Alessandro Abrami

Increasingly, automatic systems are required to have high dynamical performance and robust behaviour, yet they are expected to cope with more complex processes which are under development and highly non-linear dynamic. A very promising approach in dealing with this scenario is through Intelligent Systems (IS). IS incorporate the creative, abstract and adaptive attributes of a human while minimising the undesirable aspects such as unpredictability, inconsistency, fatigue, subjectivity and temporal instability. Even if the Autonomous Systems area has always provided the demonstration platform of IS, the methodologies are applicable to a wider range of complex problems. Synchrotron Radiation facilities or Free Electron Lasers with their complex data acquisition, data analysis, diagnostic and control problems provide a challenging application area for Intelligent Systems. The paper describes a framework for the conceptual development of IS for Experimental Physics. The proposed framewor...

ABSTRACT Elettra is a third generation Synchrotron Light Source located in Trieste (Italy). It consists of a full energy linac injector and a storage ring with beam energies between 1.5 and 2 GeV. The facility is scheduled to be operational by end 1993. For the whole project 22 beam lines from insertion devices are foreseen, each of them is composed of a large number of measurement and controls instruments, most of them embedded in intelligent devices; in addition each beam line can be considered unique compared to the others, having been designed to provide a different kind of synchrotron radiation. This results in a large not homogenous environment where more than 200,000 physical points have to be controlled. A joint team composed of Softeco Sismat and Digital Equipment has developed a fully automated beam line control system able to give full remote controls, with different kind of access rights, to beam line users and beam line specialists as well as a full integration with experiment control systems.

The recent advent of free-electron laser (FEL) sources is driving the scientific community to extend table-top laser research to shorter wavelengths adding elemental selectivity and chemical state specificity. Both a compact setup (mini-TIMER) and a separate instrument (EIS-TIMER) dedicated to four-wave-mixing (FWM) experiments has been designed and constructed, to be operated as a branch of the Elastic and Inelastic Scattering beamline: EIS. The FWM experiments that are planned at EIS-TIMER are based on the transient grating approach, where two crossed FEL pulses create a controlled modulation of the sample excitations while a third time-delayed pulse is used to monitor the dynamics of the excited state. This manuscript describes such experimental facilities, showing the preliminary results of the commissioning of the EIS-TIMER beamline, and discusses original experimental strategies being developed to study the dynamics of matter at the fs-nm time-length scales. In the near future such experimental tools will allow more sophisticated FEL-based FWM applications, that also include the use of multiple and multi-color FEL pulses.

The Elettra beamline for mammography with Synchrotron Radiation (SR) has been operating since March 2006. The clinical aim is to apply the PHase Contrast (PHC) imaging technique to a selected number of patients, recruited by radiologists according to a protocol approved by the Hospital Ethic Committee. Due to the laminar nature of SR beam, PHC images are obtained scanning the patient and the detector simultaneously through the beam. Technical issues, national radiation protection and safety guidelines, both for patients and for operators, have been faced with during the design and implementation phases of this project. A description of equipments and systems is presented.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of phase-contrast mammography with synchrotron radiation using a high-resolution computed radiology (CR) system devoted to mammography. The study was performed at the Synchrotron Radiation for Medical Physics (SYRMEP) beamline of the Elettra synchrotron radiation (SR) facility in Trieste (Italy); X-ray beams were in the range 16-22 keV with a high degree of monochromaticity and spatial coherence. The CR system evaluated is the FCR Profect CS by Fujifilm Global. The first images were obtained from test objects and surgical breast specimens. Images obtained using SR and both screen-film and the CR system were compared with images of the same samples acquired with digital mammography equipment. In view of the good quality of the results obtained, the CR system was used in two mammographic examinations with SR. Images acquired using SR and both screen-film and CR were obtained with the same level of delivered dose. Image quality obtained with CR was similar or superior to that of screen-film images. Moreover, the digital images obtained with SR were always better than those acquired using the digital mammography system. Phase-contrast mammography with SR using the studied CR system is a feasible option.

System for controlling the variable-angle spherical-grating monochromators at Elettra. [Proceedings of SPIE 3150, 76 (1997)]. Juraj Krempasky, R. Krempaska, Andrea G. Bianco, A. Abrami, R. Pugliese, F. Bille, Juha A. Karvonen, M. Coreno, M. de Simone. Abstract. ...

ABSTRACT FERMI@Elettra, the Italian Free Electron Laser (FEL) source, is in an advanced commissioning phase, having already delivered radiation down to the endstations. The facility is routinely using the low energy branch (FEL1) to produce photons in the 65–20 nm range, while the 20–4 nm range will be covered by FEL2 that is now being commissioned. A dedicated system to collect, diagnose, transport and focus the radiation (PADReS) is used to provide informations about the photon beam intensity, position, spectral content, transverse coherence, and so on. The experience gathered so far, as well as the most recent results both from the diagnostic section and the beam manipulation part are presented here.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

... Fulvia Arfelli, Alessandro Abrami, Paola Bregant, Valentina Chenda, Maria A. Cova, Fabio de Guarrini, Diego Dreossi, Renata Longo, Ralf‐Hendrik Menk, Elisa Quai, Tatjana Rokvic, Maura Tonutti, Giuliana Tromba, Fabrizio Zanconati, Edoardo Castelli. Abstract. ...

ABSTRACT FERMI@Elettra, the first seeded EUV-SXR free electron laser (FEL) facility located at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste has been conceived to provide very short (10–100 fs) pulses with ultrahigh peak brightness and wavelengths from 100 nm to 4 nm. A section fully dedicated to the photon transport and analysis diagnostics, named PADReS, has already been installed and commissioned. Three of the beamlines, EIS-TIMEX, DiProI and LDM, installed after the PADReS section, are in advanced commissioning state and will accept the first users in December 2012. These beam lines employ active X-ray optics in order to focus the FEL beam as well as to perform a controlled beam-shaping at focus. Starting from mirror surface metrology characterization, it is difficult to predict the focal spot shape applying only methods based on geometrical optics such as the ray tracing. Within the geometrical optics approach one cannot take into account the diffraction effect from the optics edges, i.e. the aperture diffraction, and the impact of different surface spatial wavelengths to the spot size degradation. Both these effects are strongly dependent on the photon beam energy and mirror incident angles. We employed a method based on physical optics, which applies the Huygens–Fresnel principle to reflection (on which the WISE code is based). In this work we report the results of the first measurements of the focal spot in the DiProI beamline end-station and compare them to the predictions computed with Shadow code and WISE code, starting from the mirror surface profile characterization.

The article describes the ESCA microscopy beamline dedicated to high spatial resolution quantitative and qualitative analysis on surfaces and interfaces. The scanning microscope is constructed to work both in transmission and photoemission within the photon energy range from 200 to 1200 eV with a spatial resolution of ∼0.1 μm. A Fresnel zone plate demagnifies the photon beam to submicrometer dimensions