17–22 May 2026
C.I.D
Europe/Zurich timezone

Reinforcement Learning Beyond Greedy Optimisation for Delayed-Consequence Accelerator Control

WEP6097
20 May 2026, 16:00
2h
C.I.D

C.I.D

Deauville, France
Poster Presentation MC6.T04: Accelerator/Storage Ring Control Systems Poster session

Speaker

Simon Hirlaender (University of Salzburg)

Description

Most accelerator control systems assume that the effect of an action can be evaluated locally and immediately. While
greedy approaches work in near-linear regimes and Bayesian Optimisation (BO) is now standard for black-box tuning,
both are essentially static optimisers and struggle in dynamic tasks with delayed consequences, where even adaptive
BO remains time-myopic and lacks explicit temporal credit assignment for system memory and long-range machine
evolution. We investigate three relevant forms of delayed consequences: explicit action latency (field settling delays
response), magnetic hysteresis (output depends on change history), and ballistic amplification (small upstream kicks grow
through nonlinear optics and apertures, causing downstream loss). Using a high-fidelity XSuite model of the AWAKE
electron line, we benchmark a reinforcement learning controller against an inverse-response greedy optimiser and BO.
The learning-based method anticipates delayed effects and avoids failure regions where both baselines fail, indicating
that delayed-consequence regimes are a key class of accelerator control problems where horizon-aware model-based or
learning-based methods clearly outperform current practice.

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Authors

Simon Hirlaender (University of Salzburg) Kajsa Miho Björkbom (University of Salzburg)

Co-authors

Ms Sarah Trausner (University of Salzburg) Ms Olga Mironova (University of Salzburg) Mr Lorenz Fischl (EBG MedAustron GmbH) Peter Auer (Montanuniversität Leoben) Ronald Ortner (Montanuniversität Leoben) Verena Kain (European Organization for Nuclear Research)

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