Using AI to diagnose beam loss in real time
Project: READS: Disentangling beam losses in the Fermilab Main Injector enclosure using real-time Edge AI
At Fermilab’s Accelerator Complex, the Main Injector, a powerful linear accelerator, accelerates proton beams to exceptional energies, while the Recycler Ring uses a circular path to recycle and further boost these beams. These two machines, operating in tandem, can sometimes fall out of sync and cause beam loss, which requires precise diagnostics.
READS, the Accelerator Real-time Edge AI for Distributed Systems project, has developed an AI/ML model deployed on fast FPGA hardware to analyze this data in real time. This system disentangles mixed beam losses and assigns probabilities to each machine’s contribution. Its real-time inferences are streamed to the accelerator controls network, helping operators tune the machines for optimal performance.
