Berkeley Accelerator Controls and Instrumentation (BACI) Program

Particle accelerators are dependent on control systems, and instrumentation is the “eyes and ears” of these systems. As both accelerators and the needs of their users become ever more subtle and precise, these systems must become ever more innovative and sophisticated. ATAP’s BACI Program serves focuses on three areas of controls and instrumentation that offer particular opportunities to serve the accelerator community and advance the state of the art.

Advanced RF Design and Engineering

Radiofrequency (RF) design for accelerating, manipulating, and controlling beams is a longtime area of strength for BACI — going back to the very origins of the Program, Division, and Laboratory — that integrates accelerator physics and engineering. Over the past three decades we have developed a number of demanding ion-accelerator “front ends,” most recently radiofrequency-quadrupole linacs for IMP-Lanzhou and Fermilab’s PIP-II project. More…

High-Dynamic-Range Beam Instrumentation

Our expertise in beam orbit measurement and feedback control in storage rings has enabled transverse stability at the level of microns over time periods of days at the ALS. An emerging challenge in high-dynamic range AC&I is minimizing loss of high-power beams (e.g., in the LHC’s coming upgrades, neutrino sources, spallation neutron sources, and accelerator-driven waste transmutation systems). More…

Precision Controls and Laser Innovation

“Low-level RF” controls to stabilize the electromagnetic fields that accelerate and control a beam, as well as stabilizing mode-locked laser oscillators, are key applications of our expertise, as is a femtoseconds-across-kilometers timing and synchronization capability. BACI and collaborators are also working on a highly promising set of approaches to the challenges of high-average-power, high-repetition-rate, ultrafast lasers for laser-plasma accelerators and other applications, in a DOE Accelerator Stewardship-funded effort. The use of field-programmable gate arrays to read the outputs of microwave-sensed outputs in quantum computing is also being explored. More…

Ultrafast High-Resolution Electron Diffraction

Intended as an R&D testbed for the injectors of the next generation of light sources such as LCLS-II, ATAP’s Advanced Photoinjector Experiment is also en route to becoming a user-science instrument in its own right through HiRES, the High Repetition-rate Electron Scattering apparatus for ultrafast electron diffraction. This is expected to provide another way to address one of the grand challenges in the understanding of materials: following the dynamics of atoms and molecules. More…