Continuing the slow work

So, I now have software that can add a kick map element to the lattice and code to track through.
I am documenting it on wikidot, here. The kick-map addition code is called id_table_global for the one that does it via a global variable, and id_table for the one that directly outputs the element.
The tracking code is called IDTablePass and is based in c code that is compiled to mex code.

I create the kick map using RadiaToTrack Mathematica notebook. I start with a simple planar undulator with a vertical field of 0.76 Tesla, a 35 mm period, and 5 periods. The gap here is 11 mm. After running the und[] routine, one gets an index g to the pointer to the structure. One can then generate the kickmap by running the maketable[] command. One can then output this to a text file, or to a .mat file. The element creation file in Matlab needs to be able to read this file.
We add the element to THERING by issuing the commands:
idtable_global('scw', 1, 'scw31.dat', 6.04, 'IDTablePass')
THERING={THERING{:},FAMLIST{end}.ElemData};


Once the element is in the Matlab structure, one do tracking studies and compute different quantities. One may do linear lattice studies for example to find the changed tune.

The reason why I write this out is that I don't see the result as particularly interesting. Many have computed the tune shift of an undulator before and probably checked an implementation in a tracking code to the formula. This should be implemented in way that it becomes easy to do. It is testing, packaging, and documentation rather than a science or numerical study. Thus, one needs to proceed carefully with respect to the tools. All parts should be easy to use.
In my own case, I implement it both on a laptop and on a PC, and the software is different. So I am in essence implementing it twice. So it goes slowly, but hopefully is clear once its done.

Touschek

I am reading about Bruno Touschek. Here is a biography by Eodardo Amaldi titled The Bruno Touschek Legacy: Vienna 1921 - Innsbruck 1978. It includes some of his drawings at the end! In any case, I was quite interested to find at the end of it a statement that Touschek was very enthusiastic about Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi, or the Glass Bead Game (p. 53):

It was the final phase of his life that it became easier for his Italian friends to grasp the profound reasons for his enthusiasm for Das Glasperenspiel, Versuch einer Lebensbeschreibung des Magister Ludi Josef Kneckt by Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)-- his enthusiasm for this Utopia in which the various figures fluctuate between a real and symbolic existence, in an imaginary future country, where, in about two centuries, mankind has succeeded in overcoming the present world and society, characterized by frequent wars, by wild individualism, and by a culture reduced to "feullitons" that is to the "third page" ("potted culture" page) of the newspapers. The new society is guilded, morally and culturally, by an intellectual aristocracy, which, through the study and meditation, always deeper, of the form and contents of music and mathematics in all their aspects, has succeeded in producing a new order, which at the end, reveals itself to be without a way out, based on a game, extremely refined by sterile, like so many others.

building in the center

I continue to try to figure out how to work in this area of the interface between the electron beam and the photon beam. I see that there is a close parallel between my personal life story of trying to figure out how to live with both my mom's family and dad's family.

How to create space and build something substantial between two different things?
Perhaps the key is that secretly one gets help from a third thing. With my life in Santa Cruz, I think the key was to have good friends. It was within this context that I came closer to finding a common ground out of which I could exist in between both parents' houses and not feel like I was having to change myself so dramatically that there would be no continuity.

So, one claims a bit of ground somewhere in between this and that. Both this and that each think you belong to them. Or perhaps I myself think I belong to each of them, periodically. At one moment I am this. At the next, I am that. And while I am in the space that I am creating and building between the two, I try to make something that relates to the other two.

The title of this blog "adiabatic invariants", expressed a hope that I could find a space of more stability without the dramatic shifts. Perhaps I might also use a double well potential as a physics model for the kind of dynamics I am trying to deal with. And, for yet a third image, I have often thought of building a bridge between this and that. Building a bridge, however, is helpful for traveling in between, but does not in itself constitute a place of residency. One does not live on a bridge. And the imagery suggests a deep chasm. Perhaps it is not a chasm, but simply forest. And thus, instead of building a bridge, all that is needed is a path, and perhaps a map.

The task of life, then, is to inhabit the in-between territory, or if uninhabitable, to go elsewhere, but perhaps to keep the paths back alive. What are some topics where one must do this? Food is certainly one area. At my mom's house, we cooked and shopped ourselves. At my dad's, we were cooked for. Food meant something different. Meals had a different feel. So, today, I still do not have a way of shopping and eating that feels comfortable. Perhaps by continuing to think and write about this topic, I will make more progress. Creating a personal space which is comfortable is another area where I have a hard time. Choices feel political and charged, and what I actually create is often not very coherent. The same applies to how I dress and how I clean, and how I organize my projects and papers and other belongings. I have made progress, but the result is still not so coherent. I am trying to build in the center, between this and that. And the result is not always as satisfying as I might like.