Minutes of the PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 26 held on June 29th, 2023

News from the PS & SPS Physics Coordinator (M. Jäkel)

See this codimd location from Tuesday morning onwards for the News from the FOM

AD/ELENA

• Commissioning in progress, some issues because of technical stop and recovery from electrical problems
• Physics start forseen Friday 30th June
• Physics extended by 12 days --> new injector schedule presented at the IEFC last Friday

Preview of Booster inspections - no beam from 7:30 to 9:00.

This stops might be cancelled, if the inspections could be performed during other down-times.

• w26, on Thursday 29th June.
• w28, on Thursday 13th July.
• w30, on Thursday 27th July.
• w33, on Monday 14th August.
• w35, on Thursday 31st August.
• w37, on Wednesday 13th September.
• w39, on Thursday 28th September.
• w41, on Wednesday 11th October.

Preview of next weeks MDs:

Week 26:

• No HiRadMat, full day (8h-18h) MD.
  No access to NA62 after 13h (beam to P42 on T10)

Week 27:

• Dedicated MD (8h-18h) for bunched beam slow extraction (and/or crab cavity)
  No beam to NA.

Week 28:

• Dedicated MD for SPS collimation studies (no extraction to the NA - to be confirmed)

Insity split

Starting FRIDAY 30.6 : (to be updated)

• NA64e reduces the number of units to 30 units on T2, with the increase by 10-20 units afterwards if needed.
• NA62 continues with 56 units on T4
• AMBER will increase to 110 maximum on T6

PS Machine Report (B. Mikulec)

• Availability for EAST and AD 85.6%, 77.8% for nTOF and 77.1% for the SPS
• Difficult restart after the Technical Stop; follow-up of a few issues the following days
• Tuesday lost due to trip of Meyrin electrical substation ME59 at 7h36 (short circuit of circuit breaker in cubicle EMD201*59)
  • Lost practically all machines (except for LHC), ATLAS dipole, infrastructure etc.
  • Took the whole day for OP, piquets and best effort to work through all faults
  • 13h33: due to the power limit of the electrical distribution rack  loss of all PS 10 MHz cavities
    • EN-EL finally had to put the spare cubicle for EMD201*59 in place – ready around 18h30
  • Beam back in PS Tuesday around 20h, after which a few remaining issues had to be solved
• No beam for nTOF Tuesday night due to missing target Semgrid acquisition; still well above curve of desired integrated intensity
• Monday + Tuesday night synchronisation issues for LHC single-bunch beams and the MTE BB beam
  • Solved yesterday (faulty cable exchanged as well as an amplifier for h16LI RF beam control)
• Automatic steering (YASP) based on UCAP devices implemented for EAST T8

SPS Machine Report (Kevin)

• Difficult week for the NA physics this week; preparation of LHC beam (LHC1 and VdM) which took lots of Monday day time followed by PS isseu for FT beams. Tuesday full day outage of entire complex after power glitch. COming back late night still working without barrier buckets due to ongoing issues in the PS.
• Wednesday all day dedicated MD (crab cavities and NA FT beams); back to physics in the evening at 18:00, problem with TT20 crystal control. Hopefully good beams over night at least! Intensity change onm T4 now with new target - need input for sharing of upcoming weeks.
• Rest of the week, LHC filling and physcis production.
  • This afternoon, need half an hour for TECS re-alignment - single injection during this time.
  • Will need a few hours today for BSRT calibration in the SPS --> 2 SFT + LHCPILOT-type.

Safety / Radiation Protection (J.Devine)

• Helmets! Just because it is hot doesn’t mean you can take it off in beamline areas. We have stopped a large number of people working and walking around without helmets over the last few days.
• Trips and falls. We had an incident last week with a trip caused by a stray cable, please use the cable covers provided (157) or tape to secure any trailing cables to the floor. We will be checking this more carefully on safety clearance inspections going forward.
• Missing equipment? If you are still waiting for your detector, or other major equipment to arrive please let us know so that we can reschedule your safety clearance inspection. The safety inspection needs to be carried out when the installation is either fully or at least mostly complete. It is much easier to reschedule ahead of time if you are in doubt about your readiness, than afterwards when we have arrived in your zone.
• Chemicals: If you are using chillers containing coolants (Glycol etc.), please attach the SDS for the product to your ISIEC submission. This will save you time as we will not clear your experiment without it.

n_TOF (Nikolas Patronis)

• EAR1: The 30Si(n,g) measurement is in data taking mode.
• EAR2: The 243Am(n,f) measurement also in data taking mode.
• NEAR: No irradiation in the activation area (a-NEAR). In the inner area (i-NEAR) material irradiation hardness studies are on going
• PoT: 8.5E18; The currently running experiments (30Si(n,g) & 243Am(n,f)) are in the limit with respect the expected #PoT due to the accumulated beam-off windows in the last 2 weeks
  

East Area Beam Status (N. Charitonidis)

T09: Operation ongoing. XBPF readout issues last weekend due to a software update. Beam to be checked with IDEA DRC on Thursday.
T10: Operation ongoing. Some issues with magnet T10.BHZ027, being monitored.
T11: No operation just now.

East Area Users Tour de Table

T8: IRRAD / CHARM (F. Ravotti & S. Fiore)

Similar week as the previos one due to the reduced PS beam availability (see cumulative T8 intensity plot below). On Friday and Monday MD cycle was activating the EAST_T8 user timing making trigger the IRRAD instrumentation when no beam: issue promptly investigated and solved by PS-OP. During the access on Wednesday we exchanged dosimetry and all long-term users continue EP-ESE, TE-MSC, CMS Pixel, ATLAS ITk strips, etc. (IRRAD). ATLAS and CMS removed their setups, TE-MPE, BE-CEM users modified their setups and continue testing (CHARM). Beam alignment on both X- and Y-axis only ~83% over the week (e.g. lower than the 96%-97% during the first weeks, but testins UCAP steering [see PS report]). Upcoming access, next week.

T9 Outgoing: MUONE ECAL (Carlo Ferrari)

We had one whole week (one day more than scheduled).
Despite of the problems at the accelerator on Wed/Thu of last week and on Tue of this week, we could accomplished almost completely the physics program we planned.
We could scan the entire ECAL module at some energies between 1 and 6 GeV.
We tried to take data at 10 GeV, where the electron content in the beam is very low. Effectively, we could tag the electrons with the Cherenkov beam detector, at a rate of few tens/spill. We acquired some thousands events, enough, we hope, to have a reference point.
On Wed morning we de-installed the apparatus, and cleaned the area and the control room. Then we moved the apparatus to the M2 beam line, and re-installed there, for a parasitic (technical) test with AMBER.

T9: IDEA DRC (Shuichi Kunori)

We brought several types of fibers and SiPMs, and readout electronics from Texas Tech University. The goal of our test was described in our preliminary report last week (in pdf). We will complete the installation of the hardware by 15:30 before the safty clearance inspection. Once the inspection is done, we start taking data with eleveton beams and then use hadron beams.

T10: IDEA CC (Franco Grancagnolo, Nicola De Filippis)

We experienced some toubles with the DAQ system for our detector last week but then we found the solution and the configuration has been working and stable since sunday night. We observed lower rate of muons than expected in the past days, likely related to a magnet turning faulty along the beam line. Due to the power cut yesterday we lost 3/4 of one data taking day. After that we got the beam and we have been taking data smoothly so far. Anyway we would report about a general instability of the beam that makes hard to make plans for the tests/measurements.

T10 Incoming: ALICE ITS3 - Week 27 (Please Add Your Name Here)

T10 Incoming: ALICE TIMING - Week 27 (Please Add Your Name Here)

North Area Beam Status

H2, H4, H6, and H8 Beams (N. Charitonidis)

H2/H4: Normal Operation, no particular issues.
H6: No issues.
H8: Beam set up Wednesday evening for first electron users this year, tentatively looks OK.

Other Beams P42, K12, and M2 (N. Charitonidis)

M2: Operation ongoing without problem. On Friday AMBER DY test is planned. RP test scheduled to start tentatively around 14:00.
K12/P42: SHADOWS test completed on Monday.

North Area Users Tour de Table

P42-K12 and M2

K12: NA62 (L. Bician)

• Took kaon data on Friday last week and during weekend, then on Monday collected low-intensity beam dump data during SHADOWS measurement (useful for preparation for the NA62 beam dump run in July).
• Then no beam until Tuesday evening, followed by normal kaon data taking (with the Wednesday full-day MD in-between). T4 target was replaced for a longer one – caused some confusion in delivered beam intensities (fixed thanks to CCC, Kevin, and Johannes).
• For the next week, we would like to request beam intensity between 28e11 and 29e11 on T10.

M2: AMBER (Maxim Alexeev)

The core part of the first running period dedicated to the antiproton cross section measurement has been concluded on Sunday 25.06.23.
We have emptied the target and are presently taking some reference empty target measurements that should be concluded on Friday 30.06.23. The same day a test to validate with our Radioprotection colleagues the high intensity 3∗108

part/s beam in 888 will take place. The spring-summer AMBER running period will be concluded by a ~4 days high intensity test stopping on Tuesday 8:00 04.07.23.
Observations:

1. Last days issues with the beam are making harder to conclude the empty target data sample within 14:00 of Friday 30.06.23.
2. CEDARs operation and fine tuning will be critical for the high intensity running. For the moment it is almost impossible to set in a stable way a small opening of the diaphragm and to position the CEDAR in a reliable way. We know an intervention is planned to address the issue, will be very important for us.

Request:

1. To be on the safe side a 3 spills SC till Friday would be helpful.
2. Conditionally to the test with the RP colleagues we might need 100-120 units on the T6 to reach the requested intensities.

M2 Incoming Access Only: NA64mu - Week 27 (Please Add Your Name Here)

H2

H2 Main: LHCb ECAL (Loris Martinazzoli)

• Data acquisition ongoing:
  • Successfully carried out measurements of energy and time resolution with our Tungsten-Polystyrene fibres SpaCal prototype
• This week dedicated to Photodetector studies and Shashlik studies

One quadrupole on the beamline failed overnight but was promptly reset by the beam physicists.Thanks to Bastien, Dipanwita, and Nikos for their support even over the weekend.

H2 Incoming: NA61/SHINE - Week 27 (Piotr Podlaski)

• NA61/SHINE will start next Wednesday with K+ beam at 60 GeV/c
• Two additional Delay Wire Chambers will be installed for beam monitoring
• We expect to start data taking Thursday afternoon - after we are done with installation and initial detector setup

H4

H4 Main: NA64e (L. Molina)

We continued data taking last week. We had a couple of days without beam but we collected about 5x10^11 EOT. Today we moved to 70 GeV to positrons and tomorrow we plan to move to hadrons until the end of our run next Wednesday.

H4 Incoming Main: GIF++ - Week 27 (Martin J.)

Preparation for the beam time is going fine. We expect to participate with 11 setups in parallel. Proposal from RD51 about usage of Goliath and electron beam runs received. Hope to still be able to fine-tune this proposal with them.
Most setups already installed and running, some setups to complete installation during next week, ahead of the beam time.

• ATL-MPI - 1&2
• ATL-NSW MM
• ATL-RPC
• CMC-CSC-1
• CMC-CSC-2
• CMS-GEM
• CMS-RPC-1
• CMS-RPC-2
• EP-DT2
• ProToV
• RPC Ecogas

H4 Incoming Parallel: RD51 - Week 27 (Yorgos Tsipolitis, Eraldo Oliveri)

• 8 setup in paralle: (see slides)
• About 40 hours of beam not compatible (GOLIATH/e-) with GIF++ expected (to be defined in agreement with GIF++)
• Installation and infrastructures: everything should be ok. Thanks to all the support teams. A note: we used all the available gas lines going into the area (need to evaluate if this could be an issue in the future -> ECFA/DRD1 wider collaboration)
• Connection to the network in the area (outlets): in the past we had issues (connection moved from the area to the control room). We are interacting with IT to prevent potential problems.

H6

H6 Outgoing Main: AIDAInnova (Iván Vila Álvarez)

• Completed the testing of most of the 4D tracking test structures: AC-LGAD, TI-LGAD and RSD sensor prototypes.
• Besides the beam hipcuts we successfully collected about 2Mevent were acquired in total.
• Real time assessment of the data quality probed to be good.
• Commissioning of the cooling box was completed, though we need to improve the cooling speed and still reduce the final temperature by 5 degrees.
• Clear path to improve the DAQ acquisition rate for next test beam in August/September.

H6 Incoming Main: CMS MTD (Iván Vila on behalf of Roberta Arcidiacono)

• Aiming to assess the radiation tolerance of the latest CNM, FBK and HPK LGAD prototypes for the MTD-ETL timing layer.
• Since Wednesday morning, the experimental test stand ready and with safety clearance (reusing the AIDAInnova test stand).
• Testing of radiation tolerance of the latest CNM LGAD sensor prototypes starting this night.

H6 Parallel: ATLAS ITK PIXEL (Andre Rummler)

We finished the irradiated SCC batch at different inclinations taking most of the foreseen data points despite some issues (chiller stops; ill understoof flickering communciation issues with the modules).
On Wednesday we installed a new batch including an irradiated RD53B quad module. In order to achieve better cooling than last time we installed a complete secondary cooling circuit dedicated to the quad: drilled two holes in the box using RP vacuum cleaner; installed two hoses with armorflex going to Julabo FP-89 HL; two t-pieces inside the box; cooling two solid/liquid HX on the quad holder which are back cooling one peltier each. First test very successful after fixing two leaks which took a few hours longer: <-20°C on sensor powered instead of >+6°C. Today cooling tests with different settings to understand the system better and trying to start real measurements with the quad module.

Two irradiated SCCs (measured last time unirradiated in the test beam) arrived Tuesday at CERN; processing by RP the same late afternoon; thank you very much; delivery to EHN1 foreseen for Friday. Depending on how the works on the quad batch goes and on the program of the main user in H6B we would try to mount them as a third batch.

H6 Incoming Main: EP PIXEL (Justus Braach)

• Plan to complete measurement programme started in week 23 beam period: high-statistics data taking with FASTPIX, DPTS and Timepix3 iLGAD samples, including rotation scans.
• Same high-rate / narrow beam settings as in week 23.
• Agreed with upstream MONOLITH parallel user on placement of MCP time reference behind our telescope, to minimise upstream material.

H8

H8 Outgoing Main: LHCb (Loris Martinazzoli)

Successful data taking for all the teams (Muons-RICH-TimePix4).

All set-ups uninstalled and areas freed.

H8 Outgoing Parallel: UA9 (Francesca Galluccio)

We could not complete our program.
We had few crystals more to test in several configurations.
Nevertheless, we could take some very useful data that will allow advancing in our RD.

H8 Main: IDEA DRC (Please Add Your Name Here)

Also: parasitic user behind H8 DUMP in week 26

H8 Incoming Main: ATLAS TILECAL (Giulio Usai and Tigran Mkrtchyan)

See slides attached in indico. In the 2023 campaign (2w starting now +2w in September) will continue the testing of electronics prototypes for HL-LHC and calibration studies.
The scanning table is in garage position and accessible from the back, We will be installing some new electronics in the modules and in the barracks in the next days and beginning of the next week.
on Wed 5th we will be dismounting the fences that close the garage and moving the table in the area.
Requested setup and configuration of the beam line is like last year.

Parasitic Users

Reporting for parasitic users is optional, please add your name below:

K12 Outgoing: SHADOWS (Please Add Your Name Here)

M2: MUonE tracker+ECAL (Carlo Ferrari)

We completed the installation with ECAL and chiller, we are ready to take data for the next week (without the chiller the temperature inside the tracker was too high to power the sensors).

H4 Incoming: STRAW TRACKER 3D (Please Add Your Name Here)

Also: current parasitic user behind H8 DUMP in Week 26

H4 Incoming: MINICACTUS (Please Add Your Name Here)

H6: EXFLU (Valentina Sola)

The setup is completed and safety visit done on 29/6 at 9:00.
Setup includes 4 to 6 DUTs read out by oscilloscopes, with power suppliers for HV/LV. Maximum HV will be -500 V.
Eventual usage of dry ice to cool down the devices, if needed.
High intensity beam required for end of this week / beginning of the next week.

H6: ATLAS MALTA (Please Add Your Name Here)

H6 Incoming: MONOLITH (Lorenzo Paolozzi)

High intensity beam required to run.
The setup will consist of the Geneva FEI4 telescope + two DUT boards + 2 MCP-PMT as time reference.
The DUTs are heavily irradiated silicon pixel sensors, they will be operated inside a cold box. tu

H8 DUMP: IDEA DRC (Roberto Ferrari)

Setting up of our detectors done. At 20 GeV the electron beam purity looks fine. Problems with both Delay Wire Chambers (no signal arriving) and with one Cherenkov counter. Waiting for the beam detector expert to come and look at the DWC signals. We definitely need the position information.

AOB

Minutes by the respective speakers, edited by E. B. Holzer and M. Schwinzerl