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PS/SPS User Meeting
PS/SPS User Meeting
PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 42 held on October 19th, 2023
The agenda for this meeting is based upon user schedule 2.1.1, please cf. here. Please note the current injector schedule which contains information about MDs, Technical stops, etc. and can be found here.
Next user meeting:
For week 43 on Thursday October 26th, 2023 10:30 CEST
Meeting room: 874/1-011 (CERN)
Most Recent EATM meeting from October 17th 2023:
indico.cern.ch/event/1335909/
News from the PS & SPS Physics Coordinator (E.B. Holzer, M. Jaekel)
Barbara is ill, Martin on vacation. If you need anything, contact D. Lazic at 16-4051 or Sps.Coordinator@cern.ch
News from the Facilities Operations Meeting (FOM) (D. Lazic)
Check the Page 1 on the machine vistars for most up-to-date information of the beam availability:
https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/vistars.php?usr=SPS1
https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/vistars.php?usr=CPS
Till the end of the run: dedicated LHC filling with ion trains in the SPS. The fillings last around 1 hour and repeat about every 5 hours.
- PS EA duty cycle is reduced during the LHC filling periods --> If you require more cycles to finish your measurements - you can ask for some compensation during the other periods --> to be discussed at the user meeting.
- SPS NA --> no beam during dedicated LHC filling
- Pb source refilled on October 12th
Injector Schedule
Preview of MDs:
Please note that the MDs might change on short notice if problems occure in the SPS/LHC.
Wk 42 : Long parallel SPS MD (8h-20h) scheduled for Monday could only partially be done due to multiple fillings of LHC. The MD users requested a short parallel MD slot Tuesday (24.10) to compensate the lost time. As it will take only a small fraction of the supercycle (~10%) I approved it.
Dedicated MD (8-18h) on Wednesday week 43 for tests of wirescanners with high intensity and high duty cycle. Preparatory work done yesterday (18.10)
Dedicated Linac4 and PSB high intensity MD in week 44
Intensity split and wobbling
- Sharing between T2 and T4 (ion run)
- T2: 220E8 (was 160E8 in 2022)
- T4: 225E8
- Supercycle (2022, ions & AWAKE in parallel):
- SFTION1 -> AWAKE -> AWAKE -> AWAKE -> MD1.
- SC length: 50.4 s
- 2023 while dedicated NA ions (57.6 sec, 48BP)
- SFTION1 -> MD1 -> SFTION1 -> MD1
PS Machine Report (Ewen Maclean)
- lower PS availability this week than recently 83.6-84.9%
- dominated by several longer issues
- emergency stop Friday due to burnt KFA
- POPs cooling issue
- MTG board issue and replacement
- since this morning issues with C80-08 affecting ion beams to SPS/LHC
- Preparation of medium intensity dedicated nTOF 350e10. Some issues with transition crossing moving back and forth in intensity, mostly solved now
- Switch to T8 ions. Affects low-intensity nTOF 10e10 - now to be added on T9/N. Need T9/N users to call when removing request to avoid loosing parasitic ntof on ring
SPS Machine Report (Francesco Velotti)
- Running smoothly with higher-than-average availability
- MD preparation for wire-scanner test of next week done in ~20 min wrt the 2h asked for - very quickly back to normal physics
- Request for short parallel MD from 14 to 20h00 Tuesday afternoon - very low impact on duty cycle as also AWAKE finished
Safety (James Devine)
- Thanks for ISIEC submissions, we have been receiving them in good time this week.
- Lighting issue for the EHN1 staircase should be resolved, thanks to EN/EL.
- If you are designing an experiment to bring to CERN which includes lifting equipment, please get in contact with the EP safety office as soon as possible. We have been working closely with SHiP this week to allow the required load tests to be carried out.
nToF (M. Bacak)
Physics according to schedule:
- EAR1: Transmission measurement with Argon gas
- EAR2: mounting of X17 setup
- NEAR: offbeam background measurements (active and passive n+g detectors) and diamond with different readout
Proton average intensity is fine. Thanks to PS-OP for serving all of our often short notice requests regarding varying intensities and excellent communication. From today afternoon we request 10e10 on parasitic cycles again.
East Area Beam Status (N. Charitonidis)
T9/T10/T11: ALl values of the “duration” (magnet menu in CESAR) had to be put back manually to 0.5s, is it possible to store this as a standard value?
T9: Good operation last week. SHIP installation ongoing. Beam to be checked with them on Friday.
T10: Good operation.
T11: Some resets of the magnet duration to 0s after the power cut on Friday, but they were reset hopefully without CLOUD experiencing any downtime.
East Area Users Tour de Table
T8 Outgoing Main: IRRAD / CHARM (F. Ravotti & S. Fiore)
Good last week of the year. Weekly intensity below the target value (~1.9e16 p/w, see plot below) because of shorter week (stop on Tuesday morning and reduced PS availability). Beam alignment and center on both X- and Y-axis less good than previous weeks (e.g. number of spills centered within +/- 2mm): ~90%.
During the access on Wednesday, in IRRAD / CHARM we stop all experiments and removed all setup (with exclusion of what needs the winter period to cool-down in IRRAD). In CHARM, the experimental equipment for the CHIMERA ion run was installed and in IRRAD the electronics to perform the measurement with the diode installed on T8b area.
About 40 experiments (>400 samples) in IRRAD and 50 in CHARM were exposed to the proton beam this year on T8. The IRRAD (EP-DT) and CHARM (BE-CEM) operation teams would like to warmly thanks the EP Physics Coordination, BE-OP, HSE-RP, BE-EA, SY-ABT, etc. and all involved teams for all the support given to our operation contributing once again to this succesfull year of proton and mixed field irradiations. See you in 2024!
T8 Main: CHIMERA (see above)
The setup of the ion beam started on Tue. 17th morning at 10:00. In the afternoon some EAST_T8 cycles still mapped on the CPS delivred some protons shots on T8 (see PS report). Measurements were performed over night before beam stop Wed. 18th at 7:00. EA2 flushingtime lowered to 5min.
Wed. 18th several acces slots needed involving IRRAD/CHARM and the Mixed area (EA1). The characterization of the ion beam now continue (one access to CHARM this morning). Program will be announced using the e-group by CHIMERA team.
T9 Outgoing Main: ALICE FOCAL (Tommaso Isidori)
The TB was mostly successful for the collaboration. The results will be used in the FoCal TDR.
3 systems were tested in beam:
- n-type sensor on Xilinx KCU readout board + HGCROCv2
- MIP detected and stable over voltage, position scan, and beam energy
- e- showers and hit distribution as expected (using the W absorbers )
- irradiated p-tye sensor on Xilinx KCU readout board + HGCROCv2
- Some technical issue didn’t allowed to perform a temperature scan. Will have to follow up with this measurement with lab tests
- Signal detected in irradiated chips with alternative readout
- The high power consumption of irradiated p-type (main FoCal choice) sensors didn’t allow to use the full bias voltage forcorrect depletion. Follow up in lab
- prototype of scintillator tiles HCAL with HGCROCv3 readout chip
- Studies of hadron beam signal
- Commissioning of HGCROCv3 (main FoCal choice)
T9 Main: SHIP (Annika Hollnagel)
Installation of SHiP-SBT 4-cell prototype detector (see slides of PS-SPS meeting October 12th) ongoing in T9:
- False floor in T9 successfully removed by this morning (Thursday 19th).
- Now transport of detector holding structure and detector materials into T9 for assembly and setup.
- Several pre-visits, final safety inspection scheduled for tomorrow (Friday 20th) morning.
TB measurements planned mostly with muons, plus repeat measurement (w.r.t. 2022 DESY TB exposure) using electrons.
Setup planned to stay inside PS T9 until start of beam 2024 to be the first TB user for a repeat measurement of ‘aged’ detector, taking data with cosmics in the meantime.
T10 Outgoing Main: ALICE RICH (Nicola Mazziotta)
Nice week. Data taking completed on Oct 18 around 8 AM. Sometimes we had a fault for the magnet BHZ027 and a reset and/or OFF/ON was needed. After the power cut the scintillator in the beam area shows low counts (please check it).
T10 Main: ALICE TIMING (Sofia Strazzi)
- 18 Oct: installation of the whole setup + safety inspection; no beam until 6pm
- Data taking during the night to extract the main parameters and the time resolution of the CMOS LGAD (+ Reference LGAD)
- Hadron beam (10 GeV)(some tests with an electron beam of few GeV in the end depending on the time)
- Plans 18-25 Oct: tests with CMOS LGAD, SiPMs with different resins, single/double LGAD
T10 Parasitic : ALICE TOF (Despina Hatzifotiadou)
Installed 4 small Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPCs) with XY readout to test their performance.; gas is flowing. The main interest is to use as tracking devices. The intensity of the beam is very high; we will try to place our detectors and trigger scintillators so that they see a small fraction of the beam.
T10 Incoming Main: ALICE ITS3 - Week 43 (Paolo Martinengo)
Preparation in the lab ongoing, we will need a second DESY table
T11 Main: CLOUD (Please Add Your Name Here)
AWAKE (Giovanni Zevi Della Porta)
–> Filled after the meeting <–
Proton run:
- Very good availability outside LHC fills and power cuts
- Occasional RF issues (jitter in time of arrival or beam size) requiring re-tuning
- Electron beam transverse parameters changed significantly after UV intervention: required development of new optics
Detailed program:
- Sunday-Monday: commission new diagnostics with protons
- Tuesday-Wednesday: plasma light measurements at 1.3E14/cm3
- Thursday-Friday: 3.7E14/cm3 density, with 0% and 3% density steps
- Saturday-Sunday: 6.6e14/cm3 density, [0, 3, 6, 9]% density steps
- Study plasma light from electrons beam whenever proton beam was not available
Issues:
- Malfunctioning vacuum probe: bypassed in interlock but will need replacement
- ICT for electron charge measurement not reading: access planned
Plans for this week:
- Proton-driven plasma light as a function of density step
- Electron-driven plasma light to validate electron trajectory
- Electron acceleration with density step
North Area Beam Status
Beamlines H2, H4, H6, H8 (N. Charitonidis)
H2: Smooth operation. An issue with Coil Temperature Error of the first two bending magnets, connected with the SPS timing, is investigated between SY-EPC /BE-OP.
H4: Smooth operation
H8: Good operation, many tests performed with NA60+. The main optics used this year was in combination with the small TAX hole (2mm) resulting in a very nice beam spot. The intensity test was finally performed last monday in collaboration with RP, many thanks to F. Aberle, Y. Pira and F. Philippon, also to the people who volunteered. With an extensive set of additional protective measures, the intensity in H8A was brought to 2.4e6 primary ions in a spill (target 1e7), but the test was sandwiched between two LHC fillings which cut it short. Another test to reach the target intensity has been foreseen for next year and will need to use the large TAX hole - the intensity with the small tax hole was nearly fully exhausted.
North Area Users Tour de Table
H2
H2 Main: NA61 SHINE (Piotr Podlaski)
- smooth data taking when there is beam
- LHC cycles left in the SC even after fill is done (LHC already accelerates)
- Issue with beamline magnets:
- very often after LHC fill some of our beamline magnets are OFF/FAULT
- I brought this up to Nikos and Xavier Genillon (SY-EPC) on yesterday’s EATM - apparently problem is known and complicated
- Plea to SPS operators: please make sure that all the beamline magnets are up after returning to SFT cycle, especially during the night
H4
H4 Outgoing Main: RE44 HERD (Nicola Mori)
- (Almost) steady operations since last week
- Occasional beam stops due to e.g. troubles in Meyrin
- Data taking completed on 16th October around 8:30 AM
- Preliminary results:
- Track and charge reconstruction
- Low-energy trigger validation
- No issues with unmounting and RP checks
- As usual, great support from all the CERN staff (TSO, handling team, RP team, beam survey team, beam physicists)
- Special thanks to M. Lazzaroni and S. Auerbach for providing long-term storage.
- See you next year!
H4 Main: MEDIPIX (Petr Burian, petr.burian@cern.ch)
The setup was installed sucessfuly on Monday, safety inspection performed at 4pm:
- Moving stand with rotating stages
- Computer
- Readout system (Katherine readout for Timepix2/3) - ethernet connection
- Detectors
After some problems and tuning beam with Nikolaos (thanks so much) we are fully satisfied with beam (intensity and spot size are fine for us).
Monday - Wednesday:
- Primary beam
- Timepix3 (Si500um, Si 1mm, ATLAS TPX3 device)
- Timepix2 (si500um)
Figure: Example of cluster measured by Timepix2 Si500um
Note: We need 2h with primary beam on Thursday, because beam was off in the night.
Thursday - Sunday:
- Fragments (PAN team will join us)
- Timepix3 (Si500um, Si 1mm, ATLAS TPX3 device, SiC500um)
- Timepix2 (Si500um, Back-side pulse measurement)
H4 Incoming Main: AMS-L0 (RE1) - Week 43 (Matteo Duranti - INFN Perugia)
- ISIEC submitted ID 1111
- crane booked
- setup in August, replicated almost identically:
- next week setup with ions:
- Fragmented beam
- A/Z = 2 and 2.2
- Energy as high as possible (150 GeV/n)
H8
H8 Main: NA60+ (Enrico Scomparin)
The data taking ended this morning, and was largely successful. Detailed plots in the Indico presentation. Hereafter a selection:
High-intensity test: beam size (1 σ
) --> 210 x 230 μm2
Measurements of charged-particle multiplicity with Pb inceident on different targets and using different set-up of the ALPIDE telescope (one example shown below)
Extensive tests on GEM, μ
RWell and MWPC prototypes
H8 Main: R2E (Please Add Your Name Here)
H8 Incoming Main: RE7 GAMMA MEV - Week 43 (Nicola Mazziotta)
PPE138
ISIEC submitted ID 1107. The set-up is very similar to the one in T10 on Sept 6-13. The plan is to mount our detectors in the morning on Oct 25 and to start the data taking in the afternoon (secondary beam). Safety booked at 4 PM.
Parasitic Users
T10 Outgoing: EIC DRICH (M. Contalbrigo)
The beam time was dedicated to the commissioning of the new readout plane implementing the solutions under study for EIC: SiPM sensors, ALCOR digitazing chip, low-temperature working point. Compact photon detector units were assembled to cover an area suitable for imaging with the EIC dRICH prototype. Lot of data were collected in various beam configurations and detector conditions (only aerogel or dual gas+aerogel radiator, temperature,…).
Many thanks to the CERN support and ALICE RICH team for this opportunity and the successful run.
T10: ALICE TOF (Please Add Your Name Here)
H8: STRAW TRACKER RD (Please Add Your Name Here)
AoB
Minutes by the respective speakers, edited by D. Lazic, E. B. Holzer, M. Jaekel, and M. Schwinzerl
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