Automatic and expert systems for orbit analysis

In alternating gradient machines, the analysis of closed orbit or trajectory measurements in terms of betatron oscillations is useful to detect field defects. This has been used for long to help realignment. In a large machine like LEP it is not practical to launch a survey check without making sure of the existence of the defects. In order to improve the reliability of their detection, it is extremely useful to have a fast system which makes it possible to cross-check several measurements. For treating a large quantity of information in an empirical way, the use of an expert-system was proposed. In fact the numerical content of accelerator orbit measurements as well as the good knowledge of the modeling of such a machine makes such a system useless. The experience gained on the analysis of closed orbit measurements done at CERN shows that a simple algorithmic process is more efficient to analyze closed orbit measurements