AVS 45th International Symposium
    Vacuum Technology Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session VT-WeA

Paper VT-WeA2
Vacuum Instrumentation and Control System for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Wednesday, November 4, 1998, 2:20 pm, Room 329

Session: Vacuum Systems and Components
Presenter: L.A. Smart, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Authors: L.A. Smart, Brookhaven National Laboratory
R.C. Lee, Brookhaven National Laboratory
D. Weiss, Brookhaven National Laboratory
D. Zigrosser, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) Project is a nuclear physics research accelerator entering its final year of construction, with beam circulation scheduled for March 1999. To achieve beam emittance growth and lifetime, the vacuum in the two concentric rings must be at specified levels, and the sector valves isolating the cryogenic beam lines from those at room temperature must be open. The RHIC vacuum instrumentation and control (I&C) system performs multiple functions, the first of which is operating the sector valves with input from over one thousand gauges and pumps distributed around the 3.8 km circumference of the accelerator rings. Other vacuum system control functions include operating all gauges, pumps and valves from remote locations, supplying data for beam permits, data logging, and display of vacuum system parameters. Vacuum gauging includes inverted magnetron and convection-Pirani total pressure gauges, and partial pressure analyzers with faraday cup and electron multiplier detectors. Pumps on the high and ultrahigh vacuum chambers include sputter-ion, turbo molecular, and titanium sublimation pumps. Multi-drop serial communication networks are used to transfer pressure readings from gauge and turbo molecular pump controllers 300 m distant to distributed programmable logic controllers, which form the heart of the vacuum system control. This paper describes the architecture and implementation of the RHIC vacuum I&C system from the pumps and gauges to the remote operator interfaces used to control them.