Experiment planning using the high level parameter concept

Full text of publication follows: One discharge at the steady-state experiment Wendelstein 7-X will last up to 30 minutes and will be divided into many elementary experimental program phases, so-called segments. Physics programs need to be planned and technical parameters need to be adjusted well before the discharge. The technical parameters provide a complete description for the behavior of all participating components. Physicists, however, aim at specifying the state and behavior of both plasma and machine in terms of physics. Therefore an abstraction layer above the technical parameters has been developed, the so-called high level parameters. These specify a subset of the technical parameters on a higher, more physics-oriented level and are therefore used to encapsulate technical details. During ordinary program planning, the physicists and engineers only see and work with these high level (physics) parameters. In comparison to shot-based and other existing experiments, this is an entirely new scientifically-oriented method to plan experiments in terms of physics parameters (supported by tools) which are automatically mapped onto technical parameters. Details about defining and editing high level parameters as well as about the mapping of high level parameters onto low level (technical) parameters will be given for an example. In addition, other fields of high level parameter applications will be mentioned. (authors)