Introduction

MAD is a project with a long history, aiming to be at the forefront of computational physics in the field of particle accelerator design and simulation. The MAD scripting language is de facto the standard to describe particle accelerators, simulate beam dynamics and optimize beam optics.

MAD-X is the successor of MAD-8 and was first released in June, 2002. It offers most of the MAD-8 functionalities, with some additions, corrections, and extensions. The most important of these extensions is the Polymorphic Tracking Code (PTC) of E. Forest (see documentation).

MAD-X is released for the Linux, Mac OS X and Windows platforms for 32 bit and 64 bit architectures (see releases). The source code is written in C, C++, Fortan90 and Fortran77. The architecture of MAD-X is under complete review and reorganization in order to improve its maintainability, its flexibility and its performance. This long process should be completely transparent for the end users (see roadmap).

MAD support

The users support is provided through the e-group mad-usr (see support), or directly by emailing to mad support. For questions or bug report, you must provide a clear description and a self contained minimalistic example that exhibits the unexpected behavior with the last development release (see issues).

The project support and maintainance strategy is based on the MAD team and module keepers to debug and improve the legacy code (see contributors). This task is extremely complex within the legacy code and finding effective correction can take significant time (see issues).

MAD on the web

MAD http://cern.ch/mad (this website, currently an alias for madx)
MAD-X http://cern.ch/madx
MAD-9 http://cern.ch/mad9
MAD-8 http://cern.ch/mad8

The links above are the officially maintained MAD links, but the previous MAD-X website is still online.

About this website

The aim of this website is to provide easy and quick access to meaningful MAD related information and materials. The displayed content has five regions (frames), which should always be visible on your screen unless you left this website or your web browser window has a resolution below 510x310 pixels:

Banner: This is the banner on the top with links to the CERN home page (left) and to the Accelerator Beam Physics Group home page (middle).
Main menu: This is the menu on the top-left with a link to each 1st level page. As all links in this website, each menu item becomes bold when you move the mouse over. A scollbar will appear if the screen or window is too small to display it.
Shortcuts menu: This is the menu just below the main menu. It provides direct access to the MAD-X user's guide and subjects index for quick browsing, whatever page is displayed on the right. More shortcuts can be added on demand, but the list must be kept short to be effective.
Main page: This is the page displayed on the right (this page), the only "dynamic" part. The page title indicates to which item in the main menu it belongs to. Each page has a link on the top-right corner to go back to the MAD home page, which should be useful for standalone bookmarked pages. To bookmark pages appearing in frames (not recommended), "right-click" on the hyperlink that goes to the page and select "Open Link in a New Tab" or something similar; then the page appears as a normal webpage (i.e. not in a frame), which can be bookmarked.
Information box: This is the small box on the bottom-left containing a link to the mad support email for feedback and request. It also displays the number of visitors (red) and the last modification date of this website.

This website is designed, developed and maintained by the MAD team (see contributors). Any suggestions to improve it or its content are welcome, including bells and whistles, please contact mad support.