PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 34 held on August 22nd, 2024

News from the PS & SPS Physics Coordinator

E.B. Holzer, M.R. Jäkel

• 2024 injector schedule released EDMS 2872566
  2024 approved LHC schedule EDMS 2872429

Reminder: Beam time exceeding the limits of 2 weeks PS beam time and 1 week SPS beam time per year need the approval of one of these CERN committees: SPSC, LHCC, DRDC, INTC, RB or IEFC. Consider joining a DRD collaboration, if you require more beam time.

News from the Facilities Operations Meeting (FOM) (M.R. Jäkel)

Target intensities:

• August 2nd to 12th: 45 units on T10 (85 units on T4)
  • had to reduce the POT due to radiation alarms
  • August 12th: reduce again to 21 units on T10 (about 54 units on T4)
• T2: 30 units
• T6: 30 units

Upcoming SPS MDs next weeks :

https://be-dep-ea.web.cern.ch/content/md-planning-north-area
Dedicated SPS MDs - if not anounced differently - are taking place from 8:00 to 18:00

• No dedicated MDs for week 33, 34 and 38
• week 34 Monday to Friday: LHC MD
  • August 8 and 9 daytime: preparing the cycles for LHC MD next week - reduced duty cycle for North Area
  • reduced duty cycle for the North Area (in particular up to and including the nigth of Tuesday)
  • possibly problems with the spill quality
• Dedicated SPS MD week 35: Beam to P42 - no access to ECN3
• Dedicated MS week 36, 37 and 39: most likely no access to ECN3

PS Machine Report (Y. Dutheil)

• 96.8% overall availability
• Issues
  • Last Thursday 1h downtime due to setting error on SMH57 septum
  • Last night 2 unrelated issues with low-level RF between booster and PS and F16 dipole magnet cooling
• Status
  • BIG TOF parasitic beam operational, ongoing effort for automatic settings switch when TOF stops request
  • Nominal TOF intensity between 800 and 950, asjusted manually to reach maximum flux depending on supercyle
  • EAST pre-pulse (extracted beam before extraction start) identified to early transverse excitation switch on, and solved

SPS Machine Report (Kevin Li)

General report:

• Good overall availability - 91.3%
• LHC MDs ongoing, some preparations here and there but usually either fill or NA production, whenever possible; extra time Thursday last week has proven to be very useful and made this weeks beams delivery much smoother;
• Potential issue with wobbling magnet in front of T4; under observation, thresholds increased, now waiting for evolution of magnet trips - in case they get worse, will need an intervention with access for 9h minimum; trying to place thin on one of the coming Wendesdays depending on how the magnet behaves now;
• Outlook: AWAKE coming in next week - MDs and dedicated MD on Wednesday still to be finalized, depending on magnet evolution as mentioned above - might be possible to go into access on Wendesday, but not yet decided, tbc.

Incoming:

Safety (A. Schouten)

• General reminder for ISIEC requests next week.

nToF (M.Bacak and P.M.Milazzo)

Smooth data taking in all experimental area.

EAR1: 238U(n, g)
EAR2: 88Zr(n, g), smooth installation of the radioactive sample on beam on 15.08, ~50 mSv/h @ 5 cm. Excellent coordination between laboratories: Los Alamos, PSI and CERN. Thanks specifically to RP shipping service, RP and STI.

Beam intensity increased 14/15 Aug. thanks to optimization projects by the PS team:
Increased bunch length to 44 ns without affecting physics data quality

• high intensity parasitic (350e10 >> 800e10 p/bunch)
• 800-850e10 >> 900-950e10 p/bunch on dedicated

East Area Beam Status (D. Banerjee)

On call phone number: 67500

T09: Good operation.
T10: Good operation.
T11: P349 de-installed, beam shutter closed until CLOUD run.

East Area Users Tour de Table

T8 Main: IRRAD/CHARM (F. Ravotti)

Excellent week in T8. The proton intensity delivered this week was the higest recorded in 2024: 3.18E16 p/w (see plot below)! This also gurantees that the TID in CHARM is well above the specification level (~600 Gy). We run >20% above our weekly reference intensity (see second plot below) for the benefit of the experiments, mainly in IRRAD, that need to cumulate very high fluence levels exceeding 1e17 p/cm^2.

T8 transmission very good (although since end of the previos OP week [Tuesday] the “slow” drift on the X-plane seems to appear again - see below red curve from this morning) as weel as the beam alignment (% of spills within +/- 2mm from the center) that was >98% on both axis. Also this is the highest value recorded in 2024.

Access delayed by problem with PAD (start at 10:00).

In IRRAD we are continuing with long-term experiments only (TE-MSC, EN-MME, etc.) - no users/samples exchanged yesterday.

In CHARM, the user installed in the rack (SY-RF) for long term exposure continue. CMS setup removed and BE-CEM-EPR setup continue.

T9 Main: NP06 ENUBET (Andrea Longhin)

Slides:

https://indico.cern.ch/event/1447441/contributions/6094860/subcontributions/499532/attachments/2914305/5113988/ENUBET_PS-SPSusermeeting_22Aug2024.pdf

The commissioning phase is over. Currently taking good data.

Two modes:

1. Standalone self triggering demonstrator (fast, internal triggering asking a majority of 2 channels above threshold)
2. With silicon trackers (slower but with precise position information on the impact point on the calorimeter)

A big work was done on synchronization of the Si tracking chambers with the demonstrator readout (SiPM with FERS CAEN boards readout).

We have characterised the single-scintillator mip signal in terms of single photo-electrons.

T9 Incoming Main: EIC ePIC LFHCal (Week 35) (Please Put Your Name Here)

T10 Outgoing Main: ALICE TOF (Yongwook Baek)

• Beam test was conducted without any problems
• Pulled out yesterday and completed the TREC test
• Collected all the data we wanted.

T10 Main: ALICE ITS3 (Please Put Your Name Here)

T10 Parallel: ALICE FOCAL (Please Put Your Name Here)

T10 Incoming Parallel: BE-EA (Week 35) (D. Banerjee)

BE-EA: We will test the low momentum 15 GeV primary proton beam up to T10, checking the transmission and beam composition at different momentum points. Require only the beamline instrumentations (XBPFs, XCSI, XCET).

T10 Incoming Main: BI XBPF (Week 35) (I. Ortega)

Our beam request covers four activities:

• Characterization and validation with beam of the first prototype of the new North Area Scintillating Fibres Beam Profile Monitor (XBPF).
• Characterization and studies of the prototype of a new in-vacuum scintillator tile that will replace the Scintillator Paddles (XSCI) for beam intensity measurements.
• Testing and validation of the new readout electronics for the instrumentation in the CERN Experimental Areas, called EAVP (Experimental Areas VME Platform).
• Characterization and studies of the prototyep of a straw-tube detector for a new radiation-hard beam profile monitor

We will use a DESY table and a concrete block for our data datking

• The DESY table will be positioned upstream, as close as possible to the beamline XBPF. On the DESY table, we will set up the new North Area XBPF prototype in the upstream position, followed by the equipment for characterizing the scintillator tiles.
• The concrete block will be placed downstream of the DESY table and will hold a set of small scintillators to trigger our detectors on small surfaces. These small scintillators will be followed by a standard XSCI, which we will use for additional triggering and timing measurements. Finally, the straw-tube demonstrator will be positioned after the XSCI.

The goals of these tests, by order of priority, are:

• Measure the performance of the new detectors and electronics across all available intensity ranges and beam conditions.
• Characterize the different trigger modes of the detectors and electronics and the ways to extract individual particle tracking information for beamline users.
• Test the integration with the CERN controls system (FESA, CESAR, DIP, etc.).

Concerning the beam conditions, we would like to begin with a 10^5 particles/spill and from there, scan different beam intensities and beam sizes. We are less sensitive to beam energies and beam composition. These can be discussed with the beam physicists.

T11 No beam: P349 (Please Put Your Name Here)

North Area Beam Status (D. Banerjee)

On call phone number: 67500

Target intensities

General: Earth fault with the Bend2 of T4 wobbling. The threshold was increased yesterday and so far it holds well without further trips. If the situation deteriorates, a 9h intervention would be needed minimum.
H2: Issue with a missaligned beam pipe in front of the experiment, which was degrading the electron beam. Solved.
H4: Smooth operation.
H6: Good operation.
H8: Good operation. Problem with XTDV.042.572 has been found (relay in electrical box) which was fixed. Beam stopper will be checked during user changeover on 28 August.
P42/K12: Bend 2 in K12 stable again after intervention last Monday. Good operation since then.
M2: Good operation.

AWAKE (M. Bergamaschi)

Proton Run start next Monday (26/08/2024) for 3 weeks

North Area Users Tour de Table

P42-K12:

NA62 (B. Velghe)

The 2024 Beam Dump Run Ended on Monday

• Sucessful run with no incident, we collected about 2.2e17 proton on T10 over 12 days.
• Johannes and Lau switched the beam back to kaon mode Monday 19th at 4 p.m. Smooth transition.
  

We are Now Back to Kaon Mode

• LHC MD, reduced duty cycle and frequent super-cycle changes.
• Thanks to the SPS operators who have kept an eye on the spill quality over the past few days.
• We are planning a couple of maintenance interventions in ECN3 on Wed. 4/9 (W36).

M2:

Main: NA64mu (Vladimir Poliakov)

Smooth data taking. We recorded 56k spills and accumulated 1.85x10^11 muons on target.

H2:

Main: TECHNO CLS (Stefano Carsi)

Please, see attached slides

Shortly,

• We installed on Wednesday 14th August
• The installation went quite long, as significant modifications inside the area were required
• In the first days, we faced several problems
  • A double peak structure appeared in the horizontal beam profile: after a deep inspection of the beamline, it was a door handle left in the middle of the beam pipeby the NA61 experiment
  • The EM calorimeter was definitely not seing the electron peak. We were up to give up and try to work on the MBPL magnet and the electron peak appeared! The beam pipewas installed tilted wrt the beam direction. Indeed, the screws inside the magnet were not installed and the pipe was free to move. I managed to push the pipe of a few cm and was in a correct place
  • We found that a bin near M1 Magnet was full of water and draining on the floor. Thanks to Laza to explaining very quickly the situation and providing a larger one bucket
• Finally, on Monday, the intensity on the T2 target was reduced. Bastien tried to compensate by opening collimators. However, the beam moved slightly, and we were afraid all the alignment should be restarted from the beginning. However, the day after the previous configuration was restored

A big thanks to all the CERN staff for all the support during this week of a very complecated beamtest

Incoming Main: FASER PRESHOWER (Lorenzo Paolozzi)

This week we will test the first modules for the new FASER pre-shower with the entire readout / DCS / DAQ chain. This is a first test of the entire system so we expect to have multiple accesses during the week for debugging.

• Installation will start at 9am next Wednesday. We will install on the Nikhef table, as agreed with Michael. Will the Nickef table be free at 9am?
• We will book the crane to transport the Geneva FEI4 telescope, 1 FASER calorimeter module and 1 concrete block directly on the moving table. We will use one of the racks available in the area.
• We will need to use two tables in the control room for the DAQ PCs. Which control room and where/when can we install?

H4:

Main: NP04 (Christos Touramanis)

Smooth data taking last week and planned for next week.
Taking kaon data at 5 GeV.
Coordinating with GIF++ for breaks they require.

H6:

Outgoing Main: ATLAS HGTD (Please Put Your Name Here)

Main: ATLAS ITK PIXEL (Please Put Your Name Here)

H8:

Main: DRD6 IDEA DRC (Hwidong Yoo)

We did safety check on last Thursday and took a data over weekend for commissioning. Then we found issues on PMT responses and decided to access and update our detector configurations significantly on Monday and Tuesday.

This work has been taken much longer than our expectation but finally all problems are fixed and running well from yesterday.

Parasitic Users

H6: ATLAS MALTA (Please Put Your Name Here)

H6 Outgoing: CMS MTD ETL (Murtaza Safdari)

I’d like to once again thank the CMS & ATLAS testbeam coordinators for accomodating our move to PPE156. All team members are on flights back to the US during this meeting hence no one is able to connect in person/remote, but I’ll try my best to summarize the main points here.

This week we were able to get some excellent data at H6 (120 GeV pions/protons) which helped confirm the time resolution numbers we’d previously seen from our HV bias scan done at DESY (4 GeV electrons) [See plot on Slide 4 of the uploaded slides]. This is quite an important result as we build the case for the operational readiness of the ETROC2 chip for the CMS ETL.

Additionally we were able to take some beam data with 3 new ETROC2+LGAD assemblies, analysis of these results is ongoing and we hope to better understanding our bump bonding from these results.

We will be back in 2 weeks time, when we will run 2 telescopes in parallel to continue our HV bias scan as well as extract time reoslution numbers from new ETRC2+LGAD assemblies.

H8: STRAW TRACKER RD (Temur Enik, Katerina Kuznetsova)

• esteblishing the program for September H4 data-taking:
  • straw readout with VMM3-based and ASD-based electronics (DRD1 WP3)
  • custom fast PA/shaper + SAMPIC digitizer (SHiP) - feasibility to be studied at H8 beam dump
  • straw performance vs overpressure (DRD1 WP3, DUNE)
  • the ASD-based readout: together with US FCC team
• new intstrumentation:
  • sMDT reference tracker (large acceptance) with ASD-based readout for unified DAQ (by the US team)
  • AZAELA tracker (small acceptance, high resolution)
• both parts are expected next Tuesday, several days setup/installation at H8 beam dump
• safety visit will be needed at the end of the next week

T10: Incoming ALICE ITS3 (Please Put Your Name Here)

AoB

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