Development of hardware and software for accelerator diagnostics, physics experiments and real-world applications.
Radio Frequency Electronics
Accelerator instrumentation often requires electronics for processing radio frequency signals. Until recently, the main focus of our group had been on downconversion electronics for cavity beam position monitors. Our designs have been part of experiments at SLAC (USA), KEK (Japan), CERN (France/Switzerland) as well as Daresbury laboratory (UK).
Currently, we are expanding this activity to high quality radio frequency sources and more generic downconversion systems that will become our toolkit for the next generation of beam instrumentation. The generic nature of this development allows applications in other areas such as quantum computing and telecommunications.
Data acquisition and control systems
Experimentalist's toolbox also includes electronics and software for acquiring data and controlling experimental systems. We are working on novel analog-to-digital (ADC) conversion electronics that include radio frequency processing, system-on-chip processing and control using microcontrollers and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA). We make extensive use of Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) software for control and automation of our devices. Our goal is to build a platform suitable for running complex physics experiments both on the bench and scientific laboratory.
Electromagnetic simulations
Our group is experienced in complex 3D electromagnetic simulations of accelerator components and sensors. For example, our re-evaluation of the wakefields in the ATF2 extraction beamline at KEK was one of the key studies enabling the sub-100 nm beam size. Our main workhorse has been an FDTD code GdfidL running on a 200-core computing cluster.
Education through research
Our laboratory offers a wide range of opportunities to learn hands-on skills. The main focus of projects is currently on developing, simulating and prototyping radio frequency electronics, including modular microwave components. Students can prototype their own printed circuit boards (PCB) in the lab using our PCB milling machine and assemble them in-house. We usually aim to build a complete prototype system, including enclosures, which can include mechanical CAD, CNC milling or 3D printing.
