The NICA accelerator complex is developed on the JINR base in Dubna for performing physical experiments on colliding beams of heavy ions. It consists of the injection complex, booster synchrotron, upgraded Nuclotron synchrotron, and heavy-ion collider. The booster is currently under assembly. The system, developed at the LHEP JINR to perform precise temperature measurements of superconducting magnets of the booster synchrotron, is described. The thermometry system includes more than 240 resistive TVO-type temperature sensors, the National Instruments data acquisition system, software based on Tango Controls technology, and a web-client application.
Cycling equipment was developed for the Booster accelerator of the NICA complex in the form of a VME3U crate with a set of digital and optical input/output modules, which are controlled using the FPGA module.
A few improvements have been made in order to enhance the resolution of the Q-measurement system such as development of the new amplification system for picking up signals. It was developed using diode detection technique, analog filtering and real-time gain adjusting to allow carry out measurements during beam injection and acceleration. Results and tests performed with the Nuclotron beam are presented.
TANGO Controls is a basis of the NICA control system. The report describes the software which integrates the Nuclotron beam slow extraction subsystem into the TANGO system of NICA. Objects of control are power supplies for resonance lenses. The software consists of the subsystem device server, remote client and web-module for viewing the subsystem data.
Precise temperature control in various parts of the magnet and thermostat is one of the vital problems during cryogenic tests. The report describes design of the thermometry system, developed at LHEP JINR. This system is the operational prototype for the NICA thermometry system. Besides, the report describes generic software tools, developed for the TANGO-based control system web client software design.
The Nuclotron is a 6 GeV/n superconducting proton synchrotron operating at JINR, Dubna since 1993. It will be the core of the future accelerating complex NICA which is under construction now. The TANGO based control system of the accelerating complex is under development now. The report describes its structure, main features and present status.
A betatron tune measurement system was developed and tested at the Nuclotron. A white noise and chirp signals were used for transverse beam motion excitation. A custom FlexRIO digitizer module was developed which provides excitation signal generation for kicker electrodes and real-time signal acquisition from pickup electrodes. A high resolution FFT algorithm was implemented inside a NI PXI FPGA module, connected to digitizer. The measurement system is integrated with the NICA control system based on the TANGO Controls. Results and tests performed with the Nuclotron beam are presented.
One of the trends of Nuclotron development lies in modifying the power supply system and upgrading the energy evacuation system of structural magnets in order to provide reliable durable operation of the synchrotron at a dipole magnet field level of 2 T. This is necessary for Nuclotron operation as part of the injection chain of the heavy-ion NICA collider under design at JINR and for the current program of physical studies. The principles of construction and specific features of the existing system based on a separate power supply of structural dipole and quadrupole magnetic elements are considered. The main provisions of the upgrade of the power supply system, structural and schematic diagrams, control schemes, and energy evacuation switch schemes from superconducting elements are presented.