Brookhaven National Laboratory scientist Stephen Brooks is testing proposed designs for an electron accelerator for the lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) using custom software to generate a three-dimensional virtual model of the instrument. The goal is to keep costs down and ensure the electron beams will circulate in this setup.
"Once the eRHIC layout is in my code, I put beams through it to verify it works," Brooks says. "But I can also add errors in the alignment of the magnets, beams, and so on to verify it will work in a practical setting."
Brooks says his code can be used to test the compatibility of the individual accelerator elements with each other when they are put together, and it also includes an evolutionary algorithm optimization feature capable of varying any aspect of the accelerator and seeking an optimized design by running repeated simulations.
Through such testing, Brooks and colleagues worked out a plan in which multiple electron beams are circulated at a range of energies within each of two stacked accelerator rings, and which incorporates a non-scaling, fixed field, alternating gradient accelerator design.
From Brookhaven National Laboratory
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