Android Application for Accelerator Physics and Engineering Calculations
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THPMA06 Proceedings of PAC2013, Pasadena, CA USA ANDROID APPLICATION FOR ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND ENGINEERING CALCULATIONS M. Borland ∗ Abstract platforms, which allowed using Linux for development. Smartphones and tablets are increasingly capable com- We used the Eclipse Integrated Development Environ- putational devices, with fast processors and high-resolution ment (IDE), which is advantageous in that it helps one displays. They are also nearly ubiquitous, suggesting that quickly learn both the Java language and the specific meth- they can support the need of physicists and engineers to ods provided by Android. The web contains many re- perform quick calculations in situations where using a full- sources, such as Android tutorials and user forums (e.g., blown simulation is not necessary or expedient. In this pa- StackExchange). per, we report on the design, features, and capabilities of The application is called TAPAs, which stands for an Android application inspired by these ideas. The ap- “Toolkit for Accelerator Physics for Androids” and also is plication is called “TAPAs,” which stands for Toolkit for meant to bring to mind the popular snacks of Spanish cui- Accelerator Physics on Androids. As the name—meant in- sine. The application is free of advertising and is available voke the popular snacks of Spanish cuisine— suggests, the free of charge on the Google Play store. application provides a varied selection of calculations for electron storage rings, electron linear accelerators, electron SOFTWARE DESIGN guns, free-electron lasers, undulator design, synchrotron Those who are uninterested in software design may wish radiation, and engineering. The calculations are organized to skip this section, as it has little to do with how the appli- into separate sub-applications, which share input values to cation is used or what it can do. This section also assumes allow performing related calculations without re-entering some familiarity with Android development. data. The application is free of advertising and is available The root activity of the application, MainActivity, is an free of charge on the Google Play store. extension of the ListActivity class, which presents a set of choices as a simple vertical list. In addition, MainActiv- INTRODUCTION ity provides pop-up dialog using AlertDialog that acquaints Physicists and engineers have long needed the ability to users with recent changes. The SharedPreferences facility perform quick “back of the envelope” calculations. This is used to remember the major and minor version of the need arises during discussions, meetings, and conferences, last invocation, so that the pop-up dialog appears only on when running a simulation code is not possible or would the first invocation of a new version. Finally, MainActiv- take too long. It also arises in day-to-day work as one ex- ity loads a set of name/value pairs into a hash table, which plores ideas at one’s desk. The ability to perform a quick, provides default values for entries in the various calcula- reasonably accurate calculation can sometimes make all the tions. As calculations are used, the values in the table are difference between being productive and pursing a dead- updated so that other applications have access to the new end idea. data. The hash table is part of a class that is implemented Such calculations may be performed mentally, with a as a “static singleton,” which means that there is only one pad and pencil, or with a hand-held calculator. Depending instance of the class and it is shared by all methods that on one’s ability to remember the appropriate equations, one attempt to instantiate the class. might use a published handbook, memorized equations, or Below the main list are a series of sublists that are also a “cheat sheet.” In the not-to-distant past, it was not un- instances of ListActivity. The activities in each sublist common to have a programmable calculator that facilitated are implemented using an ActivityWithMenu class derived common calculations. At present, one is more likely to from the Activity class. As the name suggests, this new have a smartphone or tablet close by than a programmable class provides an activity class with a predefined menu. calculator. Hence, it makes sense to develop smartphone or This menu is used to control some basic settings of the ap- tablet “apps” to address the need for quick calculations. plication. The settings are saved between invocations and Inspired by these ideas, we developed an Android appli- shared among activities using the SharedPreferences class. cation that performs a number of useful calculations of the The widgets for each activity are embedded in a vertically- sort that commonly come up in day-to-day work. The An- scrolled list, which helps in accommodating various screen droid platform was chosen for its open-source nature and sizes. the low cost of entry for devices and development. Unlike Individual calculation activities typically consist of a list other smartphone platforms, the Android Software Devel- of numerical entry and output widgets, in some cases ac- 2013 CC-BY-3.0opment and by the respective authors Kit (SDK) is free and available for essentially all companied by graphics. The numerical entry widgets use c the EditNumber class, which extends EditText. This class ∗ [email protected] provides two entry methods, one being a simple numerical ISBN 978-3-95450-138-0 07 Accelerator Technology Copyright 1364 D06 - Code Development and Simulation Techniques Proceedings of PAC2013, Pasadena, CA USA THPMA06 keypad and the other being a scientific calculator keypad. wigglers, and undulators. The latter provides the ability to perform calculations on The Electron Linac menu provides calculations of mag- quantities in the entry widgets, which can then be submit- netic bunch compression; coherent synchrotron radiation ted as the new value for the entry widget used to invoke the effects in bending magnets [6, 7]; alpha magnets [8, 9]; calculator. EditNumber also includes a facility to limit the charge, current, and beam power; and beam energy and rf range of entries in order to prevent invalid calculations, as power for SLAC-type linacs. The Electron Guns menu well as methods for setting, retrieving, and formatting nu- provides calculations of Richardson’s Law, Child’s Law, merical quantities. Values are stored to full precision even thermal emittance [10], and photocathode intrinsic emit- if they are displayed to partial precision, which helps pre- tance [11]. The Free Electron Laser (FEL) menu provides serve the consistency of displayed values, something that is FEL calculations based on the one-dimensional equations not possible with the basic EditText class. [12] and Ming Xie’s parametrization [13]. Calculation outputs are displayed using the Num- The Electromagnetism menu provides calculations of berView class, which extends TextView. Like EditNumber, skin depth for nonmagnetic materials; cutoff frequency and it provides storage, retrieval, and formatting of numerical attenuation for rectangular waveguide; and frequencies of values. The font size for the EditNumber and NumberView pillbox cavity modes. The Engineering menu provides classes is under user control, which helps to accommodate calculations for iron dominated magnet design; properties screens of varying sizes and resolutions. We also extended of dipole magnets and trajectories in dipoles; analysis of the TextView and Button classes to make a ScaledTextView one-dimensional static heat flow; and estimates of temper- and ScaledButton classes, to provide the same control. ature rise in cooling water. The structure of the code is such that it is straightfor- The Particle Passage Through Matter menu provides ward to add new menus and calculations. The most time- calculations of radiation length, multiple Coulomb scat- consuming part is coding the XML file that specifies the tering, and brehmsstrahlung for electrons and protons in graphical appearance of the screen. naturally-occurring elements [14]. The APS-Specific Calculations menu provides two cal- FEATURES AND CAPABILITIES culations that are specific to the Advanced Photon Source Upon starting TAPAs, one is greeted by a simple list of (APS), namely, the single-bunch accumulation limit based topics. Clicking on one of these topics bringsup a list of re- on the impedance model [15] and the bunch length as a lated calculations that are available for that topic. Often the function of current based on a fit to measured data. calculations within a topic will share certain input values As a detailed example, Figure 1 shows the screen for one (e.g., the beam energy), so that changing it one calculation of the most-used calculations, namely, scaling of electron will change it in the others. In addition, computed values storage rings. This applies mostly well-known (e.g., [16]) from one calculation are often shared with other calcula- scaling rules to allow quickly estimating equilibrium emit- tions. This allows using the calculations in a coordinated tance, energy spread, energy loss per turn, etc., as a given fashion, which is why we used the word “toolkit” in the light source storage ring design is scaled in number of cells name. and beam energy. One can use this application to quickly Space does not permit a full account of the capabilities determine that scaling the 20-sector MAX-IV storage ring of TAPAs, which as of version 1.42 supports 40 different [17] ring to 40 sectors would give a ring size of APS which, calculations. Instead, we will list the available calculations at 7 GeV, would have an emittance of 222 pm. While most and highlight a few to give a flavor of what’s available. In of the calculations are, as in this example, straightforward addition, space does not permit showing the equations used lists of inputs and outputs, some are more colorful, such as in the calculations or citing all of the original sources; we the resonance diagram shown in Figure 2.