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Publication

Derivative-Free Optimization of a Rapid-Cycling Synchrotron

Authors

Eldred, Jeffrey S.; Larson, Jeffrey; Padidar, Misha; Stern, Eric; Wild, Stefan

Abstract

We develop and solve a constrained optimization model to identify an integrable optics rapid-cycling synchrotron lattice design that performs well in several capacities. Our model encodes the design criteria into 78 linear and nonlinear constraints, as well as a single nonsmooth objective, where the objective and some constraints are defined from the output of Synergia, an accelerator simulator. We detail the difficulties of optimizing within the 32-dimensional, simulation-constrained decision space and establish that the space is nonempty. We use a derivative-free manifold sampling algorithm to account for structured nondifferentiability in the objective function. Our numerical results quantify the dependence of approximate solutions on constraint parameters and the effect of the form of objective function.