CERN Secondary Beamlines Software Migration Project

The Experimental Areas group of the CERN Engineering department operates a number of beamlines for the fixed target experiments, irradiation facilities and test beams. The software currently used for the simulation of the beamline layout (BEATCH), beam optics (TRANSPORT), particle tracking (TURTLE) and muon halo calculation (HALO) has been developed in FORTRAN in the 1980s and requires an update in order to ensure long-term continuity. The ongoing Software Migration Project transfers the beamline description to a set of newer commonly used software codes, such as MADX, FLUKA, G4Beamline, BDSIM etc. This contribution summarizes the goals and the scope of the project. It discusses the implementation of the beamlines in the new codes, their integration into the CERN layout database and the interfaces to the software codes used by other CERN groups. This includes the CERN secondary beamlines control system CESAR, which is used for the readout of the beam diagnostics and control of the beam via setting of the magnets, collimators, filters etc. The proposed interface is designed to allow a comparison between the measured beam parameters and the ones calculated with beam optics software.