany

At the GSI accelerator complex in Darmstadt Germany the linear decelerator HITRAP is currently under commissioning. The aim is to provide highly charged ions up to bare uranium at cryogenic temperatures for various experiments as for instance tests of the theory of quantum electrodynamics. The ions are delivered with kinetic energies of about 4 MeV/u from GSIs experimental storage ring (ESR) and are slowed down in several steps until they are trapped and cooled down in a Penning trap. Whereas for the ESR as well as for the first sections of the linear decelerator the GSI accelerator control system is used the cooler trap as well as the subsequent transfer section to the experimental area are controlled with the LabVIEW based CS-framework developed at GSI. This framework is an object-oriented, event driven and multi-threaded framework with SCADA functionality, which is currently in use at many different experiments world-wide. For the HITRAP facility additional features like an online beam monitoring, realized with the integration of a LVOOP class capable of reading out IMAQ cameras, as well as a new GUI were implemented, which allows automatic scans of beam elements.

Poster THPD44 [1.319 MB]