PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 46 held on November 14th 2024

Coordinator for this week: E. Barbara Holzer

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.

Target intensities:
See below or via ASM (accessible from within the CERN network).

News from the Facilities Operations Meeting (FOM)

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

• Week 45: No dedicated MD
• Week 46: Ions Dedicated MD (Wed)
• Week 47: Ions Dedicated MD (Wed) & Long parallel (Thu), moved from week 46

PS Machine Report (Alex Huschauer, Bettina Mikulec)

• good availability for all users of ~95%
• HEARTS run started officially on Tuesday morning with beam for first users
  • challenging in terms of super cycle sharing, especially the mix between ions and protons provides less flexibility
  • flux very sensitive to preceding cycle (magnetic history), trade-off between duty cycle and flux stability
• Two short beam stops
  • Monday morning for repair of 80 MHz cavity (needed for parallel operation with LHC-type proton and ion beams)
  • Tuesday morning for EN-EL intervention on electrical network

SPS Machine Report (Carlo Zannini)

• Th-Th availability 88.5%
  • Main beam stops
    • Fire alarm on Sunday (~4h)
    • Repair of BQM attenuator issue on Monday (~2h)
    • Issue with RF cavity 4 on Monday night (~3h)
• Test of low energy SFTion cycle for next week run done on Wednesday afternoon
• Monitor intensity on T2 and keep as close as possible to 250

Safety (J. Devine, M. Jankowski)

Link to Safety clearence : https://ep-th-safety.web.cern.ch/isiec-safety-clearance (Please remember to login to Drupal to see the page)
Thank you all for the ISIEC submissions this year - we are not expecting any more in 2024.
The final inspections are planned for HEARTS next week.

n_ToF (M.Bacak, A.Manna and P.M.Milazzo)

Smooth data taking during week #46

EAR1: C6D6 detectors to measure the 65Cu(n, g) reaction
EAR2: fission fragments study

Both measurements will run up to end of the 2024 campaign (on 25.11)

Protons received

AD: PAX (N. Paul)

Safety inspection completed on Tuesday.
Waiting to achieve acceptable vacuum conditions at TELMAX, had to open the chamber to make some small modifications. Working with CERN vacuum team and should do a test of opening the valve this afternoon.

East Area Beam Status (N. Charitonidis)

On call phone number 67500

T09/T11: Good operation. No issues.
T10: Good operation.

East Area Users Tour de Table

T8 Main: HEARTS@IRRAD (R. Garcia Alia)

• Dedicated commissioning and calibration until Monday and first external user on Tuesday
• Tight schedule for several critical path elements for a successful user operation (flux calibration factors for all beams, run control from WRAP…) but managed to have everything ready in time for the first users
• Beam and facility running very well so far, in compliance with the user requirements and (hopefully!) expectations
• 2nd user team (out of a total of 9) tested yesterday, and 3rd team testing today

T9 Main: WCTE (M. Hartz)

Have continued collecting data to understand beam composition. Using our lead glass calorimeter, we find that the measured energy from positrons can vary a bit depending on the collimator settings. Working with Dipanwita to understand, but it looks like narrower collimator settings give cleaner peaks and more linear relationship.

We have established good timing calibration with ~0.3 ns resolution for the WCTE detector and are aiming to take good detector data in the final week.

T10 Outgoing Main: LHCb (Please Put Your Name Here)

T11 Main: CLOUD (Please Put Your Name Here)

North Area Beam Status (N. Charitonidis)

On call phone number 67500

Target sharing

H2: Good operation. Beam position on target and intensity fluctuations still bothersome for NA61. With the SPS operators we adjusted the intensity and hopefully now is (slightly) more stable.
H4: Good operation.
H8: Good operation. High intensity test ongoing in collaboration with RP, reached target intensity for NA60+ (1e7 primary ions / spill). Will continue optimizing beamspot after LHC filling is complete.

North Area Users Tour de Table

H2:

Main: NA61 SHINE (B. Maksiak, A. Dmitriev)

• Smooth data taking

• The complaints that we had last week - all of them are solved!

  • No beeping sound on SPS Page1 TV stream when SPS extracts the beam - fixed
  • Less annoying LHC fillings
  • Beam intensity fluctuations investigated and solved
  • Thank you!
    

• Complaint: yesterday, after MD we were left with PPE172 area doors being forced. We needed to reset the doors ourselves and make patrol. Personally, I have never been in that area and I did not feel comfortable to go there around.

• Plans for Monday 25.11:

  • Change of beam to 13.5 GeV/c
  • Requesting access to PPE112 in order to install additional detector

H4:

Main: RE1 AMS L0 (M.Duranti - INFN Perugia)

• sorry for the spam mail that I sent this morning to everybody by mistake (I simply wanted to add a reminder for the today’s meeting on my damn iPhone…)
• the second part of the week we had good beam (still unstable in the intensity, but high avalaibility)
• thanks Nikos and Bastien for the beam. In the last couple of days we played a little bit, with the VLAST colleagues to increase again the intensity (re-open the COLL01 and COLL02) but spread a little bit more on X (QUAD14, QUAD15 and QUAD16) and the beam was very good;
• we were able to complete our program
• beam profile (first week)
  
• all sensors working
  
• now we’ll analyze the data to study in details the charge resolution of our modules
  
  (eta = S_L/(S_L+S_R), with S_L/R signal on the Left/Right strip)

Outgoing Parallel: VLAST (LI, Xiang)

• The availability of the beam increased after the last user meeting.

• Ions with A/Z = 2.2 have been measured by our detectors.
  
  

• Thanks to Michael and Nikos for useful help.

• Thanks for the collaboration with AMS and HERD.

Main: RE25 CALET (Please Put Your Name Here)

H8:

Outgoing Main: RE7 GAMMA MEV (Please Put Your Name Here)

Main: NA60+ (E. Scomparin)

• beam delivered as soon as safety cleared (4pm on Monday)
• Si detectors place on the beam, no target
• First studies and optimization of Pb beam size, in view of the high-intensity test, to be held today (Thu Nov 21). Four pixel planes (ALP0-3) and two small scintillators (S0-1) plus two large scintillators (10x10cm2, not shown) to monitor the beam intensity

• Scan of the beam focus in the region around our foreseen target position (thanks Maarten!)

• 2D distribution and projections as seen by our detectors --> 180x80 mum2 sigma!

• Next: adding three MWPCs prototypes to the set-up (delay in the arrival of R/O electronics)

• Looking forward to the low-energy beam next week!

• Last minute news: test in progress, now paused for LHC filling. Reached 10^7 Pb/spill, beam spot already quite good, RP people carefully monitoring

Parasitic Users

H4 Outgoing RE44 HERD (Yongwei DONG)

Finished ion beam run as parastic user at H4. We’ve got enough and good data from the ion particles. Nice collaboration with good friends from AMS and VLAST.
Our detectors have all passed radiation check and packed. Thank Frederic and his colleagues for the patient radiation work and explanation. And thank Sebastien Auerbach for temperarily storage of our two boxes in bld. 190 for the next months.

AoB

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