Improvements of NSLS-II X-ray Diagnostic Beamlines
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The Jefferson Lab Electron-Ion Collider (JLEIC) is an asymmetric high luminosity ring-ring collider proposed as the next major R&D facility for the nuclear physics community. Both of JLEIC?s electron and ion collider rings have high beam current with gaps serving the pur-poses of beam abort, ion clearing, etc. Those gaps will cause time-varying beam loading in the storage RF cavi-ties, and may result in modulation of cavity RF phase/voltage and cyclic shift of collision point, which could lead to significant luminosity loss. We studied a few approaches to mitigate the RF phase modulation and IP shift, such as correcting the RF phase/voltage modula-tion with traditional LLRF feedback, one-turn feedback (OTFB), or RF feedforward (FF); optimizing the bunch fill pattern to limit the RF phase/voltage modulation to a small fraction of the bunch trains in the collider ring; or matching the RF phase modulation in the two rings. The preliminary results are discussed in this paper.
An EPICS-based steering software system has been implemented for beamline personnel to directly steer the angle of the synchrotron radiation sources at the Advanced Photon Source. A script running on a workstation monitors "start steering" beamline EPICS records, and effects a steering given by the value of the "angle request" EPICS record. The new system makes the steering process much faster than before, although the older steering protocols can still be used. The robustness features of the original steering remain. Feedback messages are provided to the beamlines and the accelerator operators. Underpinning this new steering protocol is the recent refinement of the global orbit feedback process whereby feedforward of dipole corrector set points and orbit set points are used to create a local steering bump in a rapid and seamless way.
Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems are able to measure the speed of incoming wind before it interacts with a wind turbine rotor. These preview wind measurements can be used in feedforward control systems that are designed to reduce turbine loads. However, the degree to which such preview-based control techniques can reduce loads by reacting to turbulence depends on how accurately the incoming wind field can be measured. Past studies have assumed the validity of physicist G.I. Taylor’s 1938 frozen turbulence hypothesis, which implies that turbulence remains unchanged as it advects downwind at the mean wind speed. With Taylor’s hypothesis applied, the only source of wind speed measurement error is distortion caused by the LIDAR. This study introduces wind evolution, characterized by the longitudinal coherence of the wind, to LIDAR measurement simulations using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) 5-megawatt turbine model to create a more realistic measurement model. A simple model of wind evolution was applied to a frozen wind field that was used in previous studies to investigate the effects of varying the intensity of wind evolution. LIDAR measurements were also evaluated using a large eddy simulation (LES) of a stable boundary layer that was provided by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The idea of acausality for control of a wave energy converter (WEC) is a concept that has been popular since the birth of modern wave energy research in the 1970s. This concept has led to considerable research into wave prediction and feedforward WEC control algorithms. However, the findings in this report mostly negate the need for wave prediction to improve WEC energy absorption, and favor instead feedback driven control strategies. Feedback control is shown to provide performance that rivals a prediction-based controller, which has been unrealistically assumed to have perfect prediction. It is well known in classical control engineering that perfect knowledge of past and future events will always lead to higher performing systems. However, it is also well known that the underlying system must be well-designed; control cannot fix a bad design. Additionally, one must consider the practical application of a control design, which relies on measurements and actuation systems. There are major implications to cost and reliability when relying on remote sensors requiring real-time data-streaming (e.g., remote wave buoys). This report shows that for a well-designed WEC, in which closed loop dynamics is considered since early stages of design, a suboptimal controller using no prediction can achieve more than 90% of the theoretical maximum. A predictionless feedback resonating (FBR) controller performs within 0.1% percent of a controller with perfect future knowledge (something which is not practically attainable). Given the major challenges with accurate and robust wave prediction, this result provides a major argument and incentive for utilizing feedback for WEC control. Implementation of these feedback strategies is readily attainable, while the strategy requiring perfect wave prediction will demand an unknown number of additional years to research and develop, all in the service of a marginal 1% benefit.
The idea of acausality for control of a wave energy converter (WEC) is a concept that has been popular since the birth of modern wave energy research in the 1970s. This concept has led to considerable research into wave prediction and feedforward WEC control algorithms. However, the findings in this report mostly negate the need for wave prediction to improve WEC energy absorption, and favor instead feedback driven control strategies. Feedback control is shown to provide performance that rivals a prediction-based controller, which has been unrealistically assumed to have perfect prediction.
This report documents the use of wind turbine inertial energy for the supply of two specific electric power grid services; system balancing and real power modulation to improve grid stability. Each service is developed to require zero net energy consumption. Grid stability was accomplished by modulating the real power output of the wind turbine at a frequency and phase associated with wide-area modes. System balancing was conducted using a grid frequency signal that was high-pass filtered to ensure zero net energy. Both services used Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) as their primary source of system data in a feedforward control (for system balancing) and feedback control (for system stability).
Compact semiconductor device models are essential for efficiently designing and analyzing large circuits. However, traditional compact model development requires a large amount of manual effort and can span many years. Moreover, inclusion of new physics (e.g., radiation effects) into an existing model is not trivial and may require redevelopment from scratch. Machine Learning (ML) techniques have the potential to automate and significantly speed up the development of compact models. In addition, ML provides a range of modeling options that can be used to develop hierarchies of compact models tailored to specific circuit design stages. In this paper, we explore three such options: (1) table-based interpolation, (2) Generalized Moving Least-Squares, and (3) feedforward Deep Neural Networks, to develop compact models for a p-n junction diode. We evaluate the performance of these "data-driven" compact models by (1) comparing their voltage-current characteristics against laboratory data, and (2) building a bridge rectifier circuit using these devices, predicting the circuit's behavior using SPICE-like circuit simulations, and then comparing these predictions against laboratory measurements of the same circuit.
Traditionally, off-road mobile machines such as excavators and wheel loaders are primarily powered by hydraulics, and throttling valves are used to control their work circuits. In recent years, two general trends are towards more energy efficient systems and electrification. With electrification, both efficiency and control performance can be improved by the elimination of throttling losses and the use of high-bandwidth inverter control. Electrification is generally accomplished with Electro-hydraulic actuators (EHA) but they are limited to lower powered systems due to the high cost of electric machines capable of high power or high torque. This project proposes a new system architecture for off-road vehicles - Hybrid Hydraulic Electric Architecture (HHEA) to improve efficiency and control performance without requiring large electric machines. The widely applicable architecture combines hydraulic power and electric power in such a way that the majority of power is provided hydraulically while electric drives are used to modulate this power. In particular, HHEA utilizes multiple common pressure rails to transmit the majority of power and small electric machines to modulate the power. The energy-saving potential of the the HHEA has been validated for the work circuits of a variety of mobile machines, from small 5-ton excavators to medium sized 20-ton excavators and wheel loaders, and representative duty cycles to reduce energy input by 50-80% compared to the commercial state-of-art load-sensing systems. In addition, the corner power requirements of the electrical machines can be downsized by 85% compared to the EHA approach. Various tradeoff studies have also been conducted, including sensitivities to individual components performances, controllers, accumulator sizes, and variations of the system architecture etc. A control strategy has been developed to maintain or exceed the motion control precision compared to current systems. The motion control strategy consists of a nominal controller, based on a passivity-based backstepping design, and a transition controller, based on least-norn feedforward design. The nominal controller is used in between common pressure rail switches whereas the transition controller compensates for any disturbance that common pressure rail switchings inflict on the system. The control strategy has been experimentally validated on both a medium pressure (200bar) hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed and a high pressure (300+bar) HIL testbed. An efficient and power-dense integrated electric-hydraulic machine consisting of an axial flux electric machine and a radial hydrostatic piston hydraulic machine has been designed, constructed and tested. The machine has an active material power density of 6.1kW/kg, a rated speed of 12500 RPM, and a design efficiency of 85%. This is among the highest power density electric machines using conventional materials. While the integrated machine was designed for modulating the hydraulic power within the HHEA, it can also be used in other applications.
We present design considerations and challenges for the fast machine learning component of a third-order resonant beam extraction regulation system being commissioned to deliver steady beam rates to the mu2e experiment at Fermilab. Dedicated quadrupoles drive the tune toward the 29/3 resonance each spill, extracting beam at kV multiwire septa. The overall Spill Regulation System consists of (1) a “slow” process using ~100-spill averages to adjust the base quad ramp infrequently, (2) a feedforward harmonic content compensator, and (3) the “fast” ML agent reacting during each ongoing spill with on-the-fly additive corrections to the sum of (1) and (2). We have demonstrated improved beam-rate steadying for a fast ML agent compared to a PID controller using a quasi-physical spill simulation, and demonstrated distillation of that simulation into a predictive surrogate model. Current work includes a data-and-training pipeline to generate data-aware surrogates with real-world dynamics, even as the dynamics shift unpredictably. The surrogates are to act as RL environments against which to train our fast ML control agents before deploying them on FPGA in the live system. Further current efforts focus on modeling and controlling beam loss around the storage ring, understanding additional available hardware inputs to the model, and the interplay of these with beam-steadying performance.
Wave-like dark matter candidates such as axions or dark photons in the microwave frequency range can be probed using resonant superconducting cavities. We demonstrate a quantum-enhanced sensing approach based on a multimode, high-Q superconducting RF (SRF) cavity, where a large Fock state is prepared in the storage mode via sideband transitions mediated by a transmon ancilla and a measurement-based feedforward protocol, achieving high-fidelity Fock states [1]. The prepared |n⟩ state induces stimulated emission from the dark-matter field, providing an (n + 1) enhancement in transition probability and proportional boost in signal rate [2]. A secondary cavity mode functions as an in-situ reference to calibrate noise. We present the control sequence, noise-referencing strategy, and projected sensitivity improvements for axion and dark-photon detection. This multimode architecture combines large Fock state preparation with noise calibration, offering a practical path to increased scan rate in cavity-based dark-matter searches.
This final report provides an overview of the Project's entire duration, covering July 1, 2021 to December 31, 2023. It primarily focuses on the achievements, technological developments, and unique challenges the team faced while working on separating and extracting Lithium from produced waters. The project's primary aim was to create an integrated, high-throughput, membrane-less, and modular microfluidic platform that could extract Lithium from unconventional sources. We have successfully met all goals and milestones envisioned in the SOPO document. The most critical primary milestones, including the Go-No-Go milestone (refer to the Gantt chart in the Appendices), were successfully accomplished. We demonstrated phase separation (>90%) and extraction (>85%) performance in the MPSE using synthetic, and representative produced water composition feed at 50 ml/min total flow through MPSE 36. We have also performed a parametric study of the MPSE operations, beyond the scope of SOPO, exploring operating conditions of current and broader interest. The extended investigation of operational parameters is concurrent with our efforts to seek further development of the MPSE technology beyond the scope of the Project. Along these lines of development, we have made efforts to be responsive to DOE calls for technological developments of other types of resources (beyond PW) for the recovery of Critical Materials and higher TRL development (beyond TRL 4). During the work on this Project, we developed and implemented three innovative technical approaches that emerged from our efforts to successfully meet the Project milestones. The innovative & original technical approaches developed and implemented in this Project are now the contributions to process engineering that could be clearly credited to the Project. First, Convergent Design Approach is a comprehensive feedforward & feedback loop of four design phases: i) design for functionality, ii) design for manufacturing, iii) design for sustainability, and iv) design for market. Next was Process Intensification. A major aim of this Project was to create an innovative phase separation & extraction microscale-based technology for Li separation – thus the words microchannel-based in the Project title. A microscale-based technology is intrinsically in the center of the Process Intensification domain as defined by its unique principles. Therefore, Process Intensification was implicitly envisioned in the Project’s SOPO. Lastly, Time Scale Analysis is a novel tool for discovering the needs and directions of Process Intensification implementations in any process technology. This Project is fully credited for developing and implementing the three novel technical approaches mentioned above. These are general contributions to process engineering that emerged from this Project. Beyond the original SOPO scope, the OSU-U.Pitt research group utilized a Convergent Design methodology, integrating first-principles mathematical modeling with experimental validation on the Minimum Development Vehicle. By creating these Digital Twins, the team rapidly assessed manufacturing iterations to support TEA analysis. This framework further enabled the development of advanced Surface Modification Techniques, where hydrophobic and oleophobic coating strategies were optimized via Digital Twin tools and validated through rigorous 100-hour longevity testing. TEA Analysis: The closing efforts of this Project were focused on the TEA analysis. TEA analysis had two primary functions: i) enabling critical assessments of design variations withing 10 the Concurrent Design Approach, thus enabling evolution of the MPSE design to reach faster- better-cheaper alternatives; and ii) to create a bridge between the accomplishments of this Project and future projects of higher TRL, beyond TRL 6 level. It is important to note that the TEA model created in the Project stirred the technological solutions for the recovery of critical materials toward a vision of a very profitable modular plant that has unique zero-waste water discharge signature. More importantly, thanks to our experimental performance data and conservative assumptions, the TEA model predicts minimal technological and investment risks. Low cost of a modular unit of a nominal capacity of [1000 tons of Li 2 CO 3 /year] positions the MPSE based technology within the reach of community investors, thus offering a paradigm shift in the development of critical technologies. The project successfully navigated two primary challenges: solvent selection and manufacturing adaptation. Restricted by the SOPO to existing literature for lithium recovery, the team identified a critical need for a "material excellence program" to develop next-generation solvents, eventually concluding with a preliminary investigation into promising Ionic Liquids (ILs). Simultaneously, COVID-19 supply chain disruptions forced a pivot from traditional manufacturing to advanced additive methods at ATAMI-OSU. By transitioning from stainless steel to 3D-printed polymer substrates, the team achieved a transformative three-order-of- magnitude reduction in manufacturing costs and compressed prototyping timelines from several months to just two days. The MPSE technology offers significant energy, environmental, and economic advantages by overcoming the traditional bottlenecks of phase-separation hardware and contactor size. Unlike conventional mixer-settlers or membrane-based systems, MPSE operates without moving parts or fouling-prone membranes, achieving robust performance even with challenging, viscous, or particulate-heavy feeds. Key performance metrics include an energy intensity reduction of 5–50x (3–40 kJ/m 3 ) compared to incumbent technologies and a dramatic reduction of processing time to under 60 seconds, which drastically reduces the physical plant footprint. These technical efficiencies translate into superior economic outcomes; for a 100 t/year Li 2 CO 3 facility, implementing MPSE is projected to nearly halve contactor CAPEX (from $\$$6.08M to $\$$3.01M) and significantly increase the project's Net Present Value (NPV), derisking new investment and enabling distributed critical-mineral processing configurations. The commercialization of MPSE technology is being spearheaded by Vigsur Dynamics Inc., which has adopted a structured, parallel approach to technical and business development since its formation in January 2026. Following extensive customer discovery and engagement with the Oregon State University accelerator, Vigsur Dynamics is working to establish a business model that transitions from pilot demonstrations to modular hardware sales, ultimately aiming for a "build-own-operate" service strategy. Current technical milestones—including 100 hours of continuous operation, superior energy efficiency, and successful 6-unit modular scale-up— provide a foundation for this transition. Backed by ongoing IP licensing and a growing network of industrial and venture advisors, the company is actively de-risking the platform to replace conventional mixer-settler systems in the critical minerals market.
Recent years have seen an increased importance of neural network inference in edge-based scenarios, which impose size and power constraints requiring novel computing devices. These same edge scenarios may require operating over long periods of time, or exposure to extreme environments, resulting in a drift of neural network weights that cause degraded performance. In searching for ways to develop neural network approaches that perform robustly under these conditions, we propose a biologically-inspired mechanism for the dynamic adaptation of within-neuron parameters that is guided by a global context signal carrying information about perturbations and variability in incoming stimuli. Specifically, we demonstrate that adaptive voltage thresholds or neuronal time constants, when informed by a global context signal, can enable network-level mechanisms to recover from perturbed synaptic weights. Consistent with prior literature, the context-modulated approach is effective for recurrent, but not feedforward networks, by modulating network level dynamics. We demonstrate this approach successfully recovers performance in image classification tasks and spatiotemporal tracking tasks under idealized and Gaussian noise as well as for realistic perturbations from a memristive device when exposed to ionizing radiation. Finally, we discuss how this approach enables the design of robust and energy-efficient neuromorphic systems that perform well, even in resource-constrained scenarios with extreme environments such as edge processing.
Short-term load forecasting is crucial for the operations planning of an electrical grid. Forecasting the next 24 h of electrical load in a grid allows operators to plan and optimize their resources. The purpose of this study is to develop a more accurate short-term load forecasting method utilizing non-linear autoregressive artificial neural networks (ANN) with exogenous multi-variable input (NARX). The proposed implementation of the network is new: the neural network is trained in open-loop using actual load and weather data, and then, the network is placed in closed-loop to generate a forecast using the predicted load as the feedback input. Unlike the existing short-term load forecasting methods using ANNs, the proposed method uses its own output as the input in order to improve the accuracy, thus effectively implementing a feedback loop for the load, making it less dependent on external data. Using the proposed framework, mean absolute percent errors in the forecast in the order of 1% have been achieved, which is a 30% improvement on the average error using feedforward ANNs, ARMAX and state space methods, which can result in large savings by avoiding commissioning of unnecessary power plants. The New England electrical load data are used to train and validate the forecast prediction.
This paper explores the use of a solid state transformer (SST) to mitigate the 𝐸 3𝐴 component of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) insult using external energy storage optimal control techniques. In lieu of conventional passive blocking devices or feedback-controlled energy storage devices, a novel implementation of Hamiltonian error tracking is utilized to develop a feedback control law for the variable converter ratio in an SST. The findings of the simulations performed in this paper suggest that additional energy storage is not necessary to protect an individual load from a HEMP insult. The simulations performed examine the response of a single-phase SST connected to a single voltage source on a long transmission line on the one side and a single linear resistor on the other. The control law is specifically developed for the late-time, low-frequency portion of a HEMP insult, namely the 𝐸 3𝐴 components. The Hamiltonian error-based converter ratio control law is compared with nonlinear optimal feedforward controls to show that the HSSPFC is an external energy storage optimal controller.
We present a novel machine learning (ML)-based method to accelerate conservative-to-primitive inversion, focusing on hybrid piecewise polytropic and tabulated equations of state. Traditional root-finding techniques are computationally expensive, particularly for large-scale relativistic hydrodynamics simulations. To address this, we employ feedforward neural networks (NNC2PS and NNC2PL), trained in PyTorch (2.0+) and optimized for GPU inference using NVIDIA TensorRT (8.4.1), achieving significant speedups with minimal accuracy loss. The NNC2PS model achieves 𝐿 1 and 𝐿 ∞ errors of 4.54 × 10 −7 and 3.44 × 10−6, respectively, while the NNC2PL model exhibits even lower error values. TensorRT optimization with mixed-precision deployment substantially accelerates performance compared to traditional root-finding methods. Specifically, the mixed-precision TensorRT engine for NNC2PS achieves inference speeds approximately 400 times faster than a traditional single-threaded CPU implementation for a dataset size of 1,000,000 points. Ideal parallelization across an entire compute node in the Delta supercomputer (dual AMD 64-core 2.45 GHz Milan processors and 8 NVIDIA A100 GPUs with 40 GB HBM2 RAM and NVLink) predicts a 25-fold speedup for TensorRT over an optimally parallelized numerical method when processing 8 million data points. Moreover, the ML method exhibits sub-linear scaling with increasing dataset sizes. We release the scientific software developed, enabling further validation and extension of our findings. By exploiting the underlying symmetries within the equation of state, these findings highlight the potential of ML, combined with GPU optimization and model quantization, to accelerate conservative-to-primitive inversion in relativistic hydrodynamics simulations.
We implement a quantum generalization of a neural network on trapped-ion and IBM superconducting quantum computers to classify MNIST images, a common benchmark in computer vision. The network feedforward involves qubit rotations whose angles depend on the results of measurements in the previous layer. The network is trained via simulation, but inference is performed experimentally on quantum hardware. The classical-to-quantum correspondence is controlled by an interpolation parameter, $a$, which is zero in the classical limit. Increasing $a$ introduces quantum uncertainty into the measurements, which is shown to improve network performance at moderate values of the interpolation parameter. We then focus on particular images that fail to be classified by a classical neural network but are detected correctly in the quantum network. For such borderline cases, we observe strong deviations from the simulated behavior. We attribute this to physical noise, which causes the output to fluctuate between nearby minima of the classification energy landscape. Such strong sensitivity to physical noise is absent for clear images. We further benchmark physical noise by inserting additional single-qubit and two-qubit gate pairs into the neural network circuits. Our work provides a springboard toward more complex quantum neural networks on current devices: while the approach is rooted in standard classical machine learning, scaling up such networks may prove classically non-simulable and could offer a route to near-term quantum advantage.
This paper introduces the compensated Kalman filter, a suboptimal state estimator which can be used to eliminate steady-state bias errors when it is used in conjunction with the mismatched steady-state (asymptotic) time-invariant Kalman-Bucy filter. The uncompensated mismatched steady state Kalman-Bucy filter exhibits bias errors whenever the nominal plant parameters used in the filter design are different from the actual plant parameters. The approach used relies on the utilization of the residual (innovations) process of the mismatched filter to estimate, via a Kalman-Bucy filter, the state estimation errors and subsequent improvements of the state estimate. The compensated Kalman filter augments the mismatched steady state Kalman-Bucy filrby the introduction of additional dynamics and feedforward integral compensation channels.