Matlab Based LOCO

The LOCO algorithm has been used by many accelerators around the world. Although the uses for LOCO vary, the most common use has been to find calibration errors and correct the optics functions. The light source community in particular has made extensive use of the LOCO algorithms to tightly control the beta function and coupling. Maintaining high quality beam parameters requires constant attention so a relatively large effort was put into software development for the LOCO application. The LOCO code was originally written in FORTRAN. This code worked fine but it was somewhat awkward to use. For instance, the FORTRAN code itself did not calculate the model response matrix. It required a separate modeling code such as MAD to calculate the model matrix then one manually loads the data into the LOCO code. As the number of people interested in LOCO grew, it required making it easier to use. The decision to port LOCO to Matlab was relatively easy. It's best to use a matrix programming language with good graphics capability; Matlab was also being used for high level machine control; and the accelerator modeling code AT, (5), was already developed for Matlab. Since LOCO requires collecting and processing a relative large amount of data, it is very helpful to have the LOCO code compatible with the high level machine control, (3). A number of new features were added while porting the code from FORTRAN and new methods continue to evolve, (7)(9). Although Matlab LOCO was written with AT as the underlying tracking code, a mechanism to connect to other modeling codes has been provided.