FLASHForwardControlling a beam-driven plasma-wakefieldacceleration experimentS. Karstensen, S. Bohlen, J. Dale1), M. Dinter, J. Müller, P. Niknejadi, J. Osterhoff, K. Poder,P. Pourmoussavi, V. Rybnikov, L. Schaper, B. Schmidt, J.-P. Schwinkendorf, B. Sheeran, G. Tauscher,S. Thiele, S. Wesch, P. WinklerDeutsches Elektronen Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany1)colormass, Berlin, Germany

DOOCS, the Distributed Object Oriented Control System was designed for FLASH. Currently it is extended to control the Eu-ropean XFEL accelerator.Recent developments for the client side applications are written in JAVA to allow them to be used on many computer plat-forms. This object oriented abstraction model helps for clean programming inter-faces and in the overall system design in-cluding the hardware for a machine and is a significant step forward in the goal to im-prove software productivity and quality.

FLASH, a soft X-ray free-electron laser, is available to the photon science user community for experiments since 2005. Ultra-short X-ray pulses shorter than 30 femtoseconds are produced using the SASE process. The FLASH facility oper-ates two SASE beamlines in parallel: FLASH1&2 and as third beamline FLASHForward. Pulses of FLASH come in bursts of several hundred pulses with a repetition rate of 10 Hz.

The DOOCS control system structure

Computing HardwareMicroTCADELL Power Edge R330Standard PCMacRaspberry Pi

Operating SystemsOSxWindowsLinux

Computing SoftwareC++PythonMatlabLabview

Controls forVacuumMagnetsmirrorsGas (Plasma)ShutterMotors...

Timing System

Data Aquisition

Movement

PI Hexapod Stepper motors Piezo motors

Detection

Cameras, Diodes, Fast ADC

Synchronisation

User Interfaces

The FLASHForward project at DESY is an innovative beam-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration experi-ment integrated in the FLASH facility, aiming to accelerate electron beams to GeV energies over a few centi-metres of ionised gas. These accelerated beams are tested for their capability to demonstrate exponential free-electron laser gain; achievable only through rigorous analysis of both the driver and witness beam's phase space.The thematic priority covered in here the control system part of FLASHForward.To be able to control, read out and save data from the diagnostics into DAQ, the DOOCS control system has been integrated into FLASH Forward. Laser beam control, over 70 cameras, ADCs, timing system and mo-torised stages are combined into the one DOOCS control system as well as vacuum and magnet controls. Micro TCA for Physics (MTCA.4) is the solid basic computing system, supported from high power worksta-tions for camera read-out and normal Linux computers.

FLASHForward is de-veloped with an inde-pendent laser system. To be able to produce plasma and acceler-ate electrons from FLASH it is imperative that the same timing events are existing in

FLASH and FLASHForward. Hence a com-plex synchronisation had to be installed, to ful�ll the needs

The FLASH timing system is necessary for all events and bunch pattern. All systems located in FLASH are depended from this in-formation to work properly. The complex architecture guaran-tees a stable, reliable and ultra-low jitter functionality.

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