scipp / scipp/ess

[essreduce] Proton charge lookup for normalization

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essreduce
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Python
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Description

Typically, a sample or reference run would be recorded for some minutes.
For proton charge normalization (for dream powder diffraction for instance), we currently find the time period over which the run was recorded, go back to the proton charge NXlog and integrate the charge over that period.

However, because of frame wrapping, it could be that some neutrons at the detector came from a pulse previous to the event_time_zero coordinate they have been assigned.
In most cases, being off by one or two pulses, over a run of several minutes would not matter.

For cases where fast recording rates are in use (fast FPS on the Orca imaging camera), this would not be the case. We would need to trace back and find the corresponding pulse for a given event_time_zero at the detector.

A solution for this would be to use the wavelength LUTs we already have. For a given event_time_offset, we find the wavelength and hence speed of the neutron. Trace backwards to find out which time at the source this corresponds to. And then find the closest previous pulse time in the nxlog.
This works as long at the proton charge nxlog contains times at the target and not at the accelerator source.
If the latter, then we would have to add an additional correction to account for the time the protons travel from accelerator source to target.

In any case, the idea here is to add an additional provider that can compute time at source. This can then be used by downstream packages to find the correct sections in the proton charge log.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the existing proton-charge normalization flow, the proton charge NXlog handling, and the wavelength LUTs described in the issue. The work is done when an additional provider computes the source time for detector events and downstream packages can use it to select the correct proton-charge log sections, including any required accelerator-to-target correction.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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