Minutes of the PS and SPS Users Meeting,
Thursday 3 rd of November, 2011
PS MACHINE (Rende)
- The PS complex has been running rather smoothly last week apart for the period
after the power glitch that took place on Friday evening just before 20:00 and that
brought down a substantial part of the PS complex. All beams were available again around
11:00 on Saturday morning. Sunday to Monday night the RFQ of Linac2 suffered twice from a
problem that caused in total about 30 minutes down time. On Monday the beams for the East Area
were absent between 12:00 and 13:00 due to a problem with the power converter of the last
magnetic septum. On Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning the DIRAC beam was optimized
in order to decrease the background. During the whole week much work went into the LHC
beam tests and many other machine developments that need to be finished before the end of
the proton run on Monday November 21. Technical stop on Tuesday November 8 (see below).
Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are also MD days during which limited beam for some physics
will be available, but not all, as MD have priority. The East Area beam will not be available
on Monday and Wednesday as we will try to setup a fast extracted beam to the East Area in order
to make an attempt to cross calibrate the secondary emission chamber with a recently
refurbished fast beam current transformer, as requested earlier this year by DIRAC.
SPS MACHINE (Yannis)
- The SPS was not very much affected by the power cut on Friday. Since
yesterday evening there was a failure on one vertical dump kicker of the SPS.
The problem was traced to a burnt ceramic high-voltage feed-through which had to be
replaced. The replacement of the failed equipment from the ABT team started at 8 am
and finished by the late morning. Work continues by the vacuum team in order to
recover the low pressure in the area, and the conditioning of the equipment.
The present plan is that the beam will be back for the SPS users at around 8 pm today.
Regarding the high intensity LHC multi-bunch beams, some scrubbing will need to be done
for avoiding poor vacuum and kicker sparking. In this respect, and for the LHC MD,
we will be able to deliver single bunch beams, at the same time as for the other
SPS users, and starting testing a 12-bunch LHC type of beam to be available
for the LHC MD at 4 am.
CNGS (Edda )
- LHC like beam with a 500 ns spacing was sent to the CNGS target.
Rate in OPERA at about 1 per day as expected. New muon detectors to be
installed during the TS next week.
EAST AREA
- T7 : doing well
- T8 : DIRAC : Special thanks to Rende for his optimization efforts.
- T9 : FACTOR happy.
- T10 : ALICE PID ok, depending on number of spills for CLOUD.
- T11 : CLOUD : Equipment needed to be repaired since Tuesday. Running on
only 1 spill last 2 days and go back to 3 spills soon.
nTOF (Eric)
- Back to nominal intensity. Use TS next week for re arranging the setup.
Major presentation by tyhe spokesman at today's INTC. Thanks to the PS operational
team for the excellent performance. The 2011 experimental campaign is a full success.
Longer time scale:
- No beam to the East Area on
Monday November 7 08:00 to 16:00
Tuesday November 8 05:00 to 20:00 (TS)
Wedesday November 9 08:00 to 22:00
nTOF on stop all Monday and Wedesday 16:00 to 22:00
NORTH AREA
- H2 : NUCLEON space detector taking data. Time launch still uncertain.
Using pion and electron beams. We will come back next year and are
interested in Ion running.
- H4 : IRRAD achieves good results for the LHC. Stop on Mondat Nov 7 as planned.
- H6 : MONOPIX is running fine; presentation of results. MEDIPIX cancelled.
- H8 : DREAM has received RD52 status. Congratulations !. We were doing an
energy scan when the machine went down. Hope to finish over the weekend.
- M2 (COMPASS) : Colmpleting successful this years run.
- P0 (NA 62) :
Longer time scale:
- CNGS beams stop Sunday November 6 at 22:00;
High intensity FT beams (AD, TOF, SFTPRO) stop Monday November 7 at 08:00.
All other beams stop Tuesday November 8 at 05:00.
Supercycles, Wobbling , Target Intensities
One more change needed before the weekend (Ilias takes care).
Safety (B. Pichler)
Bruno is taking now 2 photos per setup at the initial safety visits.
These should be collected by Michael (Jeckel) for the documentation.
All users are requested to leave the experimental areas is a cleaner condition
as they entered it !.
Users's reports
Mathieu Goffe (member from Marc Winter's team) on MONOPIX results.
OVERVIEW WEB PAGES, SCHEDULES ETC.