Exploring a New Paradigm for Accelerators and Large Experimental Apparatus Control Systems

International audienceThe integration of web technologies and web services has been, in the recent years, one of the major trends in upgrading and developing control systems for accelerators and large experimental apparatuses. Usually, web technologies have been introduced to complement the control systems with smart add-ons and user friendly services or, for instance, to safely allow access to the control system to users from remote sites. In spite of this still narrow spectrum of employment, some software technologies developed for high performance web services, although originally intended and optimized for these particular applications, deserve some features that would allow their deeper integration in a control system and, eventually, use them to develop some of the control system's core components. In this paper we present the conclusion of the preliminary investigations of a new paradigm for an accelerator control system and associated machine data acquisition system (DAQ), based on a synergic combination of network distributed cache memory and a non-relational key/value database. We investigated these technologies with particular interest on performances, namely speed of data storage and retrieve for the network memory, data throughput and queries execution time for the database and, especially, how much this performances can benefit from their inherent scalability. The work has been developed in a collaboration between INFN-LNF and INFN-Roma Tor Vergata

The PLASMONX Project for advanced beam physics experiments

The Project PLASMONX is well progressing into its design phase and has entered as well its second phase of procurements for main components. The project foresees the installation at LNF of a Ti:Sa laser system (peak power > 170 TW), synchronized to the high brightness electron beam produced by the SPARC photo-injector. The advancement of the procurement of such a laser system is reported, as well as the construction plans of a new building at LNF to host a dedicated laboratory for high intensity photon beam experiments (High Intensity Laser Laboratory). Several experiments are foreseen using this complex facility, mainly in the high gradient plasma acceleration field and in the field of mono- chromatic ultra-fast X-ray pulse generation via Thomson back-scattering. Detailed numerical simulations have been carried out to study the generation of tightly focused electron bunches to collide with laser pulses in the Thomson source: results on the emitted spectra of X-rays are presented

Proposal for taking data with the KLOE-2 detector at the DAΦ\PhiNE collider upgraded in energy

This document reviews the physics program of the KLOE-2 detector at DA$\Phi$NE upgraded in energy and provides a simple solution to run the collider above the $\phi$-peak (up to 2, possibly 2.5 GeV). It is shown how a precise measurement of the multihadronic cross section in the energy region up to 2 (possibly 2.5) GeV would have a major impact on the tests of the Standard Model through a precise determination of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the effective fine-structure constant at the $M_Z$ scale. With a luminosity of about $10^{32}$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, DA$\Phi$NE upgraded in energy can perform a scan in the region from 1 to 2.5 GeV in one year by collecting an integrated luminosity of 20 pb$^{-1}$ (corresponding to a few days of data taking) for single point, assuming an energy step of 25 MeV. A few years of data taking in this region would provide important tests of QCD and effective theories by $\gamma\gamma$ physics with open thresholds for pseudo-scalar (like the $\eta'$), scalar ($f_0,f'_0$, etc...) and axial-vector ($a_1$, etc...) mesons; vector-mesons spectroscopy and baryon form factors; tests of CVC and searches for exotics. In the final part of the document a technical solution for the energy upgrade of DA$\Phi$NE is proposed.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure

!CHAOS: A cloud of controls

The paper is aimed to present the !CHAOS open source project aimed to develop a prototype of a national private Cloud Computing infrastructure, devoted to accelerator control systems and large experiments of High Energy Physics (HEP). The !CHAOS project has been financed by MIUR (Italian Ministry of Research and Education) and aims to develop a new concept of control system and data acquisition framework by providing, with a high level of abstraction, all the services needed for controlling and managing a large scientific, or non-scientific, infrastructure. A beta version of the !CHAOS infrastructure will be released at the end of December 2015 and will run on private Cloud infrastructures based on OpenStack

Experience with DAΦNE Upgrade Including Crab Waist

International audienceIn 2007 DAΦNE was upgraded to operate in a regime of large Piwinski angle, with a novel IR optics, reduced vertical beta at the interaction point, and additional sextupoles providing for crab waist collisions. The specific luminosity was boosted by more than a factor of four, and the peak luminosity was more than doubled with respect to the maximum value obtained with the original collider configuration. The DAΦNE commissioning as well as the first experience with large Piwinski angle and crab waist collisions scheme will be reported

DaΦ{\Phi}ne developments for the KLOE-2 experimental run

Recently the peak luminosity achieved on the DA{\Phi}NE collider has been improved by almost a factor three by implementing a novel collision scheme based on large Piwinski angle and Crab-Waist. This encouraging result opened new perspectives for physics research and a new run with the KLOE-2 detector has been scheduled to start by spring 2010. The KLOE-2 installation is a complex operation requiring a careful design effort and a several months long shutdown. The high luminosity interaction region has been deeply revised in order to take into account the effect on the beam caused by the solenoidal field of the experimental detector and to ensure background rejection. The shutdown has been also used to implement several other modifications aimed at improving beam dynamics: the wiggler poles have been displaced from the magnet axis in order to cancel high order terms in the field, the feedback systems have been equipped with stronger power supplies and more efficient kickers and electrodes have been inserted inside the wiggler and the dipole vacuum chambers, in the positron ring, to avoid the e-cloud formation. A low level RF feedback has been added to the cavity control in both rings.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, presented to the IPAC10 conferenc

Technical Design Report EuroGammaS proposal for the ELI-NP Gamma beam System

The machine described in this document is an advanced Source of up to 20 MeV Gamma Rays based on Compton back-scattering, i.e. collision of an intense high power laser beam and a high brightness electron beam with maximum kinetic energy of about 720 MeV. Fully equipped with collimation and characterization systems, in order to generate, form and fully measure the physical characteristics of the produced Gamma Ray beam. The quality, i.e. phase space density, of the two colliding beams will be such that the emitted Gamma ray beam is characterized by energy tunability, spectral density, bandwidth, polarization, divergence and brilliance compatible with the requested performances of the ELI-NP user facility, to be built in Romania as the Nuclear Physics oriented Pillar of the European Extreme Light Infrastructure. This document illustrates the Technical Design finally produced by the EuroGammaS Collaboration, after a thorough investigation of the machine expected performances within the constraints imposed by the ELI-NP tender for the Gamma Beam System (ELI-NP-GBS), in terms of available budget, deadlines for machine completion and performance achievement, compatibility with lay-out and characteristics of the planned civil engineering

Epidemiological patterns of asbestos exposure and spatial clusters of incident cases of malignant mesothelioma from the Italian national registry

Abstract BACKGROUND: Previous ecological spatial studies of malignant mesothelioma cases, mostly based on mortality data, lack reliable data on individual exposure to asbestos, thus failing to assess the contribution of different occupational and environmental sources in the determination of risk excess in specific areas. This study aims to identify territorial clusters of malignant mesothelioma through a Bayesian spatial analysis and to characterize them by the integrated use of asbestos exposure information retrieved from the Italian national mesothelioma registry (ReNaM). METHODS: In the period 1993 to 2008, 15,322 incident cases of all-site malignant mesothelioma were recorded and 11,852 occupational, residential and familial histories were obtained by individual interviews. Observed cases were assigned to the municipality of residence at the time of diagnosis and compared to those expected based on the age-specific rates of the respective geographical area. A spatial cluster analysis was performed for each area applying a Bayesian hierarchical model. Information about modalities and economic sectors of asbestos exposure was analyzed for each cluster. RESULTS: Thirty-two clusters of malignant mesothelioma were identified and characterized using the exposure data. Asbestos cement manufacturing industries and shipbuilding and repair facilities represented the main sources of asbestos exposure, but a major contribution to asbestos exposure was also provided by sectors with no direct use of asbestos, such as non-asbestos textile industries, metal engineering and construction. A high proportion of cases with environmental exposure was found in clusters where asbestos cement plants were located or a natural source of asbestos (or asbestos-like) fibers was identifiable. Differences in type and sources of exposure can also explain the varying percentage of cases occurring in women among clusters. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates shared exposure patterns in territorial clusters of malignant mesothelioma due to single or multiple industrial sources, with major implications for public health policies, health surveillance, compensation procedures and site remediation programs