Minutes of the PS-SPS Users Meeting held on April 27th, 2023

News from the PS & SPS Physics Coordinator (E. B. Holzer)

Please see slides for full information!
New start time of the Weekly User Meeting: 10:30
All parasitic running needs to be approved and properly scheduled --> send email to spsco@cern.ch

The supercycle aims to deliver:

1 out of 10 cycles to IRRAD / CHARM
1 out of 20 cycles to T9 target
1 out of 20 cycles to T10/T11 target
40% to ISOLDE
1.66E12 p/s to nTOF

–> The supercycle needs to be a bit longer than in run2 to accomplish this sharing
–> for example 3 SPS cycles work very well with that sharing.
This sharing is not always possible, e.g. when the LHC is being filled.

Instructions to PS users:

If you do not require beam for at least 15 minutes --> please inform the ccc, so that they can distribute the cycles to other users
your program is ok with fewer cycles --> please inform the ccc, that they can give one of your cycles to another user!

PS Machine Report (Matthew Fraser)

PS is now in full operation, availability at ~88% last week

Wednesday mornings planned for inspection of PSB main quadrupole magnets last 30 - 45 mins if no issues found
Last night: downtime on TOF due to several KFA71 modules tripping. and needing piquet intervention

TOF

Investigations on the bad shots intermittently triggering the SIS and stopping the beam. Traced down to bad gain setting on the SEM grid wires: gain now monitored by OP in Working Set.
Changed working point to improve vertical tune before extraction

EAST

Beam now well aligned with BPMs in IRRAD/CHARM

SFTPRO

Optimization at PS-SPS transfer (energy matching with SPS, trajectory correction done by reducing extraction bump by 1 mm and adjusting DFAs)

FTA line commissioning continued.

SPS Machine Report (Carlo Zannini)

SFTPRO

Adaptative bayesian optimization for 100 and 50Hz correction successfully running
As requersted intensity step on Monday (from 30 to 60 units on T4)
Adjustment of RF settings (blow-up, phase jump) to improve beam quality
Additional step planned this morning (from 30 to 100 units on T6)

HiRadMat

Few extractions to HiRadMat with the short HiRadMat cycle to verify the emittance of high intensity single bunches coming from the booster (time needed~2h)
- Activity cannot be performed as at the moment we have no working wire scanners in the SPS

AWAKE

Today between 14h-15h we will take AWAKE cycle to verify that all is ok with 3e11 protons in view of the run starting next Monday

Safety / Radiation Protection (Please Add Your Name Here)

n_TOF (Nikolas Patronis)

The experiments are in data taking mode:
-Neutron inelastic test measurement in EAR1 using HPGe (6Li(n,n’) & 56Fe(n,n’))
-Capture auxiliary characterization measurements in EAR2
-NEAR: 94Zr(n,γ) with 10 mm B4C filter

Low intensity pulses are requested for optimal signal processing conditions (needed in EAR1)

On Wednesday morning (03.05.2023) a ~5h intervention will be needed to modify sample/filter configuration @ NEAR

Many thanks to the PS teams for being patient with our frequent interventions

PoT: 1.7E18

East Area Beam Status (L. Nevay)

T09: Smooth Operation. Beam will be tuned with LHCb today.
T10/T11: Smooth Operation.

East Area Users Tour de Table

T8: IRRAD / CHARM (F. Ravotti)

Thu. 20th: beam optimization in the morning in order to reduce the beam transversal dimensions along IRRAD in the new parallel optics (many thanks to Marc and Eliott!). Fri. 21st: short access to CHARM to retrive the user rack suffering of an unexpected early failure. Irradiations continue in IRRAD until Tue. 25th when the weekly access was anticipated this week. During the access: installation of diamond detector in R13 and exchange of samples in IRRAD. The IRRAD-BPM2 was also re-aligned following the beam optimzation of the previous week. This week we integrated about 1.5E16 p/w. Next access will be on Wednesday next week.

T9 Outgoing: MEDIPIX (Benedikt Bergmann, IEAP CTU)

Thank you for the support. Everything worked very well! Due to the continuous availability of the the beam, we have been able to finish the data taking 1 day earlier.

The following measurements were done:

Characterization of the particle tracking performance of a two-layer Timepix3 stack for neutron detection and charged particle tracking (mainly dedicated for ATLAS and MoEDAL)
- Measurement at 3 different energy with angle scans at each point
Characterization of the different power modes of a Timepix3 quad developed for the PAN instrument and vacuum operation at ISOLDE.
- Measurements in different power saving settings and comparison to standard operation
- For each power setting angle scans were performed
Measurement of the charge carrier drift properties and lifetimes in novel GaAs:Cr sensors from Advacam
- Measurement at a single particle energy at gracing angle. Measurement at different bias.

T9 Outgoing: PAN (Daniil Sukhonos, UNIGE)

Thank you for the support and beam availability during almost 3 weeks. We did all planned measuerements for position resolution studies and momentum resolution studies of our MiniPAN spectrometer. During the parasitic beam time we dedicated our efforts to understand the behaviour of StripY detectors, which had issues with asic configuration. The problems were fixed and the possibility to check immediately their performance with real particles was extremely useful.

T9: LHCb ECAL (Matteo Salomoni [apologize but cannot attend, conflict with another meeting])

Setup finalized without DWCs, software update to run the SciFi tracker started. Beam tuning will start soon with Dipanwita. Beam in the afternoon for some preliminary checks, second safety check foreseen (informally) tomorrow after DWCs installation, will coordinate with the Safety group.

T9 Incoming: ALICE TIMING - Week 18 (Please Add Your Name Here)

T10: ALICE TOF

Last week we spent some time to find the coincidence of scintillators. Last week we took data for a small MRPC using standard gas successfully. Preliminary data analysis shows that we have an efficiency more than 98% at ±6kV and a timeresolution of 52 ps.
The rest of the periiod we will continue taking data usin Eco gas.

T10 Incoming: ALICE ITS3 - Week 18 (Paolo Martinengo)

Preparing telescopes (two) in the lab, installation will start on Wednesday as scheduled. ISIEC form submitted.

T11: CLOUD (Please Add Your Name Here)

Incoming: AWAKE (Giovanni Zevi Della Porta)

Last week:

Plasma discharge tests for new 1-microsecond exposure cameras
Alignment of streak camera optical lines
Electron beam tests for Cherenkov diffraction Radiation BPMs

This week:

Continue DPS commissioning
Full DAQ/Trigger test with plasma and all diagnostics

Next week:

Protons start on Monday, May 1
Mainly interested in 3E11p
Later in the run we will also look at 1E11p
Bunch rotation always ON

North Area Beam Status

H2, H4, H6, and H8 Beams (L. Nevay)

H2: Muon beams for calibration OK, electron and hadron beams being prepared today.

H4: Beam stable with the new XCIO operational and working well.

H6: Some instabilities were observed in the beam in terms of position and transmission. Quad1 has been isolated as the likely cause. Last night it was switched off and the beam tuned without it which has worked well. Today during the stop at 14h first line will take a look at the power converter.

H8: Beam prepared and waiting for feedback if everything is ok. Small problem on the access configuration of CESAR, it moves the wrong TAX. It should be solved now, but please check ‘TAX Status’ when going next time to an access or coming back from one.

Other Beams P42, K12, and M2 (L. Nevay)

M2: Beam commissioning complete successfully. Currently some work is ongoing on the CEDARs and FISCs following which the CEDAR performance can be tested for low momentum hadrons. We give the last days of our beam commissioning to AMBER to start earlier with their ECAL calibration.

P42/K12 beam commissioning completed, now doing some last checks on the beam instrumentation and the transmission efficiency from T4 to T10. Important reduction in needed protons on T4 (70 -> 57 units) due to removal of a vacuum chamber between T4 and P42 TAX that was accidentally hit by the beam and due to using 40 mm target in T4 instead of 100 mm one.

North Area Users Tour de Table

P42-K12 and M2

K12 Incoming: NA62 (Roberto Piandani)

We are finalizing the commissioning of the detectors and data acquisition system. We are working to fulfill all the requirements to be ready for the start of the data taking next week.

M2 Incoming: AMBER (Please Add Your Name Here)

H2

H2: CALICE ScW-ECAL + AHCAL (Yong Liu)

Preparations in Week 16-17
- CERN internal transportation done in Apr. 17: B. 190 → B.887
- Unpacking and preparations for load tests
- Dedicated technical meeting with Michael and Nikos: setup arrangements
- Load test for motorised table: successfully done in April 24; safety clearance issued
- Two Cherenkov Threshold Counters (XCETs) ready in Apr. 24
Beam test in Week 17 during Apr. 24-27
- Setup: ~100GeV muon beam for combined ECAL + HCAL
- Trigger threshold scans primarily for the ECAL prototype
- ~40 runs of data were taken
General plans in the following ~2 weeks
- Electron and pion beams: negative polarity preferable
- Energy scans in the range of 10 – 120 GeV (10 GeV/step)

H4

H4: GIF++ (Please Add Your Name Here)

CMS DT, RPC, CSC and ATL MDT, RPC and EP-DT setups are participating in the testbeam
most of them are already efficiently taking data
the weekend before the testbeam started was used for efficient setups commissioning thanks to the presence of the beam
beam intensity of ~2 e4 mu/spill

H4: RD51 (Yorgos Tsipolitis, Eraldo Oliveri)

Installation: everything smooth. Thanks to all North Area support and service team, to the geometry survey and safety team.
Beam: Everyone happy with current beam. We may try to increase spill rate when beam would allow (RP alarm).
Setups: 4/5 fully running. Fifth one doing some detector caractherization in the laboratory.
Sharing with GIF++: 3 accesses/day planned (with flexibility). Working well for us.

H4: STRAW Tracker RD (Temur Enik, Katerina Kuznetsova)

installed, commissioned, taking alignment data
were very happy to use the beam during the weekend, many thanks for the two extra-days with beam

H6

H6: ATLAS ITK PIXEL (Andre Rummler)

Infrastruture re-commissioning finished (replacement telescope chiller installed on Tuesday) completing the work of the last weeks. All is nominal and operational in H6A.

Safety check passed Monday afternoon without issues and beam permit received.

Five modules (four irradiated ones) were installed and tuned. Tuning took much longer than expected due to learning curve for operation of irradiated modules with this version of the chip; particularly inhomogenously irradiated ones. Start of data taking this morning at 3am after a couple of hours of debugging due to two chips having the same ID (needs to be followed up today).

Issues with beam stability in H6; beam liaison physcists debugging and magnet first line intervening. Running without one quadrupol since yesterday; planned to have another intervention in the shadow of the 14-15 beam stop. Despite that - even without the quadrupol - beam prepared by contact physicists perfect for our needs; Dipanwita tuned it very late at night.