WAO2023 International Workshop on Accelerator Operations

The electron and positron accelerator complex at KEK provides experimental opportunities for elementary particle physics with SuperKEKB collider and photon science with two light sources. In order to maximize the experimental performances at those facilities the injector linac delivers beams with widely differing properties in pulse-to-pulse modulation at 50 Hz. Different beam flavors are...

In March 2024, CLS plan is to shutdown its facility to replace its S-Band US frequency injector with a new S-band injector which frequency synchronizes with our Booster and Storage ring ~500MHz. During the first 10 weeks needed to dismantle and install the new injector, the operator group members shall be redeployed to new tasks. While in principle it is obvious, one shall take into...

"The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) is a large-scale scientific research facility located in Dongguan, China. It is a pulsed neutron source that uses a proton accelerator to produce neutrons, which are then used to study the structure and properties of materials at the atomic and molecular level.
Since its opening, CSNS has steadily improved its operating efficiency and beam power...

"Neutron sources will be needed to characterize the material of future fusion reactors. The Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator (LIPAc) is a full scale prototype aiming at validating the low energy part of such neutron sources up to their first cryomodule. Built under the Broader Approach (BA) agreement between Japan and Europe, LIPAc will produce a deuteron beam of 125 mA at 9 MeV in...

The Korea Multi-Purpose Accelerator Complex (KOMAC) started operating the 100 MeV proton linac in 2013. Currently, the linac is equipped with four proton irradiation beamlines and it provides 20 MeV and 100 MeV proton beams to a wide range of users. The annual accelerator operation can be divided into beam service running according to a user's request and the machine study run. For the stable...

The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) provides 100 MeV - 800 MeV protons to five experimental facilities, each with different requirements, capabilities, and mission. This presentation will provide information regarding facility background, organization, schedules, staffing, priorities, execution of operations and maintenance, and challenges. Additional emphasis will be placed on...

The High Energy Photon Source is a fourth-generation light source under construction in China and is currently undergoing beam commissioning in the linear accelerator section. It is worth mentioning that the control and data acquisition design for the all-solid-state pulse modulator and the electron gun pulse power supply. It realizes wide range and high precision control of the beam current,...

"The current Fermilab Accelerator Division (AD) Electronic Logbook (ADEL) was first released in 2013. Its creation a decade ago represented a marked improvement over the previous electronic logbook (eLog) and brought about the first consolidated Fermilab AD eLog built upon a relational database. Over the past ten years, ADEL has performed admirably, logging nearly one million user entered...

"The personal protection system (PPS) of SuperKEKB takes care of many
accelerators. Since they are closely related with each other, the PPS cannot be modified or updated during the accelerator operation period. The period for the system upgrade suffers great restrictions by the accelerator operation schedule. Fur-thermore, due to the construction of PF-AR/BT line and PDR and Super-KEKB, PPS...

"Accelerator-based high energy neutron sources are foreseen to characterize the material of future fusion reactors. The Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator (LIPAc) is a full-scale prototype aiming at validating the production of a deuteron beam of 125 mA at 9 MeV in continuous wave under the Broader Approach (BA) agreement between Japan and Europe.

Just as an orchestra needs a conductor,...

A control system based on Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) has been implemented for the 100 MeV linear proton accelerator at the Korea Multi-purpose Accelerator Complex (KOMAC). Our control system is operated with over 20,000 Process Variables (PVs) and utilizes several services such as Phoebus alarm, Archiver Appliance and, Channel Access gateway, among others. The...

The 100-MeV proton accelerator has been performing a variety of beam services seamlessly with multiple beamlines for 10 years at KOMAC. An improvement method for repeated operating mistakes during beam service has been applied to the user interface. These efforts have been partially applied to the user interface, and new ideas are still being created and prepared for application. Since...

The J-PARC 3-GeV Rapid Cycling Synchrotron (RCS) aims to deliver 1 MW proton beam to the materials and life science experimental facility (MLF) and the main ring synchrotron. In such a high intensity beam , there is a possibility to cause a severe radiation accident. To detect and prevent the radiation accident in the accelerator system, we developed the beam diagnostics system in RCS. This...

At the large accelerator, hundreds of diagnostic systems are installed along the long beamline. And sometimes, we unify the information from the diagnostic systems which are installed separately, and understand the beam condition or anomaly. For this purpose, the synchronization of the timestamp of the individual diagnostic system works effectively to link the necessary information. The...

Demonstration experiment by use of strongly X-Y coupled electron beam into the solenoid magnetic field will be introduced. Our goal is to validate newly developed three-dimensional beam injection scheme and formulate strategy of beam commission for the original experiment “muon g-2/EDM experiment at J-PARC”. In our system, several beam diagnostic methods are available to understand different...

Visual aids play a crucial role in the operation of Canadian Light Source, providing valuable information to scientists, engineers, and operators. Multiple screens represent real time data about the machine's status, its parameters, and diagnostics in an easy to read and understandable form. These visual aids allow operators in particular to monitor and control various aspects of the...

"At RIKEN RIBF, a large number of electromagnet power supplies are implemented. In the control system, these electromagnet power supplies are managed in a database on a per-experimental-beamline basis, and programs are created based on this database. However, during operation, it took much work to determine the location of the controlled power supplies and what was used for the control...

At the RIKEN Nishina Center, a superconducting RIKEN Linear Accelerator (SRILAC) project was started in 2019 to synthesize a new superheavy element 119 and above. This project's control system is constructed based on Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS). To store the data for SRILAC operation, the Archiver Appliance (AA) has been introduced as a new data archive system...

"The FAIR International Accelerator Facility, one of the largest science projects in the world, is being built at the GSI Helmholtz Center in Darmstadt, Germany. With construction work on the main buildings and accelerator tunnels for the FAIR first science stage nearing completion, the project is soon entering its final phase. Installation of the accelerator components will begin next year,...

Accelerator operators expose to various knowledge that composes an accelerator complex, making operators a versatile workforce. The versatility is enhanced with additional accelerator physics knowledge and can benefit the duties in accelerator operation. Such knowledge can be intuitively obtained by involving in projects led by accelerator physicists. In this presentation, my involvement in...

"Fermilab is working to make the highest power proton beam for neutrino production. To that end we have committed to building a superconducting RF linac (aka PIP-II) to replace the existing Linac. On the experimental end we are building new detector enclosures and beam line (DUNE/LBNF) from the FNAL Main Injector (MI). The goal of the projects is to produce and utilize a 1.2 MW proton beam...

In 2017 the Australian Synchrotron secured funding to build 8 new beamlines to accompany the existing 10 that have been in operation since 2007. After initial delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic many of these beamlines have started to come online in some capacity over the past 12 months. The accelerator operators have been actively involved in this process, which has included: commissioning...

The LANSCE accelerator has been in operation since the early 1970’s at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in the past running up to 4 beams of different charge, current and flavors to 800 MeV. Much of this operation has been accomplished by iterative tuning following the primary physics tune that occurs initially at machine start up. Initially, physicists and operators utilize emittance...

In theory, a 180° hybrid bridge can be used as a variable power divider and combiner. This study focuses on applying the variable power divider and combiner to a high-vacuum and high-power environment, aiming at realizing future applications in particle accelerators. Beginning from theoretical derivation, it reports the design of an S-band variable waveguide power divider and combiner based on...

SLAC now operates four large particle accelerators (LCLS, LCLS-II, FACET-II, and SPEAR3). These four machines are somewhat independent, but share some infrastructure (water cooling systems, electrical power distribution, networking, etc). As the user availability demands increase for these accelerators, planning outages for preventative maintenance and upgrades becomes quite challenging. In...

The SAGA Light Source (SAGA-LS) is a compact synchrotron radiation facility. The SAGA-LS accelerator complex consists of a 255 MeV linac and a 1.4 GeV electron storage ring of 75.6 m in circumference. The accelerator research group is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the accelerator system. The annual operation time for synchrotron radiation experiments has been around 1700...

We present the current status of UVSOR-III electron storage ring. It is a 750 MeV machine dedicated to synchrotron radiation in UV, VIS, IR and SX region, including LCS gamma-rays. We are accepting about 4,000 person-day researchers yearly from nationwide and outside Japan. The accelerator complex consists of a 15 MeV linear accelerator, a 750 MeV booster synchrotron and a storage ring of 53 m...

60 MeV electron linac has been used for radioisotope (RI) production via photo-nuclear reaction at Research Center for Electron Photon Science (ELPH) at Tohoku University. Operation hours of the linac is 834 hours in 2022 despite refurbished former 300 MeV linac built in 1967. Four engineers together with researchers in beam physics and radiochemistry are in charge of accelerator operation and...

Control rooms rely on alarms to alert operators of abnormal conditions and failures. In the event of major failures, it is essential that operators identify the causes and respond quickly. The ATG control room at TRIUMF routes all alarms to a physical consolidated alarm panel. As the centrepiece of the control room, the panel clearly indicates the system(s) in alarm state, allows all alarms to...

"The SOLEIL synchrotron radiation facility was commissioned in 2006 and today supplies photon beams to 29 beamlines, with a maximum intensity of 500 mA during 5000 hours per year. Over the last few years the operation group, with the help of the Acquisition and Control Systems Engineering group, has been heavily involved in the fine integration of the new PANIC alarm management system into the...

The LANSCE accelerator facility has been in operation for 51 years, and the Fast Protect System has been monitoring systems site-wide since the early 80’s. The premise of Fast Protect is to provide machine protection by monitoring all critical devices at the facility on a pulse-by-pulse basis. In the event of a malfunction, beam is terminated prior to acceleration to minimize activation of...

"Effectively responding to alarms and warnings is paramount for ensuring safety and mitigating potential risks. This talk will shed light on the practices employed at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to promptly and cohesively respond to critical alerts.
1. Identify the Source: Quickly identify the source of the alarm or warning. Determine whether it is a false alarm or an actual threat....

"Cooling water leakage occurred in the vacuum chamber of an ECR ion source. It has
taken plenty of time to determine the cause of the pressure increase and realize the
cooling-water leakage in the vacuum chamber, because there were a lot of possibility to
cause the pressure increase, such as a vacuum leak from air and the gas lines. The delay
time to realize the water leakage led to...

RHIC Run 23 faced numerous challenges, largely caused by running in the heat of the summer. This talk covers the plethora of unexpected issues experienced during the run, and our attempts to address and mitigate them.

"Canadian nuclear facilities of all types are migrating from nuclear substances to accelerator-based facilities, mirroring the trend first observed in the medical sector in the 1980’s and 90’s. This shift has been motivated by the need for more flexible and higher throughput facilities, as well as a desire to move away from nuclear-substance-based facilities that may require more thorough...

Accelerator operation is very manpower demanding. Control system tools could overtake repetitive tasks during commissioning and beamtime like device scanning, beam optimization or device steering nowadays. A Sequencer tool has been developed to automate accelerator devices steering for different purposes. Main use cases up to now cover HW Commissioning and Power Saving. We report on software...

Accelerator-based high energy neutron sources are studied to characterize future fusion reactors material. The Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator (LIPAc) is a full-scale prototype aiming at validating the production of a deuteron beam of 125 mA at 9 MeV in continuous wave in an international collaboration between Japan and the European Union. The accelerator is located in Rokkasho, Japan,...

"It is important to measure and control the temperature and humidity in the accelerator tunnel to keep this accelerator component healthy.
We have developed the inexpensive measurement system in the tunnel consisting of a Raspberry Pi and an I2C sensor with temperature and humidity.
This compact system can measure humidity as well as temperature in real time based on EPICS system and is easy...

"SuperKEKB aims for high luminosity on the order of 10^35 cm^-2s^-1 with high beam currents of 2.6 A for electron and 3.6 A for positron to search a new physics beyond the Standard Model in the B meson regime. In recent operations, we achieved new record of the luminosity of 4.7x10^34 cm^-2s^-1 with 1.1 A for electron and 1.3 A for positron.
For high current beam storage, beam instabilities...

"The BEPCII is designed as an e+/e- attenuating operational collider. In order to improve the BESIII data acquisition, BEPCII has carried out an upgrade project of topup injection operation of high-energy physics experiments. Based on the injection rate, injection interval, beam lifetime and luminance evolution of e+ and e-, the optimized data acquisition time can be calculated. The collision...

"During the beam time a failure can occur at any time and the operators have to solve it as fast as possible. If they are not able to solve the problem, they need the support of an expert and during the normal working hours at GSI they can use the existing pager system. A call is initiated by simply pressing a button on a keypad in the main control room.
Previously, the keypad was limited to...

"At the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), carbon-ion therapy has been carried out since 1994, and a total of more than 15,000 patients have been treated to date. Japan, where QST is located, is prone to disasters such as earthquakes and storms, which can cause equipment failures: Earthquakes can cause misalignment in equipment, and storms can cause power outages due...

A method to measure relative changes of the bunch length based on the spectrum of the induced voltage on a BPM button has been developed at ALBA. The bunch length has been calibrated using a Streak Camera for different filling patterns and beam currents. The idea is to have an alternative, redundant and readily available measurements of the bunch length during machine operation, avoiding the...

The GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research is known for its parallel operation, in which up to 8 experiments are simultaneously supplied with beams from up to 4 different ion sources. The beamtime blocks of the last few years were about 6 months long and packed with weekly changing experiments and intensities. During the beam times at GSI, there are always unexpected failures of devices,...

For the First machine Elettra we used and optical method and reached a presion of tenths of millimetres. For Elettra 2.0 we Will use Absolute tracker, a network for inserting objects and an appropriate software. In this case we would reach a centesimal millimetres precision.

"Since the start of ESRF, the tasks entrusted to machine operators have not been only confined to operating, monitoring and ensuring the safety of installations.
Depending on their level of computer knowledge and availability, they develop interfaces and servers to control equipment (in collaboration with the experts), and complement those created by the dedicated group.

These in-house...

Research Center for Electron Photon Science (ELPH) of Tohoku University operates three electron linear accelerators (linacs) and an electron synchrotron for various scientific fields, such as radioisotope production, proton radius measurement, and hadron physics experiments. One of the linacs, operational since 1967, is outdated and frequently malfunctions. Our team of about eight people,...

"Tools developed for the control room need to be fast, effective, and modular. At the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), operators have developed software to test tuner motors on the superconducting linac and a graphical user interface (gui)-based application to automatically tune beam losses and lower residual activation levels in the tunnels. Future plans include an app to automatically...