Minimisation of the wire position uncertainties of the new CERN vacuum wire scanner

The particle production of an accelerator is characterised by the accelerated species of particles, by their number and energy. The particle rate is determined by the production cross section, a natural constant and the accelerator dependent parameter luminosity. The luminosity is proportional to the number of particles in each beam and inversely proportional to the particle beam transverse dimensions. The luminosity increases with the particle beam density and therefore the probability of interactions too. To optimize the transverse beam sizes, profile monitors are used to measure parameter depending changes. Different monitors can provide beam transversal profile measurements (Wire Scanners, Synchrotron Light Monitors, Rest Gas Profile Monitors), however the wire scanner monitor is considered to be the most accurate of all monitors. Wire scanner instruments measure the transverse beam density profile in a particle accelerator by means of moving a thin wire in an intermittent manner. In the next years the luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be significantly increased and more accurate beam profile measurement will necessary. The new performance demands a wire travelling speed up to 20 m.s-1 and a position measurement accuracy of the order of few micros. The existing wire scanners does not reach the new requirements as their accuracy achieved is limited by the motorization, the angular position measurement system located outside of the vacuum vessels and the vibration of the thin carbon wire which has been identified as one of the major error sources reducing the knowledge of the wire position. Therefore the development of a new device whose accuracy meets the new requirements was mandatory. This thesis work aims to provide suitable inputs for the design and operation of this new fast wire scanner in order to minimize the uncertainties in the wire position. To accomplish the aims the understanding of the wire vibrations in such a system is one of the main goals of this work. More specifically, the development of a suitable vibration measurement system and the construction of dynamic models of the system are the two goals aimed. For the new scanner design this work intend to propose, the conceptual design, the optimization of the most critical parts and the operation procedure that will allow the new device to reach the required performances imposed by the forthcoming LHC conditions.La producción de partículas de un acelerador se caracteriza por las especies de partículas aceleradas, por su número y energía. La tasa de partículas se determina a partir de la sección transversal de producción, una constante natural, y de un parámetro que depende del acelerador, la luminosidad. La luminosidad es proporcional al número de partículas por haz e inversamente proporcional a la dimensión transversal de los haces. La luminosidad aumenta con la densidad de partículas y por lo tanto también aumenta la probabilidad de interacciones entre los haces. Para optimizar la sección trasversal del haz, se utilizan monitores de perfil de haz. Diversos tipos de monitores pueden proporcionar mediciones del perfil transversal del haz (Escáneres de hilo, Monitores de luz de sincrotrón, Monitores de análisis de gas residual), sin embargo el escáner de hilo está considerado como el más preciso de todos ellos. Los escáneres de hilo miden el perfil del haz atravesándolo con un hilo muy delgado de manera intermitente. En los próximos años la luminosidad del Gran Colisionador de Hadrones (LHC) se incrementará de manera significativa, por lo que serán necesarios sistemas de medida de perfil de haz más precisos que lo actuales. Las nuevas características, requerirán velocidad de desplazamiento del hilo de hasta 20 ms-1 y una precisión en la medida de posición del hilo de tan solo unas micras. Los escáneres actuales no pueden alcanzar estos requerimientos ya que su precisión está limitada por el sistema de motorización, por el medidor angular de posición que está situado fuera del tanque de vacío y por las vibraciones del hilo, la cuales han sido identificadas como una de las mayores fuentes de error a la hora de conocer la posición real del hilo. Por todo esto, el desarrollo de un nuevo dispositivo cuyas características cumplan los nuevos requerimientos era necesario. Este trabajo de tesis tiene como objetivo proporcionar criterios adecuados para el diseño y operación de un nuevo escáner, con el fin de minimizar las incertidumbres en la posición del hilo. Para lograr estos objetivos, el entender las vibraciones del hilo en un sistema de este tipo es un objetivo primordial. De manera más específica el desarrollo de sistemas de medida de vibración adecuados y la construcción de modelos dinámicos del sistema son los dos objetivos concretos perseguidos por este trabajo. De cara al nuevo diseño, este trabajo pretende proponer un diseño conceptual así como definir los criterios para la optimización de las partes más críticas y establecer un procedimiento de operación que permita al nuevo dispositivo alcanzar los requerimientos impuestos por las futuras condiciones del LHC.Postprint (published version

Instrument Design and Radiation Pattern Testing for Terahertz Astronomical Instruments

abstract: The Milky Way galaxy is a powerful dynamic system that is highly efficient at recycling material. Stars are born out of intergalactic gas and dust, fuse light elements into heavier elements in their cores, then upon stellar death spread material throughout the galaxy, either by diffusion of planetary nebula or by explosive events for high mass stars, and that gas must cool and condense to form stellar nurseries. Though the stellar lifecycle has been studied in detail, relatively little is known about the processes by which hot, diffuse gas ejected by dying stars cools and conglomerates in the interstellar medium (ISM). Much of this mystery arises because only recently have instruments with sufficient spatial and spectral resolution, sensitivity, and bandwidth become available in the terahertz (THz) frequency spectrum where these clouds peak in either thermal or line emission. In this dissertation, I will demonstrate technology advancement of instruments in this frequency regime with new characterization techniques, machining strategies, and scientific models of the spectral behavior of gas species targeted by these instruments. I begin this work with a description of radiation pattern measurements and their use in astronomical instrument characterization. I will introduce a novel technique to measure complex (phase-sensitive) field patterns using direct detectors. I successfully demonstrate the technique with a single pixel microwave inductance detectors (MKID) experiment. I expand that work by measuring the APEX MKID (A-MKID) focal plane array of 880 pixel detectors centered at 350 GHz. In both chapters I discuss the development of an analysis pipeline to take advantage of all information provided by complex field mapping. I then discuss the design, simulation, fabrication processes, and characterization of a circular-to-rectangular waveguide transformer module integrated into a circularly symmetric feedhorn block. I conclude with a summary of this work and how to advance these technologies for future ISM studies.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Exploration Systems Design 201

Generating Enzyme and Radical‐Mediated Bisubstrates as Tools for Investigating Gcn5‐Related N‐Acetyltransferases

Gcn5‐related N‐acetyltransferases (GNATs) are found in all kingdoms of life and catalyze important acyl transfer reactions in diverse cellular processes. While many 3D structures of GNATs have been determined, most do not contain acceptor substrates in their active sites. To expand upon existing crystallographic strategies for improving acceptor‐bound GNAT structures, we synthesized peptide substrate analogs and reacted them with CoA in PA4794 protein crystals. We found two separate mechanisms for bisubstrate formation: (a) a novel X‐ray induced radical‐mediated alkylation of CoA with an alkene peptide and (b) direct alkylation of CoA with a halogenated peptide. Our approach is widely applicable across the GNAT superfamily and can be used to improve the success rate of obtaining liganded structures of other acyltransferases

A Conflict-Resilient Lock-Free Calendar Queue for Scalable Share-Everything PDES Platforms

Emerging share-everything Parallel Discrete Event Simulation (PDES) platforms rely on worker threads fully sharing the workload of events to be processed. These platforms require efficient event pool data structures enabling high concurrency of extraction/insertion operations. Non-blocking event pool algorithms are raising as promising solutions for this problem. However, the classical non-blocking paradigm leads concurrent conflicting operations, acting on a same portion of the event pool data structure, to abort and then retry. In this article we present a conflict-resilient non-blocking calendar queue that enables conflicting dequeue operations, concurrently attempting to extract the minimum element, to survive, thus improving the level of scalability of accesses to the hot portion of the data structure---namely the bucket to which the current locality of the events to be processed is bound. We have integrated our solution within an open source share-everything PDES platform and report the results of an experimental analysis of the proposed concurrent data structure compared to some literature solutions