Accelerator Physics

In accelerator labs like GSI/FAIR, automating complex systems is key for maximizing physics experiment time. This study explores the application of a data-driven model predictive control (MPC) to refine the multi-turn injection (MTI) process into the SIS18 synchrotron, departing from conventional numerical optimization methods. [...]

The complexity of the GSI/FAIR accelerator facility demands a high level of automation in order to maximize time for physics experiments. Accelerator laboratories world-wide are exploring a large variety of techniques to achieve this, from classical optimization to reinforcement learning. [...]

Vertical Fixed-Field Alternating Gradient (vFFA) accelerators exhibit particle orbits which move vertically during acceleration. This recently rediscovered circular accelerator type has several advantages over conventional ring accelerators, such as zero momentum compaction factor. [...]

Octupole magnets are a central mitigation method against the transverse collective instabilities expected for the high-intensity operation of the SIS18 and SIS100 synchrotrons in the FAIR project. For these beam parameters, the self-field space-charge effect dominates the betatron footprint, and strongly modifies the instability drive and the Landau damping properties. [...]

SixTrackLib is a library for performing beam-dynamics simulations on highly parallel computing devices such as shared memory multi-core processors or graphical processing units (GPUs). Its single-particle approach fits very well with parallel implementations with reasonable baseline performance, making such a library an interesting building block for various use cases, including simulations covering collective effects. [...]

High-intensity beams in low-energy synchrotrons are subject to space charge as well as intra-beam scattering (IBS). Accurate modelling of both effects becomes essential when the transverse emittances and minimum bunch length are determined through heating processes and resonances induced by machine errors. [...]

Understanding the 3D collective long-term response of beams exposed to resonances is of theoretical interest and essential for advancing high intensity synchrotrons. This study of a hitherto unexplored beam dynamical regime is based on 2D and 3D self-consistent particle-in-cell simulations and on careful analysis using tune spectra and phase space. [...]

The Joint Universities Accelerator School 2024 features an accelerator design workshop. This published container provides the lattice design jupyter notebook, which contains the setup and exercises to design a particle collider, alongside with a working environment to run the notebook with all required software tools such as MAD-X. [...]

Simulation results for beam loss in the FAIR SIS100 synchrotron for a comprehensive study on pulsed electron lenses for space charge mitigation. The affiliated manuscript 'Pulsed electron lenses for space charge mitigation' describing the study parameters is published on arxiv.org (https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.02365) and submitted for journal publication. [...]

To produce ultimate high-brightness hadron beams, synchrotrons need to overcome a most prominent intensity limitation, i.e., space charge. This Letter characterizes the potential of pulsed electron lenses in detailed 3D tracking simulations, key to which is a realistic machine and space charge model. [...]