THE CONTROL SYSTEM OF THE FERMI@Elettra FREE ELECTRON LASER

FERMI@Elettra is a new 4 th -generation light source currently under construction at the Elettra laboratory. It is based on a single-pass free electron laser consisting in a 1.5-GeV normal-conducting linac and two chains of undulators where the photon beams are produced with a seeded laser multistage mechanism. The control system interfaces to and controls all devices and systems of the facility. The hardware architecture has been designed using commercial components and open standards, and a software environment based on GNU/Linux and the Tango control system is deployed on all computers. The safety and protection systems rely on a well established technology based on PLCs. A real-time infrastructure based on a dedicated Ethernet network and a real-time implementation of Linux provides centralized shot-by-shot data acquisition at the linac repetition rate, as well as synchronized setting of the controlled variables required to implement feedback loops.