Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Particle accelerator design”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Human Factors Design for Particle Accelerator Control Room Interfaces

Fermilab, the birthplace of many scientific discoveries in physics and particle accelerator sciences, is in the midst of a widescale modernization effort. The Accelerator Control Operations Research Network (ACORN project’s goal is to modernize the accelerator control system by replacing end-of-life power supplies and enhance future operations of the Fermilab accelerator complex with megawatt particle beams. Within ACORN, opportunities for process improvement concerning software development, human-system interface design, and task performance are also being considered. Human factors researchers from Idaho National Laboratory in collaboration with usability experts from Fermilab, are currently investigating human-centered design improvements for the accelerator control system. For example, substantial tribal knowledge and memory recall are required to effectively operate the accelerator system. This contributes to high cognitive workload and potential burnout of accelerator operators. Developing guidance for consistent visual and functional design enables a more intuitive interaction and relieves operators of cognitive burden. Additionally, developing more intuitive and integrated interfaces can also lead to improved accelerator efficacy by empowering operators with greater understanding and control of the systems. The challenge in developing such interfaces is in designing for a wide variety of user goals, system specifications, and level of experience in users. The challenges need to be met while e also considering the maintainability of the control system. The purpose of this paper is to detail the human factors process and design within the ACORN project, describe results gathered thus far, and discuss the larger implications for this work.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Bridging the Gap Between Modern UX Design and Particle Accelerator Control Room Interfaces

Accelerator control systems often represent relatively complex and safety-sensitive human-machine interfaces within process control industries. These systems are technically robust and reflect the cumulative integration of solutions built and adapted across decades. One of the regular, unfortunate casualties of provisional accelerator control system updates is their human-system interfaces (HSIs) which often lag behind modern usability and design standards. An additional challenge is that although there is a multitude of established human factors (HF), and user experience (UX) principles for everyday digital applications, there are very few (if any) established principles for complex and safety-critical applications for an accelerator. This paper argues for the importance of established HF and UX principles (herein referred to as human-centered design principles) into the development of accelerator HSIs, emphasizing the need for clarity, consistency, responsiveness, and cognitive accessibility. Drawing from HF/UX best practices and human-centered design, this paper discusses how these approaches can enhance operator performance, reduce human error, and improve accelerator personnel collaboration. Case studies from Accelerator Control Operations Research Network (ACORN) at Fermilab are explored to demonstrate how interfaces built with human-centered design principles can scale with system complexity while remaining intuitive and efficient for diverse user roles including operators, machine experts, and engineers. By bridging the gap between traditional control system design and modern human-centered design methods, this paper provides a roadmap for evolving accelerator HSIs into more usable, maintainable, and effective tools.

Hill, Rachael [Idaho Natl. Lab.]↗
DOE OSTI2023

optimas v0.1

optimas is a Python library that can coordinate a large number of numerical simulations on high-performance computing resources, with the aim of optimizing a given simulation result. More specifically, this library is currently used for design optimization of laser-plasma particle accelerators. In this context, the performance of particle accelerator designs are often evaluated with large-scale simulation codes, and many separate simulations need to be run - with different design parameters - in order to find the most performant design. optimas facilitates this process by providing a convenient interface to advanced optimizers (e.g. Bayesian optimization), and by coordinating the execution of the different simulations on HPC resources. (This is done by leveraging the library libensemble.) Compared to other open-source optimization libraries (e.g. Ax), optimas is more tailored towards execution on DOE HPC resources (e.g. Perlmutter, Summit, etc.) and is specialized for the type of simulation codes and workflows that are used in the community of laser-plasma acceleration.

Lehe, Remi↗
DOE OSTI2024

WarpX: Delivering Unprecedented Particle-in-Cell Simulation Capability

Since 1939, more than 30 percent of all Nobel prizes in physics and four of the past 14 prizes in chemistry have been awarded for work with particle accelerators. These tools are now used to treat cancer and produce medical supplies, support research in applied fields such as pharmaceuticals, create microcircuits, and sterilize food—and the applications list continues to grow. However, the size of the facilities needed to house these machines—which are often dozens of kilometers long—has limited their future potential. Thus, researchers are motivated to create novel particle accelerator designs that provide new imaging capability but have a much smaller footprint. The Exascale Computing Project’s WarpX application captures the full complexity of the acceleration processes within plasma-based design, supporting the rapid and cost-efficient development of tens of thousands of new particle accelerators for various applications from improving human health to nuclear fusion reactors.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Integrable optics design principles for beam halo suppression in accelerator rings at the intensity frontier

RadiaSoft LLC is collaborating with Fermilab to fundamentally advance the field of particle accelerator design, in order to reduce cost and technical risk for next-generation hadron accelerators, and to more rapidly advance the intensity frontier of high energy physics. The Fermilab PI is one of the originators of the theory of integrable nonlinear magnetic lattices. Fermilab is the only laboratory in the world pursuing the experimental verification of the theory. Transferring Fermilab expertise to RadiaSoft LLC will enhance US competitiveness by enabling US industry to engage in the design of future high intensity hadron rings for spallation sources, neutrino sources, muon sources, subcritical nuclear reactors and waste transmutation facilities.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Experimental Demonstration of a Two-Dimensional Nonlinear Integrable System in a Particle Accelerator

A two-dimensional nonlinear integrable system was experimentally demonstrated at the Fermilab Integrable Optics Test Accelerator. The system was implemented by inserting a special nonlinear magnet in a conventional accelerator lattice. We characterized the system by measuring lifetimes, transverse profiles and transverse oscillation frequencies of the 150-MeV electron beam as a function of the strength of the nonlinear insert. The measured shift of the working point and the amplitude-dependent detuning were consistent with theoretical predictions. We also observed the predicted bifurcation of the stable closed orbit. A striking consequence of the system's implementation was the possibility to operate the storage ring with integer tunes without lifetime degradation. This research opens up novel ways to design particle accelerators and to stabilize particle beams.

Wieland, John [Fermilab] (ORCID:0000000289718523)↗
DOE OSTI2026

Beam halo formation with different cathode distributions

Beam halo refers to the low-density distribution of particles extending beyond the beam core, and its generation and mitigation are important topics in particle accelerator design. Effective mitigation of beam halo is essential for the cooler design based on Energy Recovery Linac (ERL), which must deliver an electron beam with average beam current of 100 mA and a charge 1 nC per bunch. In the ERL injector and booster linacs, space charge effects are stronger due to relatively low beam energy (6 MeV). Additionally, the longer bunch length of approximately 100 ps in this regime vs the RF period of 5.08 ns makes the formation of beam halos more likely. Therefore, effective collimation of beam halo is critical to maintaining the required beam parameters. To design an effective collimation scheme, several halo distributions were generated at the cathode and used to study halo formation within the injector-merger. This paper presents different halo distributions and halo formation, providing insights on halo collimation strategy.

Accelerator Physics↗
DOE OSTI2023

Advanced Modeling of Conventional Particle Accelerators

SciDAC-5 goals: Deliver particle accelerator and beam simulations tools that go beyond the current state of the art, up to the realization of virtual twins of particle accelerators, enabling design and modeling of particle accelerators at unprecedented speed, levels of accuracy, and realism; and apply these tools to key accelerator facilities relevant to DOE HEP (such as PIP-II/DUNE, FACET-II).

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Scorpius Accelerator Emittance Diagnostic Design

The 14th International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC’23) will be held in Venice, Italy from 7 to 12 May 2023 at the Venice Convention Centre. Website: https://www.ipac23.org/ Presenter: Mark Raphaelian Dear Mark, we acknowledge reception of your abstract #1268 for IPAC'23 - 14th International Particle Accelerator Conference. Here follow the details: Title: The Design of the Emittance Diagnostic for the Scorpius Accelerator Classification: MC6.T03: Beam Diagnostics and Instrumentation Type of presentation: Poster Presentation Submitter: Mark Raphaelian Authors: Mark Raphaelian Co-Authors: Daniel Dzenitis, Franz Weber, Nathaniel Pogue, Sean Littleton, Steven Falabella, Patrick Duffy, William Stem

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Collimation Systems for the PSR

This note provides a review of collimator systems being used or considered in high-intensity proton accelerators like SNS, J-PARC, LHC, and PIP-II. These facilities use collimators to remove beam halo, restrict transverse size and momentum in the beam to constrain beam losses around collimators and minimize beam losses downstream, particularly losses arising from particles missing the design location at the stripping foil when injected into the proton storage ring. Collimators are placed either in the transport injection lines (single-pass collimators) or in the rings (multi-pass collimators). Collimators in the transport line are placed around stripping foils in H- accelerators, allowing the beamline optics to get rid of the unstripped protons into well localized absorbers. Rings and proton accelerators mostly rely on tungsten scrapers and collimators in a multi-stage configuration to clean the scattered beam particles mainly responsible for heavy losses at high energies. Placement of the collimators is carefully chosen in terms of the right phase advance to maximize the collimating efficiency, whether the collimation is intended to match an injection stripping foil or a downstream acceptance. Collimation systems are designed with the specific concerns of each facility in mind, although all of them prioritize the minimization of activation due to beam losses to enable hands-on access during maintenance periods. At LANSCE, there are no high-energy collimators, although pairs of horizontal and vertical jaws are routinely used in the LEBT to clean and control the transverse beam profile delivered downstream. This report will help in understanding, together with the beam dynamics simulations, which collimation schemes would be most effective for the PSR upgrade. For example, SNS designed off-momentum collimators to be placed in a 90° arc bend, a high-dispersion region in the beam injection line, very similar to the bend at Line D in LANSCE. This system was very effective at minimizing losses during injection into the SNS accumulator ring and is being re-designed for future operation.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Northstar Accelerator Based Mo99 Production Facility Design Support (LANL FY20 Quarters 1 and 2 Facility Design Support Report)

Facility design support this quarter centered on transfer of the target insertion and design details to MBraun and Springs, the companies under contract via Northstar to do the hot cell, target insertion and the local target shielding. A significant number of changes have been introduced by these vendors which have been reviewed and critiqued. In addition, the company contracted to produce the Mo100 disks announced that the tolerance on the thickness of 0.5 mm would be ±25%. An alternative design of the target holder was proposed. Bulk shielding and local target shielding design work has continued also and will be reported.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

HTS Dipole Magnet With Mechanical Energy Transfer in the Magnetic Field

Several high-temperature superconducting (HTS) model magnets for particle accelerators were designed and successfully tested at Fermilab. Some worked in a persistent current mode by continuously generating magnetic fields in the iron-dominated magnet gap. This paper investigated a novel HTS dipole magnet concept with a mechanical energy transfer in the magnetic field. To pump the energy in the superconducting HTS dipole magnet, a detachable magnetizer was used. The HTS dipole magnet was built and successfully tested at a liquid nitrogen temperature. We discuss the magnet design, test results, the proposed approach limits, and efficiency.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

System study of the use of ferrite inductive inserts to improve beam in PSR

The effect of space charge has long been compensated in the PSR by offsetting the capacitive impedance of the ring with an inductive component. The effect of space charge will be discussed in detail as it pertains to rings in general, and the history of the use of the inductive insert in the PSR is also presented. An overview of ferrite properties is then provided, as well as methods for measuring ferrite properties, and several candidate ferrites are discussed. Finally, the considerations for designing an inductive insert will be fully presented.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Technical Interface Coordination with SHINE (FY2020 Summary)

In FY20, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) performed technical interface coordination with SHINE including coordination of SHINE CFD and thermal hydraulics conference calls, national laboratory conference calls, and program management activities such as reporting and tracking requirements for current FY20 activities. SHINE did not request any general technology consultation support for emergent issues. LANL has participated in the bi-weekly conference calls with SHINE and other national laboratories regarding LANL’s current activities. Activities discussed include the Supo 3-D CFD model geometry validation, releasing the CFD-MCNP coupled codes for the generic solution vessel simulations, and the ANL bubble experiment #2 design, preparation, and collaboration.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Northstar Accelerator Based Mo99 Production Facility Design Support

Facility design support in FY20 centered on transfer of the target insertion and design details to MBraun and Springs, the companies under contract via Northstar to do the hot cell, target insertion and the local target shielding. A significant number of changes have been introduced by these vendors which have been reviewed and critiqued. In addition, the company contracted to produce the Mo100 disks announced that the tolerance on the thickness of 0.5 mm would be ±25%. An alternative design of the target holder was proposed. Bulk shielding and local target shielding design work has continued also and will be reported. Ongoing design and cooling issues continue to arise as the facility takes shape and moves toward completion. LANL is part of the team identifying, analyzing and designing solutions to these issues. Many of these are covered in this report.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Dual Triggered Beam Extraction Kicker (Rev. 1)

A Blumlein modulator is a relatively inexpensive pulsed power device that can deliver highly repeatable pulses that can be used to change the path of beam pulses. The modulator is primarily built with transmission line cable which is relatively inexpensive. Due to the highly repeatable nature of a Blumlein modulator it is a great tool for kicking beam pulses while producing very little spill or losses in beam current. One of the challenges with a Blumlein kicker is that the length of the kicking pulse output by the modulator is determined by the length of the cables. Cable lengths are set prior to implementation for the desired kicking pulse width. The Blumlein modulator at LANSCE uses a single thyratron which can deliver two 50-kilovolt 1,000-amp pulses of opposite polarity to kicking plates at the same time. This method makes for a very strong kick that is highly repeatable. A method that has been discussed, to deliver a different pulse width, is to add a second trigger that would be fired, once the desired pulse width has been delivered, cutting out the remaining pulse. The second trigger would offer a lot of variability with the pulse width of the kicker. This method has only ever been attempted using low current and relatively low voltages compared to the scale needed to properly kick a beam pulse. This in turn allows for the use of power supplies with a higher repetition rate. The advancement of this standard kicker technology in the accelerator facilities would attract attention within the scientific and engineering communities. The project detailed within will investigate the capabilities of different triggering topologies and design a prototype dual triggered Blumlein kicker modulator capable of variable kicking pulse width.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗