Outlook Towards Deployable Continual Learning for Particle Accelerators

Particle Accelerators are high power complex machines. To ensure uninterrupted operation of these machines, thousands of pieces of equipment need to be synchronized, which requires addressing many challenges including design, optimization and control, anomaly detection and machine protection. With recent advancements, Machine Learning (ML) holds promise to assist in more advance prognostics, optimization, and control. While ML based solutions have been developed for several applications in particle accelerators, only few have reached deployment and even fewer to long term usage, due to particle accelerator data distribution drifts caused by changes in both measurable and non-measurable parameters. In this paper, we identify some of the key areas within particle accelerators where continual learning can allow maintenance of ML model performance with distribution drifts. Particularly, we first discuss existing applications of ML in particle accelerators, and their limitations due to distribution drift. Next, we review existing continual learning techniques and investigate their potential applications to address data distribution drifts in accelerators. By identifying the opportunities and challenges in applying continual learning, this paper seeks to open up the new field and inspire more research efforts towards deployable continual learning for particle accelerators.

Uncertainty aware anomaly detection to predict errant beam pulses in the SNS accelerator

High-power particle accelerators are complex machines with thousands of pieces of equipmentthat are frequently running at the cutting edge of technology. In order to improve the day-to-dayoperations and maximize the delivery of the science, new analytical techniques are being exploredfor anomaly detection, classification, and prognostications. As such, we describe the applicationof an uncertainty aware Machine Learning method, the Siamese neural network model, to predictupcoming errant beam pulses using the data from a single monitoring device. By predicting theupcoming failure, we can stop the accelerator before damage occurs. We describe the acceleratoroperation, related Machine Learning research, the prediction performance required to abort beamwhile maintaining operations, the monitoring device and its data, and the Siamese method andits results. These results show that the researched method can be applied to improve acceleratoroperations.