Minutes of the PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 30 held on July 27th, 2023

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

New user schedule to be made available online version 1.7 (this is the 22st numbered user schedule since February)

See this codimd location from Tuesday morning onwards for the *News from the FOM (E. B. Holzer

Preview of MDs:

Week 30:

• Dedicated SPS MD:
  • Crab cavity test (08:00 - 10:00) - no beam to North Area
  • Crystal shadowing with EBC (up to the primary targets TCC2) – LHC brightness study in parallel (10:00 - 18:00)
• No long parallel MD on Thursday 27/07/2023

Weeks 31 & 32

• Dedicated SPS MDs for North Area with extraction to primary targets (T2, T4 and T6) and P42/T10 (up to TCC8)

Intensity split

T2 = 50
T4 = 100 / T10 = 55 (until Monday 31th July) – possibly ask for an increase to be able to install the longer target for electron beam users in H8 (T4 = 120 units?)
T6 = 35

PS Machine Report (Bettina Mikulec)

• Nice machine availability of 94%/94.8%
• Frequent parameter drifts on all kind of beams, especially EAST target steering and MTE efficiency. Root cause not clear, might be linked to high temperatures, but certainly also to super cycle composition (AD cycle is particularly perturbing) – longer-term studies and mitigations required.
  • Frequent steering adjustments to EAST targets and nTOF.
• Currently trying to recover from access this morning (PSB water leak check, PS C10-91 amplifier exchange and internal dump valve repair); issue with B-train / White Rabbit transmission.
• Today 3pm - 7pm special test requested by n_TOF with a mix of different intensity TOF cycles.

SPS Machine Report (Michael Schenk)

• Good machine availability
  • 91.5 % (Thu - Thu)
  • Main downtime: injector faults and SPS beam dump kicker issue.
• Wednesday
  • Additional 30’ for dedicated MD much appreciated, thank you.
  • 1st iteration on AWAKE preps: 1E11 p & 3E11 p bunch parameters up to specs.
• Thursday
  • No beam: 07:30 AM - ~12:00
  • Various interventions in NA and on SPS machine side
• Friday
  • 09:00 AM: 10’ beam cut to implement optimized phase jump settings for SFT beam (flatter energy distribution, more reproducible extraction expected)
  • AM: potentially another ~30’ needed for AWAKE preps
• Next week
  • AWAKE Run 2 (2 weeks)
  • Dedicated MD on Wednesday
  • Coordinator: F. Velotti

Safety / Radiation Protection (J. Devine)

• Thank you for on time ISIEC submissions, the last week has been very good.
• One group had a problem with the ISIEC form, if this happens to you please get in touch with us and we will help you.
• Reminder to wear helmets and safety shoes when in your experimental zones.

n_TOF (Nikolas Patronis)

EAR1: The second part of the 243Am(n,f) reaction study is on going. This part of measurement is focusing on the higher neutron energies. This measurement will stay there for 3 weeks more.

EAR2: The 64Ni(n,g) is running also nicely. 2 weeks of data taking are needed to achieve the needed statistical uncertainty.

NEAR: An in beam test of diamond detector was performed yesterday in the a-NEAR. In the i-NEAR irradiation hardness studies are on-going.

Special beam request for today (27.07.2023): 15h00 – 19h00 beam with low intensity pulses: (2 x 50 + 2 x 100 + 2 x 200 + 2 x 350 + 2x 850 ) E10 ppp. This is for having a complete mapping of the pile up in our detectors.

PoT: 1.18E19 (Many thanks to the PS-teams!)

East Area Beam Status (N. Charitonidis)

T09: WCTE continues in low momentum configuration. No issues. Target changed to 200 mm Al.
T10: Good operation. One DWC used by BL4S replaced by BI, high voltage on beamline scintillator adjusted in response to user feedback.
T11: No user.

East Area Users Tour de Table

T8: IRRAD / CHARM (G. Pezzullo / F. Ravotti / J. Lendaro)

Very good week, no issue with operation. Cumulative intensity delivered to T8 well above specifications, thanks! :) (>2.3e16 p/w, see plot below). Beam alignment and center on both X- and Y-axis, well under control (still around 90% on both axis as the previous weeks).

During the access on Wednesday, we exchanged dosimetry samples and all long-term users continue EP-ESE, TE-MSC [including N2 experiment], CMS Pixel, ITk Pixel [scanning table], RD50, ATLAS HGTD, etc. Installed cablings for experiment planned next week from SY-BI (IRRAD). CMS DT setup removed, BE-CEM components continue testing and a new setup from CAEN was installed (CHARM).

Upcoming access, next week.

T9: WCTE (Mark Hartz)

• Completed the charged particle operation on Wedneday (July 26) morning.
  • Producing preliminary results on the charged particle rates and achievable purities for sub-GeV/c beam.
• Installed the tagged gamma configuration in T9 on Wednesday
  • Installation of Halbach array permanent magnet with dipole field, 0.23 Tm integrated field
  • Installation of hodoscope which forms a spectrometer with the magnet
  • Many thanks to Aboubakr and East Hall team for the support
• From today, will test expected signals, setup up trigger and perform spectrometer calibration with beam
• Expect to take tagged gamma data from end of today or tomorrow with Be 200 mm W 3 mm target

T9 Incoming: TECHNO CLS - Week 31 (Pietro Monti-Guarnieri)

The experimental setup will be installed as soon as the beamline is available. The setup will include silicon microstrip trackers, plastic scintillators, a goniometer and some electromagnetic calorimeters. We will run mainly with electron/positron beams with an energy of ∼

6 GeV.

We will contact today dr. Dipanwita Banerjee to define any additional detail concerning the setup and/or the beam.

T10 Main: BL4S (Sarah Zoechling)

• DWC documentation:
  • Issues with the DWCs rented from the BI => Thanks a lot to Inaki for his invaluable support!
  • Unfortunately, 1 DWC died
  • There are 4 working DWCs now, we hope they will stay alive; 1 of them has a completely different internal alignment compared to the others (i.e. x is not x and y is not y); if you raise the HV to a level that gives a good efficiency, then noise becomes an issue and the discrimination level (30mV) mentioned in the documentation does no longer apply => we had to raise it to 50mV
  • We had to modify our DWC analysis routines to suppress the noise
  • We don’t recommend applying high voltage during the calibration because of the noise
  • The pressure limit for the DWC gas line is not specified and the default values by gas service (5bar) are definitely too high
• ETHERNET patch panel: only the first 10 sockets of the LAN patch are wired (if you have this problem one day and on the next day your HV supply dies, you start doubting your plugging skills)
• T10 scintillators: When we look at CESAR, we have an incorrect trigger count due to too low voltage on at least one of the scintillators. Inaki fixed it by raising the voltage of the XSCINT044 (+50V) => Thanks a lot!
• Suggestion to improve the control rooms:
  • List of all the problems put close to the CESAR computer
  • Once we have the T10 beam composition measured, future users may also benefit from this info put close to the CESAR computer.
• Huge thanks especially to Maarten, Inaki, and the electronics pools and the network services for fixing our unrelated network problems and for providing a documentation now!!!

T10 Incoming: ALICE ToF - Week 31 (Please Add Your Name Here)

AWAKE Incoming (Giovanni Zevi Della Porta)

Proton run starting next week. Currently on the last steps of commissioning for newly installed plasma source. Aligning laser lines (IR, Marker) and optical lines for all beam screens. Little or no electron beam expected in this run.

Detailed plan:

• no beam Monday AM
• first beam Monday PM, dedicate Monday/Tuesday for DAQ and alignment of laser and proton beams
• connect Rubidium reservoirs during Wednesday MD
• begin physics with plasma on Thursday.
• planning for normal hours (2 shifts) during the run. But we will probably not stay late, without LHC interruptions, unless there are other issues

Proton beam: nominal optics (200 um), 1E11 and 3E11 intensities, bunch compression ON.

North Area Beam Status

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

H2: NA61, issues with the VTX1 cryo, fixed only Sunday. Issue with beam movement in the vertical plane still being investigated with the SY/EPC team. Yesterday night, issues with PM1 & PM2 of the CEDAR, mitigated by the SY/BI team. Still some low intividual efficiency observed at the PMs, followed up with SY/BI.
H4: Operation without issues.
H6: Normal operation last week. Now a switch to higher intensity. PPE146 and PPE156 are linked in the access matrix and the access command in CESAR this week so beam will go off in PPE146 if PPE156 is opened - for safety with the higher rates. Alignment and rate check last night and reached similar but slightly lower levels than last higher intensity week.
H8: PMT of most upstream XCET.042.474 replaced last Friday morning, testing still ongoing. Otherwise, no issues to report for the beam.

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

M2: Beam size and rates tuned for the muon beam on Wednesday. Electron beam to be checked on Thursday afternoon after the morning access in TCC2 and TT83 for vacuum.
P42/K12: Operation in beam dump mode with interleaved Kaon running on Tuesday. Again a problem with the ECN3 access PAD/MAD on Wednesday. The issue was discussed at the last EATM meeting and was elevated to the IEFC.

North Area Users Tour de Table

P42-K12 and M2

K12: NA62 (Jurgen Engelfried)

• Running in Dump Mode with ~56 units on T10 until Monday 7/31 (exact time open to discussion), when we would like to go back to Kaon Mode with ~28 units on T10. Past Tuesday we switched to kaon mode during the day, back to dumo in the evening; thanks to Johannes.
• We observe much lower (~2x) lower background rates from muons and higher intensity compared to 2021 dump mode running, attributed to the major cleanup (removable of unused chambers/magnets, lower transmission losses, etc.) during the winter. We want to thank all the people involved in this work.
• Yesterday Wednesday we had again problems with the access door to ECN3. The 3 hours delay for fixing the door also affected the extraction tests planned during MD.

M2 Main: NA64mu (L. Molina)

-Since Thursday 20th in the afternoon we are the only user.

-Friday 21st we started to measure the hadron contamination in the beam with 3 up to 9 absorbers. Very good beam over the weekend, on Saturday we collected about 5400 spills.

-Sunday we set up the physical trigger and we reproduce the rates measured in 2022. We are running at 2.8x10^6 muons per spill.

-We performed measurements without ECAL on Monday. In the evening we move the ECAL in and started data taking in the same configuration as in 2022, reproducing similar rates.

-Tuesday we switched on both magnets and collected data in this configuration

-Wednesday we tuned the beam with Dipanwita and increase intensity up to 4.7x10^6 muons per spill^

-Today we plan to calibrate ECAL and continue data taking

H2

H2: NA61/SHINE (Piotr Podlaski)

• after T2 intensity increase last Thursday we saw decent beam intensity increase @NA61
• with help of Nikos the beam spot size was further optimized and our data taking efficiency increased even further
• problems with power convertes of beamline magnets - frequent shifts of the vertical beam position - cause issues with CEDAR alignemnt, influencing its efficiency and possibly purity: further investigation is needed
  • thanks to Nikos and Johannes for following this up!
• VERTEX-1 cryo issue:
  • Cryo pump stopped on Monday just before 8h - it caused fast discharge of the magnet
  • It happened already for the second time (11.07).
  • Due to lack of time estimation from cryo and past experience with long recovery times, we decided to change momentum to 90 GeV/c and later 120GeV/c to measure p+C total cross sections without magnetic field
  • The magnet was ready on Tuesday ~6h, we decided to continue with cross section measurements until Wednesday morning, to have enough statistics for physics results
  • We will follow up this issue with cryo, to be sure it is investigated and fixed
• CEDAR issue:
  • yesterday after MD we went back to 60 GeV/c beam but we had serious problems with setting up CEDAR
  • only after intervention of Inaki we managed to do the alignment and pressure scan (some control system had to be restarted)

side comment: yesterday morning SPS Page-1 was showing that MD will finish at 10h, I called the operators and they confirmed. However around an hour later I recieved the call that it will be as usual, until 18h

H4

H4: CMS ECAL (Chiara Amendola)

• ECAL supermodule partially equipped with front-end and back-end electronics
• auxiliary: trigger scintillators, hodoscope plates for beam position monitoring, MCPs for time reference

ECAL has been running in H4 since beginning of July, in pedestal mode or collecting laser data before beam.

• Over the test beam slot we have been spanning with electron beams of 20 to 300 GeV
  • Given low rate at 300 GeV (expected), we will leave it for the end
  • in a couple of occurrences on Fri 21/07 we lost signals and have been debugging only to discover that a TAX was set up in PP154, which adds a layer of debugging

On schedule with plans:

• we’re half-away into the test beam slot
• tested mostly the timing performance across different elements of the electronics
• we’ll focus on the energy performance next

Having the system up for so long off and on beam revealed some instabilities in the configuration

e.g. loss of time alignment at the bottom left of RU 42, when under 200 GeV (DAQ window drifting away from physics signal)

We used the beam downtime yesterday to adjust some hardware trigger delays, monitor ECAL DAQ errors, reconfigure the system.

Safety clearance extended to the end of August, to keep the ECAL running in place.

Thanks to everyone for the support, things are running smoothly!

H4 Incoming: CMS HGCAL - Week 31 (Arnaud Steen)

• Testing two HGCAL silicon modules with full electronic chain
• Beam requirements:
  • electron beam: 20-300 GeV, ~10k part/spill
  • pion beam: 100 GeV, 10k part/spill
  • muon beam

H6

H6 Outgoing Main: ATLAS HGTD (Djamel Boumediene, Stefano Manzoni)

• Ended 2 weeks beam test
• All program covered: tested all available LGADs, including irradiated samples. First LGAD pre-production samples were tested.
• First week of testbeam also used for transition of our DAQ setup from Eudaq1 to Eudaq2 with more automatisation in data tacking
• Setup was dismanteled during the week-end

H6 Main: EP PIXEL (Justus Braach)

• Smooth change to high-rate settings thanks to Laurie. At the radiation limit, we achieve 5E6 per spill in H6B, with good beam position and profile.
• High-rate testing of Timepix3 iLGAD and FASTPIX assemblies. Further improvements of MCP-PMT timing references.
• Plan for sample change on Friday afternoon and possibly another one on Tuesday.

H6 Parallel: ALICE ITS3 (Paolo Martinengo)

Installed, up & running
Excellent beam, took already quite interesting data during night.

H6 Incoming Main: ATLAS ITK PIXEL (Andre Rummler)

Wednesday we will set up as usual: irradiated modules already in the freezer in the buffer zone. Re-install the second cooling circuit; some improvements (better manifold, additional quad holders using the secondary cooling) for which we have ordered just now material which we hope will arrive on time. Beam setting adjusted to the limitations of the telescope as the last time (10^5). Safety visit agreed for 16:30 on Wednesday.

H8

H8 Outgoing Main: MGTD TRD (Yulia Furletova)

-Installation and the safety inspection done on Friday ( 21 July)
-Work on HV, Trigger and the readout for our setup on Sat(22July)
-Running with pions and lepton beams this week
-Switch to Xe/CO2 on Mon ( 25July)
-Radiation surrvay and disassembly on Wed ( 26July).
-Door interlock issue during the “Free” access on Wed morning.

H8 Main: POKER (Luca Marsicano)

• Installation of experimental apparatus was successfull
• Desy table succesfully installed and operated
• Safety inspection was completed (thanks to Laura Jayne Rowland)
• CESAR and Patrol training done (thanks to Bastien Rae)
• First test and beam alignment performed (thanks to Maarten Van Dijk)

• First XCET test (by Maarten) ongoing

H8 Incoming Main: QFib - Week 31 (Suat Ozkorucuklu)

As parasitic user last week, we had set up our test system, align and took some data with 180GeV/c pions.

Parasitic Users

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

M2: AMBER (Please Add Your Name Here)

M2: MUonE tracker+ECAL (Please Add Your Name Here)

H6: ATLAS MALTA (Please Add Your Name Here)

H6: MONOLITH (Please Add Your Name Here)

H6: CEDAR-N (Please Add Your Name Here)

H8: SND@LHC Hcal calibration (Marco.Dallavalle@cern.ch)

On Monday 31st morning, four planes of SciFi mats will be added. Safety inspection agreed for Monday early afternoon.
Can the main user in W31 let us know which beams are going to be used? thanks.

H8: QFib (Suat Ozkorucuklu)

As parasitic user last week, we had set up our test system, align and took some data with 180GeV/c pions.

H8: STRAW TRACKER RD (Please Add Your Name Here)

H8: CMS RPC (Please Add Your Name Here)

H6 Incoming: RD42 (Please Add Your Name Here)

AOB

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