The commissioning and operation of future large-scale scientific experiments will challenge current tuning and control methods. Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms are a promising solution thanks to their capability of autonomously tackling a control problem based on a task parameterized by a reward function. The conventionally utilized machine learning (ML) libraries are not intended for microsecond latency applications, as they mostly optimize for throughput performance. On the other hand, most of the programmable logic implementations are meant for computation acceleration, not being intended to work in a real-time environment. To overcome these limitations of current implementations, RL needs to be deployed on-the-edge, i.e. on to the device gathering the training data. In this paper we present the design and deployment of an experience accumulator system in a particle accelerator. In this system deep-RL algorithms run using hardware acceleration and act within a few microseconds, enabling the use of RL for control of ultra-fast phenomena. The training is performed offline to reduce the number of operations carried out on the acceleration hardware. The proposed architecture was tested in real experimental conditions at the Karlsruhe research accelerator (KARA), serving also as a synchrotron light source, where the system was used to control induced horizontal betatron oscillations in real-time. The results showed a performance comparable to the commercial feedback system available at the accelerator, proving the viability and potential of this approach. Due to the self-learning and reconfiguration capability of this implementation, its seamless application to other control problems is possible. Applications range from particle accelerators to large-scale research and industrial facilities.

Until recently, the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA) located at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was using analog cameras to monitor fluorescence screens. By now all cameras have been replaced by digital cameras directly connected via ethernet, making it possible to directly integrate them into our EPICS-based control system. The new control system integration also provides for a better continuous statistical analysis and comparison of camera pictures. This paper presents an overview of the new setup, including the post-processing integration making use of Python.

Tuning injectors is a challenging task for the operation of accelerator facilities and synchrotron light sources, particularly during the commissioning phase. Efficient tuning of the transfer line is essential for ensuring optimal beam transport and injection efficiency. This process is further complicated by challenges such as beam misalignment in quadrupole magnets, which can degrade beam quality and disrupt operations. Traditional tuning methods are often time-consuming and insufficient for addressing the complexities of high-dimensional parameter spaces. In this work, we explore the use of advanced AI methods, including Bayesian optimization, to automate and improve the tuning process. Initial results, demonstrated on the transfer line of KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator) at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), show promising improvements in beam alignment and transport efficiency, representing first steps toward more efficient and reliable accelerator operation. This study is part of the RF2.0 project, funded by the Horizon Europe program of the European Commission, which focuses on advancing energy-efficient solutions for particle accelerators.

In electron storage rings, it is possible to increase the bunch length by applying phase modulation to the radio-frequency accelerating field by choosing appropriate parameters for the modulation. Such a bunch lengthening effect improves beam parameters such as beam lifetime, which can help us achieve better beam stability. It is well known that the modulation frequency around the double synchrotron frequency is effective in lengthening the bunch. The dependence of bunch lengthening on modulation frequency, the socalled detuning property, has a peak around the double synchrotron frequency with a frequency width that depends on the modulation amplitude. Nonlinear effects due to phase modulation lead to a peak frequency shift in a negative direction from the double synchrotron frequency, accompanied by an asymmetric peak shape. Beam current also affects the properties of the detuning condition of such bunch lengthening. We investigated the detuning property using a theoretical model and systematic measurements at the electron storage ring Karlsruhe Research Accelerator, and we verified the qualitative agreement between the experiments and the theoretical model. The macroparticle simulations have confirmed the agreement.

FLUTE is a compact and flexible linac-based accelerator test facility at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. It serves as a platform for a variety of accelerator studies and to generate intense short THz pulses for various photon science experiments. Later, FLUTE will be also used as an injector of sub-100 fs bunches into the VLA-cSR (Very Large Acceptance compact Storage Ring), which is part of the cSTART (compact STorage Ring for Accelerator Research and Technology) project currently in the technical design phase at KIT. Recently, FLUTE's high energy section has been installed and commissioned. This includes the linac, bringing FLUTE beyond 5 MeV to full energy, the bunch compressor, and two corresponding diagnostics sections. A metal foil in the last diagnostics section has been used to generate a first THz signal with high energy electron bunches.

To characterize an electron beam, visible synchrotron light is often used and dedicated beamlines at synchrotron sources are becoming a more common feature as instruments and methods for the diagnostics are, along with the accelerators, further developed. At KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator), such a beamline exists and is based on a typical infrared/visible-light configuration. From experience at such beamlines no significant radiation was expected (dose rates larger than 0.5 µSv h−1). This was found not to be the case and a higher dose was measured which fortunately could be shielded to an acceptable level with 0.3 mm of aluminium foil or 2.0 mm of Pyrex glass. The presence of this radiation led to further investigation by both experiment and calculation. A custom setup using a silicon drift detector for energy-dispersive spectroscopy (Ketek GmbH) and attenuation experiments showed the radiation to be predominantly copper K-shell fluorescence and is confirmed by calculation. The measurement of secondary radiation from scattering of synchrotron and other radiation, and its calculation, is important for radiation protection, and, although a lot of experience exists and methods for radiation protection are well established, changes in machine, beamlines and experiments mean a constant appraisal is needed.

RF phase modulation at twice the synchrotron frequency can be used to split a stored electron bunch into two or more bunchlets orbiting each other. We report on time-resolved measurements at the KArlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA), where this bunch splitting was used to increase the threshold current of the microbunching instability, happening in the short-bunch operation mode. Switching the modulation on and off, reproducibly influences the sawtooth behaviour of the emitted coherent synchrotron radiation.

Coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) is generated when the electron bunch length is in the order of the magnitude of the wavelength of the emitted radiation. The self-interaction of short electron bunches with their own electromagnetic fields changes the longitudinal beam dynamics significantly. Above a certain current threshold, the micro-bunching instability develops, characterized by the appearance of distinguishable substructures in the longitudinal phase space of the bunch. To stabilize the CSR emission, a real-time feedback control loop based on reinforcement learning (RL) is proposed. Informed by the available THz diagnostics, the feedback is designed to act on the radio frequency (RF) system of the storage ring to mitigate the micro-bunching dynamics. To satisfy low-latency requirements given by the longitudinal beam dynamics, the RL controller has been implemented on hardware (FPGA). In this article, a real-time feedback loop architecture and its performance is presented and compared with a software implementation using Keras-RL on CPU/GPU. The results obtained with the CSR simulation Inovesa demonstrate that the functionality of both platforms is equivalent. The training performance of the hardware implementation is similar to software solution, while it outperforms the Keras-RL implementation by an order of magnitude. The presented RL hardware controller is considered as an essential platform for the development of intelligent CSR control systems.

At KARA, the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology synchrotron, the so-called short-bunch operation mode allows the reduction of the bunch length down to a few picoseconds. The microbunching instability resulting from the high degree of longitudinal compression leads to fluctuations in the emitted terahertz radiation, referred to as bursting. For extremely compressed bunches at KARA, bursting occurs not only in one but in two different bunch-current ranges that are separated by a stable region. This work presents measurements of the thresholds and bursting frequencies in both regimes. Good agreement is found between the data and numerical solutions of the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation.

Miriam Brosi, Johannes L. Steinmann, Edmund Blomley, Tobias Boltz, Erik Bründermann, Julian Gethmann, Benjamin Kehrer, Yves-Laurent Mathis, Alexander Papash, Manuel Schedler, Patrik Schönfeldt, Patrick Schreiber, Marcel Schuh, Markus Schwarz, and Anke-Susanne Müller Laboratory for Applications of Synchrotron Radiation, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Kaiserstraße 12, D-76131, Germany Institute for Beam Physics and Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, D-76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany

At the storage ring KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) we have installed a function for the RF phase modulation to the low-level RF system. By choosing proper conditions of the modulation, the electron distribution on the longitudinal phase space can be changed in a large range. There are several applications of this longitudinal manipulation to the accelerator operation: an improvement of the beam lifetime and suppression of collective instabilities. We have performed tracking simulations for the longitudinal beam manipulation by the RF phase modulation. The results have implied that the longitudinal phase space distribution strongly depends on the modulation frequency. We have also performed experiments, which aimed at improving the beam lifetime in 2.5 GeV KARA multi-bunch operations. In this contribution, the low-level RF system at KARA, the simulation and experimental results under the RF phase modulation will be presented. As one of the options of the modulation, we consider manipulation of the internal fine structure in the longitudinal phase space by the modulation.

In recent and future synchrotron radiation facilities, relativistic electron bunches with increasingly high charge density are needed for producing brilliant light at various wavelengths, from X-rays to terahertz. In such conditions, interaction of electron bunches with their own emitted electromagnetic fields leads to instabilities and spontaneous formation of complex spatial structures. Understanding these instabilities is therefore key in most electron accelerators. However, investigations suffer from the lack of non-destructive recording tools for electron bunch shapes. In storage rings, most studies thus focus on the resulting emitted radiation. Here, we present measurements of the electric field in the immediate vicinity of the electron bunch in a storage ring, over many turns. For recording the ultrafast electric field, we designed a photonic time-stretch analog-to-digital converter with terasamples/second acquisition rate. We could thus observe the predicted link between spontaneous pattern formation and giant bursts of coherent synchrotron radiation in a storage ring.

A bottleneck for the investigation of electron beam dynamics in ring accelerators is a fast detection scheme coping with their high repetition rates in the MHz range. For example, at KARA (KArlsruhe Research Accelerator), the electron storage ring at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, we showed that electro-optical methods enable single-shot detection of longitudinal electron bunch profiles by imprinting them onto chirped laser pulses. However, commercial cameras required to detect the spectra are typically limited to hundreds of kHz in readout speed. To tackle these challenges, we developed KALYPSO (KArlsruhe Linear array detector for MHz-rePetition rate SpectrOscopy), a linear detector array with a data acquisition system (DAQ) allowing high data-rates over long time scales. Due to a modular approach, various sensors (InGaAs and Si) can be used, so that KALYPSO can be adapted to different experiments with spectral regimes ranging from near-ultraviolet (NUV) to near-infrared (NIR). In this talk, we present recent results on studies of longitudinal and horizontal bunch profiles using KALYPSO. As an outlook, we give another example for MHz-range readout using KALYPSO, namely horizontal bunch profile diagnostics measuring the radiation emitted from a dispersive section in a storage ring. At the KARA visible light diagnostics (VLD) port the emitted radiation above 400 nm was previously recorded with a fast-gated camera. Here, limitations are the repetition rate in combination with the huge number of cycles during continuous measurements. To overcome these limitations, KALYPSO can repleace the fast-gated camera. Furthermore, due to the easy implementation of KALYPSO, we envision numerous applications for table-top experiments as well as for large-scale facilies.

The development of fast detection methods for comprehensive monitoring of electron bunches is a prerequisite to gain comprehensive control over the synchrontron emission in storage rings with their MHz repetition rate. Here, we present a proof-of-principle experiment with at detailed description of our implementation to detect the longitudinal electron bunch profiles via single-shot, near-field electro-optical sampling at the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA). Our experiment is equipped with an ultra-fast line array camera providing a high-throughput MHz data stream. We characterize statistical properties of the obtained data set and give a detailed description for the data processing as well as for the calculation of the charge density profiles, which where measured in the short-bunch operation mode of KARA. Finally, we discuss properties of the bunch profile dynamics on a coarse-grained level on the example of the well-known synchrotron oscillation.