FLASHForward: DOOCS Control System for a Beam-Driven Plasma-Wakefield Acceleration Experiment

9th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC 2018, Vancouver, Canada, 29 Apr 2018 - 4 May 2018
The FLASHForward project at DESY is an innovative beam-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration experiment in-tegrated in the FLASH facility, aiming to accelerate elec-tron beams to GeV energies over a few centimetersof ion-ised gas. These acceleratedbeams are tested for their capa-bility 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 motorised 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 workstations for camera read-out and normal Linux computers.