Commons

The end-of-life of many components brought the need for a redesign of our main Control System Front-End - the SCU (Scaleable Control Unit). It was a chance to make improvements and use more powerful state-of-the-art core components. [...]

An electron beam test stand has been designed and constructed at CERN as part of the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project, in collaboration with the ARIES project, to test components related to the Hollow Electron Lens (HL-LHC) and the GSI Space Charge Compensation Electron Lens (ARIES). This comprehensive test facility incorporates normal conducting solenoid magnets, including horizontal and vertical correctors, which generate fields of fractional Tesla magnitude. [...]

For the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), which is currently under construction, a new Control System is being developed and already used at major parts of the GSI facility. The central component for Settings Management within the FAIR Control System is based on CERN’s framework 'LHC Software Architecture' (LSA) and enhanced by FAIR specific features. [...]

The Cryogenic Current Comparator (CCC) is a superconducting SQUID-based device, which measures extremely low electrical currents via their azimuthal magnetic field. Triggered by the need for nA current measurement of slow extracted beams and weak beams of exotic ions in the storage rings at FAIR and CERN, the idea of the CCC as a diagnostics instrument has been revitalized during the last ten years. [...]

Sensitive cameras are frequently operated to record low-light processes such as Beam Induced Fluorescence or optical transition radiation for transverse profile determination. We compared four cameras based on different principles: Firstly, we investigated an Image Intensifier equipped with a double MCP (producer ProxiVision); secondly, an electron-multiplied CCD (emCCD Teledyne Princeton Instruments ProEm+:512B); and, thirdly, sCMOS cameras (producer PCO.edge4.2bi and Teledyne Kinetix 22). [...]

The large-acceptance Superconducting Fragment Separator (Super-FRS) at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) at GSI Darmstadt poses peculiar challenges for its vacuum systems. Although the vacuum levels ranging from 1E-5 to 1E-7 mbar for the single-pass beamline are rather undemanding in absolute values, a combination of high level of prompt and residual radiation in the target and pre-separator area, highly outgassing and self-sealing inserts, and large volumes not usually encountered in accelerator systems are setting exceptional demands on the design of the vacuum systems. [...]

In the last beam times, operations reported a lack of performance and long waiting times when performing simple changes of the machines’ settings. To ensure performant operation of the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), the 'Task Force Performance' (TFP) was formed in mid-2020, which aimed at optimizing all involved Control System components. [...]

The LHC Software Architecture (LSA) has been applied to the accelerator complex GSI, Germany as a new control system. The Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) was recommissioned with the LSA and different accelerator and physics experiments were performed in the last several years. [...]

Formal verification techniques are widely used in critical industries to minimize software flaws. However, despite the benefits and recommendations of the functional safety standards, such as IEC 61508 and IEC 61511, formal verification is not yet a common practice in the process industry and large scientific installations. [...]

While the first FAIR accelerator buildings are soon to be completed, MicroTCA-based data acquisition sys-tems for FAIR beam instrumentation are ready for use. By using commercial off-the-shelf components as well as open hardware with in-house expertise in FPGA programming, there are now DAQ solutions for almost all major detector systems in MicroTCA in operation at the existing GSI accelerators. [...]