Physics model-informed Gaussian process for online optimization of particle accelerators

High-dimensional optimization is a critical challenge for operating large-scale scientific facilities. We apply a physics-informed Gaussian process (GP) optimizer to tune a complex system. Typical GP models learn from past observations to make predictions, but this reduces their applicability to systems where there is limited relevant archive data. Instead, here we use a fast approximate model from physics simulations to design the GP model. The GP is then employed to make inferences from sequential online observations in order to optimize the system. Simulation and experimental studies were carried out to demonstrate the method for online control of a storage ring. Our method is a simple prescription to construct a custom GP model, including correlations between the high-dimensional input space, while encoding the physical response of a system. The ability to inform the machine-learning model with physics, without relying on the availability and range of prior data, may have wide applications in science.