Speaker
Description
A laser-driven proton accelerator based on the 2 PW ultra-intense laser facility is under development at Peking University, aiming at compact proton radiotherapy applications[1]. Compared with conventional RF accelerators, laser-driven acceleration features shot-to-shot operation, broad energy spectra, and large parameter fluctuations, which impose new requirements on the control system, including high-repetition-rate data acquisition for the laser facility, timing control for laser-target shooting and beamline transmutation[2], shot-based data archiving, and closed-loop coordination among the laser, target chamber, beamline, and patient treatment workflow.
To address these challenges, we are developing an EPICS-based control system for the laser proton accelerator and the associated radiotherapy machine. In this contribution, we present the overall architecture of the control system, including the IOC design for the petawatt laser control, beam transport and target chamber control, and proton beamline transport control; the interface design between the commercial treatment control software and the laser-driven accelerator control system; and the data management strategy for shot-based operation. We also report the development of operator interfaces (Phoebus), the personnel safety interlock system[3], the machine protection system, and the state management system integration, together with the commissioning and overall test results of the facility. The progress, experience, and future plan towards a clinical-grade EPICS control system for laser-based radiotherapy will be discussed[4].
Furthermore, we have preliminarily explored large language model applications built upon the Osprey framework [5] to enable seamless integration with the EPICS architecture, realizing intelligent perception and autonomous decision-making for the laser proton accelerator and building its dedicated intelligent agent.
Reference
[1] K.D. Wang, Y.Y. Zhao, K. Zhu, et al., "Review of the research progress of laser accelerator CLAPA-II," Sci. Sin.-Phys. Mech. Astron. 53, 100009 (2023). doi: 10.1360/SSPMA-2022-0433
[2] Q.Y. He, Q. Wang, K. Chen, et al., "Design and implementation of the CLAPA-II timing system," JINST 20, P10032 (2025). doi: 10.1088/1748-0221/20/10/P10032
[3] M.X. Zang, Q. Wang, E.S. Guo, et al., "Design and development of the personnel protection system for a petawatt laser accelerator" (2026), accepted for publication.
[4] K. Chen, K.D. Wang, M.F. Cao, et al., "A model-based adaptive dose delivery method for laser-accelerated proton beams," Mach. Learn.: Sci. Technol. 7, 045055 (2026).
[5] T. Hellert, J. Montenegro, and A. Sulc, "Osprey: Production-Ready Agentic AI for Safety-Critical Control Systems," arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.15066 (2025).
