Towards the UAL open source project

Unified Accelerator Libraries (UAL) software has been introduced as an open accelerator simulation environment providing support for many-to-many associations between diverse accelerator algorithms and diverse accelerator applications. Recently, UAL has been successfully applied to the development and study of the SNS Ring realistic beam dynamics model-including a complex combination of several physical effects and dynamic processes (such as injection painting, field errors, space charge effects, impedances, fringe fields, misalignments, etc.). The SNS and previous applications have confirmed the major UAL conceptual solutions and have encouraged us to transform this software into an Open Source project. The major efforts have been releasing documentation and consolidation of UAL modules based on the Accelerator Propagator Framework (APF). At this time, the documentation encompasses User Guide, API specification of C++ classes, Perl User interface, and a collection of feature-illustrating examples. Also APF has been implemented to enhance the UAL infrastructure by providing a uniform mechanism for development and integration of accelerator algorithms. The key part of this approach is the Accelerator Propagator Description Format (APDF) that provides physicists a mechanism for switching among simulation models within their applications.