Cluster of Research Infrastructures for Synergies in Physics

Final Report Summary - CRISP (Cluster of Research Infrastructures for Synergies in Physics)

Executive Summary:
The Cluster of Research Infrastructures and Synergies in Physics (CRISP) project creates synergies and develops common solutions amongst eleven Research Infrastructures (RIs) from the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) roadmap in the field of Physics, Astronomy, and Analytical Facilities. Its ultimate aim is to supply the best service to the rapidly growing technological and scientific challenges triggered by a largely diversified user community, and to ensure that the large investments made at the national and international levels result in significant progress in science and technology. CRISP offers its partners the opportunity to enhance their own infrastructures whilst sharing research and development efforts in four R&D domains.
In the field of accelerators and particle sources CRISP partners developed and tested novel diagnostic tools for ion beams, improved the quality of superconducting radio-frequency accelerator cavities, and commissioned a 12.4 kW prototype single cavity combiner, using an innovative concept. ELI and EuroFEL partners constructed a compact 11GHz (X-band) electron source and performed extensive studies for laser-driven beamlines. A new world record ultra-cold neutron density of 120 neutrons/cm3 was achieved, and novel neutron guides with a gain of one order of magnitude in transported neutron flux were developed at reduced costs.
Experimental concepts and prototypes for ultra-fast experiments down to the attosecond time scale were developed. CRISP project partners implemented a common experimental approach for biological studies at neutron and x-ray facilities, thus facilitating the joint exploitation of the scientific results, and providing a common platform for the upcoming free-electron laser sources. FAIR and SPIRAL2 defined common system designs and related tooling for remote handling in high-radiation areas.
In the field of detectors & data acquisition, project partners commissioned a prototype timing interface module for detectors at pulsed light sources. Efficient CO2 cooling units for large detector systems in nuclear physics have been designed and produced. Electronics for the full digitisation of analogue detector information at some hundreds MHz sampling frequency and signal processing in FPGAs has been developed and tested. A prototype large area detector for neutron scattering science, based on 10B technology, suitable for being mass-produced in industry, was developed and successfully commissioned.
An EU wide federated user data base (Umbrella) could be generalised and expanded to other communities. ESRFUP, EuroFEL, and ILL20/20 agreed on the use of the metadata catalogue ICAT, and have successfully completed its commissioning in September 2014. DOI and DataCite were selected as Persistent Identifier solutions for four CRISP partners, and SLHC and ILL20/20 have subsequently signed contracts with DataCite and started to mint DOIs for their data.
The requirements and use cases for high-speed data recording to storage systems and data archives were assembled. The prototype system built at European XFEL has been successfully tested with realistic data traffic pattern and 50% of the expected data rate. A detailed analysis of networking requirements for the participating RIs has been established. Specific contributions were made to ELI’s and SKA’s computing infrastructure roadmap.
CRISP activities and results were covered in 13 press articles, presented in more than 100 conferences and workshops through posters and oral contributions, and have so far resulted in 63 publications in scientific journals.
The CRISP project is supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme Grant Agreement 283745 with 12 M€ with additional co-funding by the partners. It started in October 2011 for a period of three years.
Project Context and Objectives:
CRISP’s participating partners comprise operating facilities currently undergoing major upgrades (ESRFUP, FAIR, ILL20/20, SLHC, and SPIRAL2), new Research Infrastructures which have entered the implementation stage (ELI, ESS and European XFEL), and RIs well advanced in their preparatory phase and ready to progress towards implementation (EuroFEL, ILC-HiGrade, and SKA). Their common intent is to provide a word-class level service to the European Research Area: sensitive to the needs of a broad range of user communities, and responsive to diverse and changing demands in a highly dynamic environment. They cover a variety of scientific goals together with a range of experimental methods and techniques.
CRISP is a cooperative project. It offers the partners opportunity to enhance their own infrastructures whilst sharing research and development efforts. Under CRISP, the partners aim for a greater exchange of ideas and expertise: to better serve user communities; to retain the lead in technological progress and scientific sophistication; to achieve enhanced levels of development; and to exploit complementary know-how.
Through the mutual exchange of test and commissioning results, an improved and accelerated learning curve shall be achieved, leading ultimately to faster implementation. Joining expertise and experience will avoid fragmented approaches and uncoordinated efforts; furthermore it will significantly reduce risks associated with individual RI projects.
CRISP focuses on four R&D tasks that are of utmost importance for these RIs: (i) Accelerators, (ii) Instruments & Experiments, (iii) Detectors & Data Acquisition, and (iv) Information Technology (IT) & Data Management.
The development of novel accelerator components and their characterisation is a pre-requisite to reach beyond state-of-the-art performance of accelerator complexes which are in turn one of the key elements for the majority of the participating RI projects. The developments within CRISP constitute the basis to deliver beams with superior intensity, operate accelerators with high reliability, and achieve beam characteristics which will allow opening new perspectives and opportunities for the next generation of nuclear and high energy physics projects and experiments in photon, neutron and ion beam science. Within the accelerator topic CRISP project partners work together in the development of an ion source and related beam monitors, on improved diagnostics tools and the optimisation of surface treatment protocols for the large scale production of superconducting radio-frequency cavities, the development of fast ramped superconducting magnets, the design of a compact high brightness electron beam and of laser-induced secondary particle sources, and the elaboration of a new efficient way to combine the power of many RF transistor modules by means of a single cavity combiner.
Existing synergies within the accelerator based research infrastructures are strongly supported and further extended. Superconducting technology either applied to radio-frequency cavities or to beam transport magnets, is used for most of the upcoming large scale accelerator projects; the use of solid state amplifiers adapted to a variety of accelerating structures strongly supports this. All participating CRISP partners require ambitious particle sources design, either for high intensity ion beams or to drive free-electron lasers with their high brilliance electron beams. The developments within CRISP push accelerator facilities to performances beyond state-of-the-art.
Parallel to the further development of accelerators, new concepts and technological advances beyond the current state of knowledge need to be developed for the scientific experiments and their related instrumentation in order to keep pace with the more performing sources. During the past decade the research community has witnessed a trend to more sophisticated experimental set-ups, increasingly complex sample environments, and a suite of novel applications in a broad range of scientific disciplines. This has often stimulated new developments, which have been undertaken, to a large extent, within a single research infrastructure. In order to fully exploit the capabilities of the upgraded and new facilities, a joint effort needs to be made, aimed at common developments and deployment of common protocols, tools and equipment. This will offer a portfolio of experimental stations with unprecedented performances to the rapidly growing user community. Added to this, it shall facilitate the user migration from one RI to another.
Within the Instruments & Experiments topic eight RI projects are participating to explore the potential and commonalities of time-resolved studies at storage ring based synchrotron radiation sources, free-electron lasers, and neutron sources. They develop new concepts, methods, and equipment to be used in highly-activated areas with very restricted access for the new generation of nuclear facilities. Common approaches and methodology are identified and pursued in the study of biological materials, the feasibility of directional neutron moderators, and the design of optimised ultra cold neutron (UCN) sources and innovative neutron delivery devices.
The need for efficient and high performance detectors and their associated instrumentation is common to essentially all RI projects. Some of the new RIs in preparation heavily rely on the construction of new detector systems that go beyond current, well established technologies. Other RIs need to develop completely new approaches. Research and development efforts, undertaken by individual facilities, are, however, cost intensive. Therefore, common developments and sharing of expertise and know-how are often key ingredients for significant progress. Furthermore, for increased performance of the upgraded and new RIs, novel and more performing data acquisition and signal processing standards need to be developed. Within CRISP the following objectives were set: (i) definition and development of various techniques and methods to reduce, transmit and process high throughput data streams produced by the newest generation detector systems, (ii) development of CO2 cooling systems for the next generation of particle detectors, (iii) the common development of advanced electronics and software for neutrons and photon detectors, and (iv) the development of a large area neutron detector proto-type based on solid 10B films technology as a substitute to 3He gas.
The importance of experimental data for modern science is growing daily, and new initiatives are required to cope with the resulting “data deluge”. The rapid development and increasing complexity of experimental techniques, instruments and detectors requires developments beyond the current state-of-the-art. To fully justify the huge investments made in scientific instruments, the data produced by these instruments must be securely and efficiently stored, archived, annotated, queried, and linked.
A sustainable and interdisciplinary metadata management service bridging a federation of data catalogues across RIs can significantly enhance scientific progress by reducing the time to discover distributed resources. Proper curation of open scientific data, linked to corresponding publications, can help to foster a wider public understanding of fundamental scientific achievements. An authentication and authorisation mechanism common to all users of different RIs can greatly simplify the access to distributed resources. These examples show how a common IT platform for the storage, discovery, access, and processing of data can improve the current status of research in Europe.
These needs are of common interest to all CRISP partners. They work together in the development of a common user identity system, the selection and implementation of metadata management and data mining services, and the development of a common solution for the high-speed recording of data to permanent storage and long-term archiving within a single site. Furthermore, the analysis and deployment of prototype distributed computing data infrastructures, is as well part of the CRISP IT&DM programme.
All the previously mentioned aspects are important points in the internal programme of work of the different participating CRISP project partners. Working together on the delivery of common solutions brings two immediate advantages: internally, the deployed IT solutions represent complete solutions resulting from a larger development effort; externally, the deployed IT solutions are not limited to the RIs scope but have instead concrete links to other RIs.
Exchange of experience and know-how transfer is at the heart of the CRISP project. This is ensured via regular meetings of individual work package participants, bi-annual meetings within the topical R&D areas, and the CRISP Annual Meetings. Educating the next generation of technicians, engineers and scientists is another important aspect; CRISP pursues this, where appropriate and possible, via its recruitment strategy and mobility of staff between RIs.
CRISP engages in the full range of dissemination activities including publications in scientific journals, placement of articles in specialised media widely read by the scientific community and policy makers; public communication via a dedicated website and social media, and participation in workshops and conferences. This ensures that the exploitation of CRISP results is not restricted to the participating projects, but made available to the other RIs in the European research area. In fact, the generated synergies will be crucial to respond to the rapidly evolving and mobile scientific user community. It will allow the RIs to strengthen their role in the advancement of knowledge and to stimulate scientific and technological progress, indispensable to address the grand challenges of our society in health, environment, sustainable energy, transport and communication. Collaborations with industrial partners are fostered, with the aim to improve the performance of their products, and to pave the way from proto-types to serial production.

Project Results:
In the four R&D fields Accelerators, Instruments & Experiments, Detectors & Data Acquisition, and Information Technology (IT) & Data Management, CRISP has promoted synergies and brought different communities together. This has allowed tackling and resolving critical issues, catalyzing novel developments, and advancing the state-of-the-art.

Accelerators
Superconducting technology, either applied to radio-frequency cavities or to beam transport magnets, is used for most of the upcoming large scale accelerator projects; the use of solid state amplifiers adapted to a variety of accelerating structures strongly supports this. All participating projects are involved in ambitious particle sources design, either for high intensity ion beams or to drive free-electron lasers with their high brilliance electron beams. These CRISP initiatives will push accelerator facilities to performances beyond state-of-the-art.

The development of an ion source and related beam diagnostics is of central importance for FAIR and SPIRAL2. Thus, work within the CRISP project included the development of so-called Bunch Shape Monitors for high current LINACs, and the development of a new electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS) to create the high intensity beams required for the envisaged nuclear studies.
The research work on beam diagnostics aimed at the design and realization of novel types of bunch shape diagnostics for the high current LINACs SPIRAL2 at GANIL and the Proton LINAC at FAIR. Two dedicated diagnostic devices were developed in a collaborative effort. Since SPIRAL2 and the FAIR Proton LINAC are not yet operational the respective monitor performance was determined using other facilities at IPN Orsay and GSI. For both monitors the program was successfully completed, and the key results are documented. The tested devices become important tools to achieve the high performance ion beam operation at both advanced LINAC facilities. In this context, the development within CRISP was essential since no standard device for the determination of the bunch shape, a critical beam parameter, existed.
The two former ion sources financed in the framework of the FP6-EURONS – ISIBHI (MS-ECRIS, A-PHOENIX) were both facing R&D challenges. In view of the upcoming start of beam delivery at SPIRAL2 and FAIR, a new ECRIS design was required by both facilities. The joint development and construction of a new prototype 28 GHz ECR ion source was started as a CRISP activity. The tasks included the mechanical design study of a new ion source , the construction including permanent magnets and axial magnetic coils, the assembly, and the testing of the device. The most significant results can be summarised as follows:
• Design study and subsequent detailed design study for the new ion source were completed.
• Procurement of the ion source magnets and mechanical fabrication of the source.
• Successful and safe construction of the new ion source permanent magnet hexapole.
• Validation of the magnetic field.
• Production of 1 pµA of 58Ni19+ and 40Ca16+ with the oven to be used on the new source installed on the former PHOENIX V2 source.
The mechanical design of the ion source was delayed by 6 months due to difficulties to recruit a CAD designer. In the further course of the project, this delay could not be fully absorbed, and as a consequence, the assembly and commissioning of the ion source is only partially accomplished by the end of the contract. Work by SPIRAL2 and FAIR teams is on-going and it is expected, that the new ion source will be fully operational in spring 2015.

Superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) technology is used for almost all future large scale accelerator projects. New accelerator structures with improved characteristics were or are to be developed for the participating projects ESS, ILC-HiGrade, SLHC, and XFEL. Highest accelerator performance requires optimized production, surface treatment, and diagnostics of the accelerating structures.
The knowledge and mastering of these technologies becomes even more important since large scale production involves large scale series production in industry. Within CRISP work package 4 the accumulated know-how of EuroFEL, ILC-HiGrade, SLHC (at CERN) and European XFEL (at DESY) was exploited to further improve the quality of the SRF accelerator cavities by pushing further the detailed diagnostics tools and the surface treatment of the cavities. At DESY an optimized procedure for a second surface treatment, required to improve the performance of returns, was studied and established. At CERN the upgrade of the SM18 test facility was a central ingredient for the common activities. Transfer of knowledge to new projects e.g. ESS and SLHC was seen as an essential part of the work, thus guaranteeing an optimum sharing of the acquired know-how. The following results have been achieved:
• The industrial cavity production for the European XFEL (which includes chemical surface preparation) of the required 800 superconducting 1.3 GHz TESLA-type cavities is now in full swing, with approximately 430 cavities having been delivered to date. At of end of the CRISP funding period, more than 50% of the 800 series XFEL TESLA-type 1.3 GHz SRF cavities have been produced, and have each undergone at least one vertical acceptance test. The series cavities are delivered complete with a helium tank, ready for vertical testing at DESY. Both vendors must exactly follow well-defined specifications for the mechanical fabrication and surface treatments, but no RF performance guarantee is required. Therefore retreatments are in general the responsibility of DESY contributing the cavities to the European XFEL. The results of about 80 cavities before and after retreatment are available. A detailed analysis of the RF acceptance tests amassed so far was presented recently at the LINAC 2014 conference. The established methods are now available for future projects. The successful work is summarized in deliverable D4.2 (Report on performance of industrially produced cavities for European XFEL before and after retreatment).
• Based on the optical inspections of over 30 European XFEL series and ILC-HiGrade prototype cavities by the high resolution scanning apparatus (OBACHT), several surface defects on the industrial cavities could be recognized and studied in detail. Typical surface defects are scratches, defects called “cat eyes”, etching pits, pits and foreign inclusions, incomplete welding, welding spatters, and rough polishing. This inspection helps to predict the cavities performance, make quality control as well as clarify the failure reasons and give valuable feedback to the production cycle. Profilometric studies were established and first experience with an acid-free abrasive surface polishing (“Centrifugal Barrel Polishing”) exists. A new system for the detection of local cavity surface temperature during the 2K test (“T-Mapping”) has been successfully commissioned (D4.1: Report on performance of high-gradient aspects of QA as required for the ILC).
• In 2014 CERN has successfully commissioned and operated its entire new SRF infrastructure. The cold test stations after the cryogenics upgrading, the cavity cleaning and assembly facilities including new HP water rinsing cabinet, two new clean-room facilities and the dedicated cold test diagnostics systems with OST second sound sensors, thermo-mapping, magnetic sensors plus Kyoto camera inspections are now operational. The first relevant experience has been obtained on a five-cell SPL type 704 MHz Niobium bulk cavity which will undergo further treatment in the coming months. Relevant details of the program and the applied systems have been partly published. The main accomplishments are reported in deliverable D4.3 (Experience report on upgraded diagnostic infrastructure for SRF cavity tests at CERN).
• ESS has collaborated with CERN and European XFEL since Lund was selected as the site for ESS in 2009. ESS is now being established as a green-field site, and is growing from a small office with a few employees to an organization with more than 500 staff over a period of 7-8 years. This cannot be done without the support of existing laboratories in Europe with competences in accelerator science, target technology, neutron instruments, etc. CERN and European XFEL belong to these laboratories and both have contributed to the design of the ESS accelerator, not the least in the field of superconducting RF technology. The CRISP network has been one of the catalysers for conducting the European collaboration for the construction of ESS, and has promoted the exchange of knowledge and ideas between the collaboration partners. The CRISP activities between ESS and CERN have involved test facilities for accelerator cryomodules, and the collaboration now continues with the preparation of tests of inductive output tubes (IOTs) for ESS at CERN. Similarly DESY and European XFEL are expected to become partners to ESS in quality control of the niobium used for the manufacturing of superconducting cavities as well as in other areas relating to RF systems of high-intensity particle accelerators.

The development of fast ramped superconducting magnets is of central importance for the planned synchrotron SIS300 at the FAIR facility and an upgraded LHC (SLHC) at CERN, where it is important to assess whether the technology for fast ramped superconducting magnets is suitable and adapted to the construction of the future injector chain of the LHC. In general, future accelerator facilities will rely on the use of these magnets in order to meet their ambitious goals.
In this context, all tasks within work package 5 have been achieved. The collared coil was produced and tested as foreseen. The magnetic measurements showed a high sextupole component, which is not yet fully understood. Further studies need to be conducted after the end of the CRISP project. The produced collared coil can now be used as key element for the completion of a full dipole magnet. Due to problems with the delivery of certain components such as the superconductor and collar steel from industry the originally foreseen timeline of 24 months could not be kept. Indeed, the originally foreseen conductor could not be used in the end. CERN finally provided an existing conductor. Nevertheless all milestones/deliverables were achieved within the overall duration of the CRISP project. As mentioned above, a detailed analysis of the collared coil tests, which reveal an unexpected high value of the sextupole component of the field is still ongoing and will be published later. The full understanding of this result will require additional measurements, and perhaps an un- and re-collaring of the coil is necessary.

The R&D on novel compact particle sources within the frame of work package 6 addresses two different topics, namely the design of radiofrequency (RF) X-band (11GHz) electron sources/accelerators (T1), and the study of the Laser driven plasma generation/acceleration of electrons and protons (T2). Both activities were successfully concluded and are well documented in the deliverables D6.1 (Report on the design of a proton capture section based on conventional accelerator technology) and D6.2 (Report on the design and implementation of a laser-driven electron source). While the design of the compact 11GHz electron source has been concluded in collaboration with Rome University and INFN Frascati in the first part of the CRSIP project, the second period put emphasis on the laser-driven beam lines (ROMA1, IST, INFN). The successful work included work on protons:
• study of the post-acceleration schemes for protons, i.e. injecting the proton beams in conventional accelerating structures
• improvement of the quality of laser generated protons, acting directly on the source (e.g. targets) or designing a proton selecting device
• particle-in-cell simulations to validate experimental data regarding protons generated in low-density targets using exploded foils. Experiments have been performed on the high-energy laser TITAN (~180 J) at Laurence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL in US).
• parametric (slit, dipole length and magnetic field strength) analysis of an energy selector for proton beams using a particle-tracking code
• study with respect to production of high-repetition (e.g. 10 Hz) rate targets
• proton ray tracing to study how one can concentrate protons with all-optical micro-lenses for generating miniature magnetic devices
as well as work on electrons with the following main results:
• capture and transport of 8GeV laser generated electrons
• study of lower energy (i.e. 350-400 MeV) electron beams
• study of introducing beam diagnostics into the beamline

The ESFRI projects ESRFUP, ESS, FAIR and SLHC all require Megawatts of radio-frequency (RF) power to accelerate particles. Conventionally, this power is generated by klystrons, but in recent years LDMOS-FET transistors have become an attractive alternative. The CRISP project aimed to elaborating a new efficient way to combine the power of many RF transistor modules by means of a single cavity combiner. This concept results in a more compact, flexible and cost effective design with improved operation reliability. Within the frame of work package 7, a prototype was to be built for ESRFUP and design studies for ESS, FAIR and SLHC were planned. However, in the course of the CRISP project both ESS and GSI/FAIR changed priorities in the frame of their challenging large scale accelerator projects, and they stepped back from WP7.
The highly efficient power combination by means of a cavity combiner was demonstrated with the successful test of a 10 kW prototype cavity combiner equipped with 18 RF transistor modules (12.4 kW obtained with 62.5 % efficiency). An innovative concept with fully planar circuits for the RF amplifier modules and the systematic choice of assembly techniques for the modules and the cavity combiner that are suited for cost effective mass production of such amplifiers have given excellent results at the scale of the 10 kW prototype.
The cost effective production methods are currently being applied to the fabrication of a 75 kW prototype. However, the power tests and therefore the full scale validation can take place only after the end of the CRISP project. Once validated by power tests, the cavity combiner will provide a substantial reduction of the footprint of high power solid state amplifiers.
The share with CRISP partner labs has been very successful with SLHC, for whom ESRFUP has carried out a design for a 200 MHz – 150 kW cavity combiner. The prototype is currently under construction. A fruitful collaboration outside CRISP between the Uppsala University and the ESRF has been started thanks to CRISP.

In general, the CRISP support to the accelerator activities was very visible. More than sixty distinct presentations at workshops and conferences were utilized for dissemination: basically all well-known accelerator conferences and workshops profited from CRISP related presentations. Furthermore, 44 scientific publications leave an impressive footprint of CRISP accelerator activities in the community.

Instruments & Experiments
The development of novel instruments in the CRISP RIs requires novel instrumentation which will allow a new class of experiments to be performed in the future. A substantial amount of new instruments was developed thanks to a mutually fruitful collaboration between CRISP project partners, addressing the common needs and exploiting complementary expertise. This synergy led to a smooth and effective implementation of the work program, with an impact clearly beyond the simple addition of requirements. CRISP project partners joined efforts for time resolved and biological scattering studies at neutron, x-ray, and laser facilities; for the development of tools in harsh radioactive nuclear beam environment; and for the enhancement of neutron beams.

The development of time resolved experiments exploiting synchrotron X-rays, FELs and neutron facilities makes it necessary to develop new schemes especially designed for large scale facilities. Common needs between neutrons and x-ray sources were identified to be quite small, due to the difference of timescales which will be available in the coming years. At the free electron laser FLASH photon energies are in a similar range than obtainable with VUV high harmonics generation conventional laser sources, i.e. as planned for the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI). Therefore two different schemes were followed to reliably monitor the arrival time and pulse width of such VUV light sources. At FLASH a cross-correlator scheme utilizing THz radiation was developed to monitor the arrival time with femtosecond precision. This was done in collaboration with laser experts from FORTH, an ELI partner, which also developed an XUV auto/cross-correlator scheme with ca. 100 as resolution. Both projects thus propelled the development of new timing tools in the <200 eV energy range for both laser-based and accelerator-based light sources. The THz scheme is now being further developed at FLASH to permit reliable timing of user experiments in the near future.
For the machines generating harder X-rays, it will become important to perform pump-probe experiments at MHz repetition rates, either due to the MHz electron bunch filling pattern at synchrotrons (16 bunch at ESRF with 5.6 MHz) or due to the burst mode filling pattern at the European XFEL, which will deliver 2700 electron bunches at 4.5 MHz. Emerging fibre-based laser systems now permit such laser pump – x-ray probe experiments, however, such experiments are usually limited by using only the fundamental, second and third harmonic radiation from these pump laser systems. Efforts were put into developing a MHz compatible non-collinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA), which has the potential to deliver any desired pump wavelength throughout the UV-vis range. Despite the fact that it was expected to encounter (thermal load) problems on the way towards MHz operation, CRISP partners managed to develop first a 0.5 MHz prototype, and then to upgrade it towards 2 MHz operation, thus even surpassing the initial target performance. This prototype system will initially find use at synchrotron sources, and then will eventually be deployed at the European XFEL.
At hard x-ray FELs x-ray spectroscopy will provide a very powerful tool, in addition to x-ray diffraction techniques. In this context, CRISP partners dedicated efforts into evaluating and actually fabricating suitable x-ray crystals for recording x-ray emission spectra and variants thereof (High energy resolved fluorescence detection, resonant inelastic x-ray scattering). To this end a ray tracing code that considers elastic stress in bent crystal analyzers was developed in order to determine the reflectivity/luminosity of X-ray emission spectrometers. The code was then used to assess various spectrometer geometries and to judge their suitability for scanning and single shot X-ray emission experiments. The calculations were checked against experimental results.
In summary, the most significant results in the frame of time resolved studies can be listed as follows:
• A report on common needs in instrumentation in time resolved studies.
• Design and test of a non-collinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) with a repetition rate of 500 kHz for femtosecond time-resolved studies.
• XUV pulse duration measurements at the free-electron laser FLASH@DESY on a single-shot basis using laser based THz streaking
• Review of existing X-ray emission detection systems covering both non-dispersive and dispersive X-ray spectrometers
• Successful development and operation of a non-linear XUV-x-ray-cross-, autocorrelator with >100 attosecond resolution, based on ion/EL detection

In the field of instrumentation for remote handling in harsh radioactive nuclear beam environment FAIR and SPIRAL2 focused on the development of tools to make the necessary maintenance in the radioactive nuclear beam environment which is required for a successful and smooth operation of these future facilities. Both facilities aim at the production of very rare isotopes using different techniques. Many basic challenges are very similar as for both installations the starting point is an intense ion beam impinging on a target.
The typical engineering approach: from defining the requirements, tasks and the proper tools, until building prototypes and testing them was followed. The work to develop the specifications included an analysis of radiation levels and doses to find the permissible materials to avoid material failure but also unwanted long lasting activation. Inside the hot area almost none of the parts can be replaced in the usual manner. This also includes the handling tools themselves. Therefore, the designs need to include also possible replacements of all feedthroughs and connectors as well as of the tools. A key point here is the vacuum system since ion beamlines require high vacuum with a lot of infrastructure to achieve this. The following results can be reported:
• Identification of sufficiently radiation hard connector types and first design of the remote handling tools for FAIR and SPIRAL2
• Development of several beam position monitors for fail-safe diagnostics of accelerators at FAIR and SPIRAL2
• Development of specific instruments to align the beams in radiation dominant zones
• Development of a new improved type of seal for remote handling in high-radiation level areas
• Compilation of detailed technical specifications for the above equipment

In the frame of structural biology, CRISP project partners ESRFUP, EuroFEL, ILL20/20, ESS, and the European XFEL developed a common framework for biological samples through the combined use of neutron and X-ray diffraction approaches. The work carried out has had strong impact in a number of key areas. For joint neutron/X-ray crystallography, new sample handling approaches have been developed allowing rapid and compatible transfer of samples between neutron and X-ray diffractometers. Additionally, methods for sample cryocooling that have been well established in X-ray crystallography were adapted for use with neutrons. This has already had strong impact on high-resolution and ultra high-resolution studies. For biological solution work, joint X-ray and neutron solution scattering methods have been optimised whereby deuterium labelled protein is used to highlight specific parts of protein complexes. Considerable development has occurred for liquid injection systems for nanocrystals suspensions at FELs. This technology is in the process of being adapted at synchrotron nanofocus beamlines such as ID13 at the ESRF. In the case of partially ordered systems (such as fibres), key developments have occurred that allow directly comparable humidity control systems to be exploited in joint X-ray and neutron fibre diffraction work. Furthermore, work has resulted in the development of serial fibre diffraction experiments using FEL sources, such as LCLS in Stanford. This new application has a high potential for the use of the European XFEL in Hamburg when it comes into operation in 2016. The results obtained throughout the project have crucial implications for the field of neutron and X-ray structural biology and have formed the basis of a number of future experiments and collaborations.

Huge gains in instrument performance can be expected provided sufficient work is invested into enhancing the performance of neutron sources, moderators and beam delivery systems, which will lead to new science. An important part of these new devices have been implemented at ILL as prototypes and will continue in future to be implemented at ILL and at the future spallation neutron source ESS. Within the CRISP project, three main tasks were identified to reach these objectives:
1) The accurate determination of heavy and light water neutron cross sections, required for more accurate simulations of the directional moderators. Promising results are obtained by using single crystals. The ESS investigated by computational methods the possibility to enhance the neutron emission by inserting a single crystal inside a moderator. The most promising results obtained so far have been achieved however by a pilot experiment using a single crystal reflector filter, a concept similar to the more conventional beryllium reflector filter in use at the Los Alamos Lujan center. Though still preliminary, the results show that a single crystal sapphire reflector filter transmits cold neutrons while suppressing fast neutrons, just as a common reflector filter. Furthermore, as hoped, the single crystal reflector filter also transmits thermal neutrons, which are suppressed by Bragg scattering in the conventional (poly-crystal) reflector filter. Due to the relatively high absorption by Al atoms, no direct gain is observed using sapphire. However, sapphire was only used as a substitute for single crystal graphite, which was unavailable within the time frame of the experiment. If the results obtained using sapphire are extrapolated to what would be expected from a single crystal graphite reflector filter, they indicate a gain similar to what would be gained from a conventional carbon reflector filter, but with a significant increase of thermal neutrons below the Bragg edge.
2) The development of ultra cold neutrons (UCN) to provide higher neutron flux density. In a joint effort, ESS developed a design optimising the UCN performance of the target and moderators, while ILL built a large-volume UCN source and provided a dedicated beam line. Using the technique of moderation of the neutrons with low temperature (<1.5K) liquid 3He, a new world record of 120 UCN/cm3 was obtained. The neutron beam was produced by the high flux reactor of ILL, first moderated by the ILL cold source, and then selected with an intercalated graphite monochromator. The lifetime of the UCN was typically 40 sec, indicating that there is still a possibility to improve this value if the coating of the surface of the source is of better quality. This type of source will be used to improve the resolution of the measurement of the Electric Dipolar Moment of the neutron (very important to test standard model of particles physics) as well as the neutron lifetime.
3) Development of novel neutron guides with a gain of more than an order of magnitude in transported neutron flux at the sample position at reduced costs. The neutron guide technology is of prime importance to optimise the transport of useful neutrons, i.e. the neutrons that will really be used for experiments. To achieve this goal, the neutron flux should be optimised according to the wavelength and divergence acceptance of the individual instruments. Furthermore, it is also necessary to reduce the flux of unused neutrons to minimize any potential background for the experiments. Modern techniques for neutron guide assemblies allow now to have a new way of sharing a neutron guide: the guide can be split into different sections that are then separated via different radii of curvature. This method leads to rather complicated multiple guide elements while the guides are still very close to each other. Such a design has become possible in recent years due to new developments in guide manufacturing. Modern so-called supermirror guides can now accept and transport a larger divergence neutron beam from the source. In the frame of the CRISP project, a new kind of neutron guide housing has been developed. The principle of these housings is that the guide and the housing are linked together (same length, no alignment of the guide inside the housing). The main advantages of these housings are:

• Reduced costs (serial production, no feed troughs, standard tubes)
• Reduced alignment time (preparation offline possible)
• Possibility to check the alignment after installation without dismounting

The new design was implemented for the H5 guide system at the ILL. It consists of three different neutron guides that deliver cold neutrons to seven scientific instruments. Neutron flux measurements were performed in July 2014, resulting in a flux increase ranging from 10 to 20 according to the exact position of the guides, very close to theoretical expectations.

Detectors & Data Acquisition
Detectors and data acquisition schemes have to keep pace with the enhanced performance of the RIs and their increasingly complex experimental set-ups. This implies to explore new technologies, for example, to push the time and spatial resolution further, increase the detection sensitivity, and design new data acquisition schemes. CRISP project partners collaborated on the following topics: High-throughput detector data streaming, CO2 two-phase cooling for nuclear detectors, innovative solutions for neutron and gamma-ray detectors, and large-area thermal neutron detectors using 10B technology.

Participants from ESRFUP, EuroFEL, European XFEL, ELI, and SKA worked on the definition and implementation of various techniques and methods to reduce, transmit and process high-throughput data streams produced by advanced detectors. Work was dedicated to propose and validate generic schemes for interfacing high performance detector systems with the surrounding instrumentation and computing environment from two independent perspectives. Further effort focused on methods for fast on-line reduction of high throughput data streams.
The first aspect addressed the low latency interfacing of the detectors with the timing systems of accelerator based photon or particle sources. First, the various timing schemes currently used in 13 accelerators were studied, and then classified in three types according to technical similarities. This allowed summarising the interfacing requirements regarding synchronisation and triggering from the perspective of the detectors and investigating the actual possibility of building a universal timing interface that would allow the deployment of different detectors across facilities with different timing systems. As a result, a board under development at DESY for applications at FLASH and planned also for the European XFEL was adopted as the platform for the development of the timing interface. Furthermore, several important considerations about the use of the selected hardware platform as well as the constraints for the definition of a fully universal timing interface that would allow the synchronisation of the detector systems in pulsed facilities in a rather generic and versatile way were analysed.
A new very high throughput data transfer scheme optimised for segmented area detectors with emphasis on photon science applications was proposed and implemented. This scheme, under the name of RASHPA, is not a specific component; it has been developed rather as a set of concepts, conventions, functional descriptions and software modules that are intended to be used as a comprehensive framework to build the data acquisition subsystems of new instruments. The RASHPA framework has been designed to facilitate transferring data to multiple destinations by establishing parallel simultaneous data flows and support computer clusters as data receivers. RASHPA based detectors are also able to push data directly from the detector heads into the destination areas by using zero-copy techniques in order to minimise memory copy operations and CPU time. Another very relevant added value of this framework, with respect to the simpler schemes in use today, is the capability of integrating a number of geometry related manipulations along with the data transfer process. These geometry related manipulations are only applicable to image data produced by 2D area detectors and include the possibility of reconstructing full images from segmented devices, image extraction, pixel sampling or binning, extension of image edges and certain simple image transformations such as rotation or mirror inversions.
The feasibility of RASHPA has been proven by building a hardware and software demonstrator that has served also to evaluate technical solutions that are expected to be applied in the future for the implementation of new high performance detectors. The demonstrator was built based on existing electronics and commercial boards to moderate cost and development effort and therefore it cannot be taken as an example of ultimate performance in terms of, for instance, achievable data rate. Nevertheless, the device has been adequate for 1 GByte per second sustained RASHPA transfers through a single data link.
Furthermore, methods to reduce the big data volumes produced by advanced detectors by two different techniques were evaluated. The first one consisted of the usage of VETO signals and messages generated by auxiliary detectors to implement an early data (frame) rejection at the front-end of modern MHz repetition rate image detectors to discard data tagged as invalid. The proposed solution based on low-latency communication interfaces between FPGAs and a dedicated VETO decision unit to gather information from multiple detectors and derive an overall decision was implemented as a demonstrator. The communication and functionally was tested successfully and the measured latency of the complete setup was only 1.9 microseconds.
Two existing different Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) programming frameworks for online data processing were compared, evaluated, and further developed. These two frameworks, provided by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER) and the European XFEL, offer modern Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) supporting a Graphical User Interface to build modules of code that can be used to treat and reduce the fast data streams as they are received from the detector front-end by specialised high performance hardware processor boards. An important part of the work consisted in investigating how both frameworks can be integrated together to increase their capability, the result being a list of suggestions for further improvements to make the overall process more efficient.

Efficient CO2 cooling units for large detector systems have been designed and prototyped in different sizes by the participants from SLHC and FAIR. The knowledge on system parameters and techniques, including selection of suited components, technical reports and detailed 3D models, has been disseminated in a web portal made available to the much wider CRISP community.
Test systems have been constructed at CERN and made available to other RIs. At GSI/FAIR, a further developed general-purpose test system has been set up fitting to the prototypes of detector modules for the Silicon Tracking System of the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment. Full-size cooling plants up to a power of 15 kW have been commissioned at CERN for LHC/SLHC experiments.
Detailed standard design steps for all different classes of cooling unit of growing complexity have been defined, from conception, to modeling, to control design, up to the final assembly. Particular attention has been devoted to the creation of a standard approach to the design of controls, based on a highly modular hierarchical sequence of Process Control Objects. Also, a powerful user-friendly Graphical User Interface has been developed. This is composed of several synoptic panels, with navigation in between, allowing for controlling and monitoring of all instrumentation. Each instrument in the plant is represented by an independent widget with an associated faceplate holding all status information and supporting real time queries by a simple click action.
In a similar way, well defined standard procedures have been defined for the commissioning of any new unit produced, from the initial basic safety verifications up to the final thermodynamics performance test under stress.
Finally, important step forwards have been made towards the development of innovative local thermal management techniques of the highest efficiency.

In the frame of deploying innovative gamma and neutron array detectors for ELI, FAIR, and SPIRAL2, electronics for the full digitization of analog detector information at some hundreds MHz sampling frequency and signal processing in FPGAs have been realized and tested in experimental conditions, migrating the experiments to new platforms and allowing a broader use of these electronics for neutron, gamma-ray and particle detectors like EXOGAM2, NEDA, PARIS, and S3.
In terms of detector developments, simulations have been performed for the ACTAR Time Projection Chamber and PARIS phoswichs were tested.
Measurements of neutron yield in various experimental conditions have been performed using an Extended Range Bonner Spheres Spectrometer (ERBSS) and a SP2 spectrometer. An efficient method for measurement of neutron energy spectra in the presence of high X and gamma fluxes has been developed based on plastic scintillators shielded with lead.

ESS and ILL20/20 have jointly developed a prototype of a 3He free large area detector for neutron scattering science. This was largely motivated by the 3He shortage crisis, which appeared in 2008, and represented a serious threat for the future of instrumentation in neutron scattering science, in particular for large area Time Of Flight instruments. In response to that situation, the ILL introduced the Multi-Grid detector concept, in which the 3He gas is replaced by thin films of a neutron convertor solid material coated on aluminium substrates. Good detection efficiency was demonstrated with a small prototype; therefore ESS and ILL20/20 engaged in the fabrication and operation of a large area demonstrator with a sensitive area of 3 m x 0.8 m, equivalent to what is needed on a real instrument.
ESS was responsible for the study, characterisation, optimisation and production of the B4C coated blades, as well as for the assembly of the grids, which are the sensitive elements of the Multi-grid, and ILL was responsible for the study, optimization, assembling and testing of the demonstrator, as well as for the readout electronics. The tasks associated to this project were strongly interdependent, and were therefore jointly conducted.
A campaign of experimental tests was first carried out with several prototypes by varying the convertor film thickness, the gas pressure, the gain and time constant of the amplifiers, the electronics readout scheme, and the background shielding. One of these prototypes, tested on the IN6 Inelastic Instrument of the ILL, produced decisive results concerning the background noise (alpha and scattered neutrons), and the way to get rid of it. Another prototype, equipped with a pressure vessel compatible with low gas pressure, showed that the performance of the Multi-grid detector is optimal at 50 mbar, well suited to simplify the conception of the demonstrator gas vessel, and to reduce the material budget for minimum neutron scattering inside the detector. The experimental results obtained during that campaign, and those of the Monte Carlo simulation program developed during the course of the project, were used to define the parameters of the large area demonstrator.
The first image obtained in September 2014 with half of the demonstrator assembled, shows that the detector is operational. This result and previous results obtained during the course of the CRISP project, and before, lead us to the conclusion that the 10B Multigrid developed in WP15 is a performing and robust technique, and is furthermore mechanically tolerant. Mass production in industry is economically viable; in the actual context of 3He shortage, this is particularly important to secure the future of detection in neutron scattering instrumentation.

Information Technology & Data Management
The ever increasing amount of data, produced by the present and future RIs, must be managed in a cost-efficient and secured fashion. These needs are of common interest to all participating RIs, and therefore all eleven RIs were involved. CRISP project partners worked together on a common user identity system, metadata management and data continuum, high speed data recording, and on distributed data infrastructures.

Authentication systems are the basis for most of the services for users at large research infrastructures and local systems are already in place. Within CRISP WP16 Umbrella, a pan-European system for the identification of users at the participating CRISP RIs was developed and deployed for the management of local and remote access to facilities, experiments, data, and IT resources. Harmonisation meetings were organised with facility authentication and authorisation experts to synchronise deployment and further development of Umbrella. Three bridging solutions (X509, EduGAIN, and Moonshot) have been provided that enable Umbrella to be interoperable with alternative technical solutions for Federated Identity Management. The sustainability of Umbrella has been achieved through the establishment of the Umbrella Collaboration, a Federated Identity Management System based on Umbrella which is supported by signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoU).

ESRF, DESY, CERN, and ILL worked together to select and implement metadata management and metadata mining services and to establish an environment permitting a data continuum from raw data to publications across the RIs. Sources of textual information concerning datasets have been aggregated into an Apache Lucene search index. What was initially planned as a prototype was integrated into the ILL data portal in September 2014. The ICAT metadata catalogue was installed on development and production infrastructure at the participating RIs after which most of the subsequent activities relating to the integration of metadata catalogues were dedicated on developing a system for automating the ingestion process. As the workflow of the ESRF and ILL were very different, two solutions were provided: Experiment Data Ingestion System for the ILL and an ingester based on Apache Camel for the ESRF. Both metadata catalogues were commissioned during September 2014. In 2012, all the partners agreed on the choice of DOIs and DataCite as providers of Persistent Identifiers for datasets. CERN and ILL have subsequently signed contracts with DataCite and started to mint DOIs for their data. Cooperation took place with DataCite and Thomson-Reuters who have recently launch the Data Citation Index. The CERN hosted Zenodo catalogue is now integrated into this index. The ILL is currently in discussion with Thomson-Reuters and the integration of the ILL data portal is foreseen in the near future.

Increasingly complex experimental techniques and detection schemes in many scientific domains result in extremely high data rates that exceed tens of Gbyte/s. Cost-effective recording of data to storage systems and archives becomes an increasingly challenging task. CRISP partners worked together to provide solutions for high-speed recording of data to permanent storage/archive and optimised secured access to data using standard protocols. The requirements and use cases for high-speed data recording to storage systems and data archives were assembled during, along with a review of available technologies that enabled the selection of tools. Initial performance tests of the Lustre file system on Dell based hardware was carried out at Cambridge. Tests of the parallel NFS (pNFS4.1) protocol and its dCache implementation were compared to other protocols natively supported by dCache. This included development work on Linux Kernel RAID-6 for efficient Lustre on commodity hardware. A data recording and access architecture was designed which defines the system layers, including interfaces for data exchange and functional modules. The implementation and deployment of two prototypes for data recording and access based upon the defined architecture design that integrated the evaluated components were provided for the SKA and the European XFEL. The prototype system built at the European XFEL has been successfully tested with realistic data traffic pattern and 50% of the expected data rate and hence can be scaled up to full data rates.

Significant efforts went into the analysis of the existing distributed data infrastructures from the network/technology perspective and plan/experiment their evolution to support the expanding data management needs. A detail analysis of networking requirements for ELI, EuroFEL, FAIR, SKA, and SLHC has been documented in Deliverable D19.2: Distributed Data Infrastructures Evolution Roadmap. Specific contributions were also made to the SKA’s roadmap of relevant technologies for computing hardware and the outline design of the computing system, including the underlying software architecture necessary to support SDP. In addition, a document has been prepared on ‘Research and analysis tools – Requirements and future plans’ for ELI-ALPS. Various investigations and developments have been done to review and improve the data management tool sets respectively. These include investigating HTTP for standards-based access to data, a distributed testing framework for benchmarking storage systems, tests of the parallelized version of HDF5 (pHDF5), the Dynamic Deployment System and FairMQ.

Potential Impact:
CRISP is a concerted plan to achieve more efficient implementation of ESFRI projects. The eleven participating ESFRI projects have joined their resources and expertise to develop concerted actions with the following aims:
• Enabling of key technologies that are essential to meet current and emerging scientific and technical challenges (new ion and neutron sources and accelerator components, development of fast real-time techniques, rapid digestion and transfer of huge flow of data, …).
• Creating synergies between experimental methods and techniques enabling innovation and new solutions to scientific questions (joint approaches in structural biology, transfer of accelerator technologies to parallel projects, remote handling in highly-activated areas, ….).
• Fostering interactions between fundamental research and industry, facilitating collaborations, building knowledge and understanding of complementary needs and demands (IT efforts, structural biology, accelerator components, …).
• Promoting the development and implementation of common solutions to the challenges faced by ESFRI partners (performances, cost efficiency, responsiveness to users’ needs, access, data management …).
• Enhancing the capacity and performance not only of the participating RIs, but of all other national RIs in the field of Physics, Astronomy and Analytical Facilities.
Close collaborations and continuous exchanges of experience within the four scientific topics of CRISP and across them, an optimal exploitation of the complementary expertises have allowed a successful completion of the project. Training of early career researchers and technical staff was a further asset of the project: 19 postdoctoral fellows, 9 PhD students, and 10 engineers were hired, thanks to CRISP funds, and more than twenty undergraduate and PhD students directly profited from the project’s work and investment. Apart from the global impact of CRISP each of the four R&D areas has made their own impacts.

Accelerators
In the field of accelerators CRISP fostered the fruitful collaboration within different areas of accelerator physics and technology. In all work packages an improved networking of the participating institutes was strongly supported. This is of very high importance since accelerator technology is demanding, and often cutting-edge technology is used. Modern accelerators as required by the user communities are based on challenging particle sources, on superconductivity still being at the R&D forefront, and on new technical concepts.
Within CRISP the accelerator topic strengthened the collaboration between SPIRAL2 and FAIR in the field of beam diagnostics. Particle sources related R&D can be of profit for both projects, but also other future accelerators. CRISP helped a lot with respect to knowledge transfer in the field of superconducting technology. High field and fast ramped superconducting magnets are of interest at FAIR as well as for future CERN projects. Many modern accelerators are based on superconducting accelerating structures. While CERN produced many of them already for LEP, the upcoming and next generation infrastructures are more demanding. The technology developed, e.g. for the European XFEL but also for a potential superconducting linear collider ILC, becomes somewhat standard around the world. Modern clean rooms and sophisticated surface treatment techniques are visible in many laboratories. CERN used the CRISP program to support new and essential infrastructures. New radio-frequency amplifiers as developed at ESRF are of high interest in different laboratories. The utilised modern technology is likely to become operational soon and industrialisation is expected. More fundamental accelerator research was supported through CRISP in the field of modern RF guns and proton sources, but also in the field of plasma acceleration. Here more work is expected for the future, and CRISP helped to prepare the basis for further R&D projects, for example, the Extreme Light Infrastructure.
Knowledge exchange and transfer was possible in all working areas. CRISP helped to strengthen existing collaborations, but even more important, established new contacts. Future projects will be able to profit from either direct use of developed components and technologies, or from created networks. All large scale accelerator installations require such a strong international cooperation.
Since education in accelerator physics and technology needs steady support, CRISP was seen especially helpful in the integration of young scientists. Besides, the CRISP program also initiated a number of public presentations either at workshops or conferences. Also the mentioning of CRISP support during visits of and presentations about accelerators should not be underestimated. If science and especially young scientists are supported by networking projects, the attractiveness for young students, be it undergraduate or PhD, is largely increased.
Instruments and Experiments
The technology developed for time resolved studies down to the attosecond time regime and up to photon energies of 200 eV will be exploited and further developed for the upcoming laser facilities such as ELI, European XFEL, FLASH-II, SwissFEL, and others. Software tools to assess the performance of various crystal spectrometer geometries and to judge their suitability for scanning and single shot X-ray emission experiments will be of large benefit for the design of instruments, not only at laser facilities, but also at accelerator based x-ray sources, where time-resolved x-ray emission spectroscopy in single-shot or stroboscopic mode has a large scientific potential.
FAIR and SPIRAL2 worked closely together in the field of instrumentation for remote handling in harsh radioactive environment. These tools set the standard for an efficient operation of their facilities, and can be exploited by other nuclear facilities such as ESS, ILL, and other national facilities.
The development of a common framework for biological samples through the combined use of neutron and X-ray diffraction approaches and instrumentation has significantly facilitated the rapid and compatible transfer of samples between neutron and X-ray diffractometers. Methods for sample cryocooling that have been well established in x-ray crystallography have been adapted for use with neutrons. This has already had strong impact on high-resolution and ultra high-resolution studies. The technology of liquid injection systems for nanocrystals suspensions at FELs can be exploited now as well at synchrotron beamlines. The development of serial fibre diffraction using FEL sources such as the LCLS in Stanford will be of direct benefit for the European XFEL in Hamburg when it becomes operational in 2016.
The neutron source and guide technology developed within CRISP is of direct benefit to the ILL20/20 and ESS project, and forms the basis of instruments with unprecedented performance. Other neutron facilities in the European research area and beyond will profit as well. The achieved cost savings by a factor two are central in the current economic situation. Furthermore, the novel technologies will provide a clear bonus for the European companies involved in the procurement of the instrumentation (neutron guides, tools for radioactive environments, etc…).

Detectors and Data Acquisition
The new standard for high-rate experiments in particle and nuclear physics, as well as astronomy, is the production of large volumes of free streaming detector data, digitized detector response fitted with time stamps, which has to be transferred to computing nodes for processing, e.g. suppression of dark frames or stacking in case of imaging devices, event building in the case of tracking detectors. Prototypes of such data streaming architectures with processing features have been developed, suitable for adaption to several environments with different timing systems. Based on those prototypes and their documentation, teams can use the toolboxes to advance to final applications.
The growing level of integration of the electronics for silicon detectors and their boards calls for highly efficient cooling systems in tracking detectors for Particle Physics experiments. A new generation of cooling plants based on CO2 in a two-phase pumped loop, characterised by reduced energy consumption, high thermal exchange properties and low Greenhouse emissions is being developed to this aim. The activities developed in the frame of CRISP have contributed to this process with the construction and detailed commissioning of a 15 kW CO2 plant at CERN, as a prototype for the CMS experiment, and with the development of movable 1 kW unit at GSI, to be used as test station and first prototype for the future CBM experiment. In this respect the two communities at CERN and GSI have benefitted from the synergy created to reach a deep understanding of the technology involved and of the challenges to transfer this innovative technology to industry.
On the other hand the mere cooling plant design and development is only one aspect of the complex task of efficient thermal management of such a detector. At the other end of the chain, the on-detector thermal management requires innovative solutions for accrued effectiveness. Advanced solutions for local thermal management have also been developed within CRISP: these goes from geometrically complex metallic heat exchanger produced with the latest metallurgical techniques, to ultra-thin micro machined silicon cold plates allowing for perfect material matching of the semiconductor and the heat sink. The development of these technologies may positively impact the thermal management of hi-tech electronics industrial devices, e.g. in the fields of high power computing or Photovoltaic Concentration Cells.
Nuclear physics experiments utilise increasingly larger and more complex devices, which are being employed, as “travelling devices”, used at different infrastructures and in varying experimental environments. The modern read-out electronics that has been developed in the frame of CRISP can be easily adapted to those conditions. This advanced instrumentation and the associated electronics is contributing to the investigation of the most challenging contemporary nuclear and astrophysics questions aiming at the deeper understanding of the nature of matter.
It also reinforces the European Research Infrastructures and will also contribute to the achievement of the balanced territorial development within the European Research Area. For instance, GANIL/SPIRAL2 facility is the only world-leading large research infrastructure in its region of France. The SPIRAL2 facility, with its new detectors, will increase the number of mostly European researchers coming for experiments and research training by about 50%. With the instrumentation developed during the CRISP project, European Physics Infrastructures increased their quality of “talent magnets” and impact the local economy through the numerous scientists coming for breakthrough experiments.
3He is the helium gas isotope that for the last 30 years has been used in neutron detectors worldwide. Once plentiful as a by-product of nuclear weapons development, its supplies have dwindled to critical levels and existing stockpiles are now closely controlled by foreign governments for domestic use. The price on the free market has become unpredictable, and ESS’s needs alone exceed available supplies. ESS will build its detectors from scratch and has an urgent need for a substitute technology. ILL felt similar urgency based on the fact that, first it hosts dozens of instruments using a wide variety of detector types, all using 3He, and second it is involved in a continuous process of modernisation of its instruments, hence new detectors are needed.
Work within the CRISP project demonstrated the feasibility of building 10B detectors with the same performance, and at a comparable cost, as 3He detectors. Several techniques of production and mounting, easily transferable to industry, were implemented. Furthermore, the ILL patent on the Multi-grid technique, filed in March 2010, completed by the ESS patent on the B4C coating process, filed in June 2011, provides conditions for a successful technology transfer to industry.
In the context of European neutron science, the construction of many new instruments provides a great opportunity to use this new concept in the future.

Information Technology and Data Management
During the course of the project the concept of a common user identity system has become increasingly important within the European research community. To build upon these emerging synergies, the Umbrella harmonisation meetings were extended to partners from other EU projects and communities. Intense discussions during these meetings concluded that the Umbrella concept could be extended to further communities and a clear roadmap for the Umbrella deployment was defined. As a result, the Umbrella Collaborators signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the establishment of a Federated Identity Management System (“Umbrella”). Following this approach, the operation and maintenance of Umbrella can be guaranteed after the end of CRISP and PaNdata projects. The bridging solutions (X509, EduGAIN, and Moonshot) provide a technical foundation for future participating within the wider Federated Identity Management for Research Infrastructure (FIM4R) initiative. Furthermore, a FIM interest group has been created as part of the Research Data Alliance to which Umbrella is actively participating.
The typical data publication processes of the analytical facilities have been enriched and opened to scientists who were not involved in the initial proposal process. They now have the possibility to search and access public data of the experiments, to process and analyse the data with their own tools and to produce publications based on the analysis of the respective experimental raw data. At CERN, the study of data analysis workflows of the four LHC big collaborations (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb) permitted to identify key assets for knowledge preservation in the data continuum lifecycle. A common data analysis preservation pilot platform was built to explore and confirm the ideas. The CERN Open Data portal has been prepared for a public launch that is scheduled to happen in autumn 2014. The portal preserves and offers to peruse open data sets, the virtual machines and software tools helping to analyse them, and offers live in-browser data visualisation services such as event display and basic histogram generation.
Results of prototype tests for high-speed data recording and access have been valuable in deciding on the preliminary architecture for SKA Science Data Processor. This has allowed SKA Science Data Processor to enter the next phase of the design process. The integration of software RAID-6 with Lustre is reducing costs of future Lustre installations very substantially by removing the need for a proprietary hardware RAID layer while improving performance because software RAID can leverage very high performance in modern CPUs. The proposed architecture and the results obtained from the prototype system will be used for the production systems at European XFEL and SKA. This will serve also other facilities as the starting point for their developments towards production systems
The CRISP participants took leading positions within the SKAs Data Delivery activity, both providing methodologies for analysis and comparison of different available technologies, but also methods for their evaluation including standardised benchmarks and tests. This work also included the definition of interfaces between the delivery system and the core SDP archive and necessary regional centre archives
CRISP has contributed a set of milestones for the SKA SDP. Significant contributions include input to the Preliminary Design review documentation set including both architecture and rough order of magnitude costs to support the SKA project organization in defining the overall budget for the next, construction, phase of the project.
The investigations supporting the development of essential HDF5 enhancements revealed fundamental issues and triggered new HDF5 developments.
A first stable prototype of the Dynamic Deployment System “DDS” has been developed which automates and simplifies the process of distribution of user-defined processes with their dependencies on different resource management systems. The prototype is able to deploy single dependency tasks like a PROOF cluster or FairRoot analysis tasks and can be steered using an SSH plug-in on the Cloud and local computers.
Furthermore, CRISP engaged in discussions with the other cluster project representatives to discuss the common IT challenges across scientific domains. The conclusions were documented in a report entitled “Realising the full potential of research data: common challenges in data management, sharing and integration across scientific disciplines” that is available from the Zenodo repository. This report on common challenges extends the concept of synergy, which is at the heart of the CRISP project, to the other cluster projects and beyond.

Dissemination
Dissemination activities have raised the awareness of CRISP results in the different scientific communities through a number of different media channels, but also through publications and via attendance of CRISP participants in workshops and conferences within the European Research Area and beyond.
The CRISP web site is regularly updated with information coming from the project participants. It contains several video clips that are also accessible through YouTube. The website has received more than 14000 separate site visits since the beginning of the project. Social media channels Twitter and Facebook have also been used with the aim of making the project known to the general public.
A number of short articles outlining the major achievements of the project were prepared and circulated to selected specialist journalists in autumn 2013. This campaign has resulted in 13 press articles in different on-line journals: e.g. THE (the heart of the higher education debate), Projects, Accelerating News, InfoHighTech, ITR, Research Europe, ISGTW, Grid cast, and Physics world.
CRISP entered into a mutually beneficial agreement with the FP7 funded project e-ScienceTalk in order to promote CRISP to a large GRID-oriented community and to broaden the scope of the eScienceTalk project.
A CRISP concept poster and RI specific posters were produced explaining the contribution and achievements of the individual RIs for display at conferences and in the participating RIs. Furthermore, a presentation brochure summarising the mission of the project was produced, and has been circulated to members of the RI governing bodies and displayed on the European Commission premises.
CRISP participated in, or organised several industry related events, most notably: the CRISP IT and Data Management event held at CERN 31Jan-1Feb 2013, Netherlands@GIANT event in June, 25-27th 2013; the 12th RD51 collaboration meeting and workshop on Neutron Detection with Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detectors, October, 14-17th 2013, and the CRISP WIN Workshop in imaging with Neutrons, Grenoble, March 17th 2014.
CRISP consortium members participated in numerous workshops and conferences, spanning a large range of science and technology applications from novel accelerator components, macromolecular biological structure determination, to federated identity management. Work performed within CRISP resulted in 46 peer-reviewed publications and 17 conference proceedings in scientific journals.

List of Websites:
http://www.crisp-fp7.eu/

e-mail: coord@crisp-fp7.eu

Final Report Summary - CRISP (Cluster of Research Infrastructures for Synergies in Physics)

Share this page

Download