Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Designing and Implementing Software for the Ion Chamber Calibration Tool Suite

Student: Amanda Seiken

School: University of Virginia

Mentored By: Michele Joyce

Jefferson Lab's particle accelerator directs a beam of electrons traveling near the speed of light into atomic targets in order to study the building blocks of matter. A beam such as this produces radiation, which is why the accelerator has ion chambers to perceive radiation from the electron beam and automatically turn it off if the detected radiation is unusually high. A high dose of radiation indicates beam scraping, which is harmful to the accelerator's equipment, and the beam will most likely miss its target. The current method for calculating the trip dose rate set point for an ion chamber is time-consuming and tedious. Because of this, the beam operations group requested a piece of software to do it automatically. A program was written to read in a data file and derive a set point. It then displays the information so the user can quickly determine if the suggested value is acceptable and adjust as necessary. With this software, calculating the trip dose set point for each ion chamber is much more efficient and less prone to human error.