PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 48 held on November 28th 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 48: Short parallel MD on Monday. No dedicated MD this week.

PS Machine Report (R. Garcia Alia)

• Availability: ~91% (Thu – Thu)
• nTOF finished on Monday, East Area protons on Wednesday (still ongoing: AD, ions to EA and ions to SPS/NA, all up to Monday 6 AM)
  • For nTOF: some final parasitic 28ns checks, showing that up to 700-800e10 can be delivered - to be further studied next year
• Some difficulties with super-cycle composition to satisfy user needs for both AD and IEAST (in terms of shot-to-shot intensity and beam position variability, etc.)
• New HEARTS cycles developed for beam studies (not to be employed as user beams in 2024): 350, 250 and 230 MeV/n

SPS Machine Report (M. Schenk)

• Availability: ~91% NA (Thu – Thu)
• Some downtime due to injector faults, setting up of low energy cycle in SPS
• Wk 48
  • Monday: setting up of low-energy ion cycle and steering to targets
  • Tuesday: new line optics setup and tests with much improved transmission
    • Challenging beam size measurement at targets (successful in H last night, V to follow today, close to optics simulations)
    • Thank you to everyone involved!
  • Other
    • Monday: short-parallel MD
    • Tuesday: 1 h parallel test for hysteresis (thank you!)

Safety (M. Jankowski)

• Nothing to report, other than please wear your safety shoes and your helmets - thank you!

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

The (very long) Physics 2024 Run ended on 25.11, 6.00 AM, after 252 days of data taking.

A new record of protons received (3.2E19) has been reached. Beam intensity increased by 20% (from 1.08 to 1.3E17 p/day).

13 experiments have been performed on 17 different isotopes. 9 measurements were dedicated to neutron capture reactions, 1 to induced fission, 1 to investigate the inelastic scattering channel and 2 with production of light charged particles.

Several detectors have been tested.

[sorry to be not with you in presence, we have our Collaboration and Board meeting in these days, https://indico.cern.ch/event/1451728/]

AD: PAX (N. Paul)

Achieved sufficient vacuum conditions to take beam last Thursday. Tuned the waterfall antiproton cascade with operators so as to not saturate the Germanium detectors. Took successfully 3 days of beam, but had to stop because it was discoverd that the cycle caused some small interferences with the another experiment. Very happy with the obtained data, currently performing analysis and will work with the ELENA team so that the waterfall cycle doesn’t impact the other users next year.

East Area Beam Status (B.Rae)

On call phone number 67500
General : End of Proton run Yesterday

T09: No faults. To confirm the linearity of the calorimeter at momentum > 0.9 GeV/c, beam was checked for positrons with different collimator settings and in pure positron and mixed hadron mode at 1 GeV/c. Both beam size and distribution was confirmed to be ok with scans. Detector response was better in the pure positron mode. From the beam point of view, there is no difference between the positron and hadron mode except in rate and beam composition, and the beam is behaving as expected. Further investigations ongoing.
T10: Good operation.
T11: Good operation.

East Area Users Tour de Table

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

Successful first (ever!) user campaign, with good beam, facility and service performance. 24/7 beam provision to users, with 3x 8h shifts of 2x HEARTS@CERN members. Currently the 6th (out of 9) user team is testing [D-Orbit, space company from the Como area in Italy]. Frequent changes in LET (between the offered 12 and 37 MeVcm2/mg values) and flux (between few ten and few 1e5 ions/cm2/spill).

T9 Main: WCTE (M. Hartz)

Continued work with Dipanwita over the last week to understand the beam line settings with regards to to the multi-peak structures we were seeing in our calorimeter for some settings (see above). Found solution to take data with readout of WCTE multi-PMTs and beam monitors combined and took data before the end of the run. We are now carrying out a campaign of further detector readout development and calibration data taking, so detector remains operational with people on shift in T9. Requesting radiological survey of detector water in preparation for draining the detector.

Thanks to everyone for the support throughout the installation and beam time!

T10 Outgoing Main: LHCb (L. Martinazzoli)

Successful two weeks of data taking for the Muon station detectors. Everything went fine and we have achieved good preliminary results. Thanks again to Maarten, all the beam experts, and the infrastructure team for the support throughout the year!

T11 Main: CLOUD (Please Put Your Name Here)

North Area Beam Status (B.Rae)

On call phone number 67500

General : Change of ion energy to 13.5 AGeV last Monday.
H2: Good operation.
H4: No user.
H8: Good operation. Many beam tests together with NA60+. Optics upstream now optimized, many thanks to the operators and F. Velotti. Today we run the high intensity test for low energy to see if we can reach the target intensity and we hope to see an acceptable spotsize.

North Area Users Tour de Table

H2:

Main: NA61 SHINE (Piotr Podlaski)

• 2024 Pb+Pb data taking:
  • We finished data taking on Monday 25th of November
  • In total we accumulated ~250M events
  • Challanging operation this year:
    • big fluctuations of beam intensity (improved towards end of the run)
    • availiability issues - unstable LHC and frequent filling
• Data taking with Pb fragments:
  • We received fragmented beam on Monday evening
  • Yesterday we did rigidity scan to optimise isotope content in the beam
  • Since yesterday evening we take data : accepted isotopes Li-Si ( P )
• Many thanks for your support during Pb run and preparations of the fragmented beam
• Special thanks to Nikos, SPS coordination team and SPS operators

H4:

Outgoing Main: RE25 CALET (Please Put Your Name Here)

H8:

Main: NA60+ (E. Scomparin)

• Program at 150A GeV carried out successfully.
• Shift to 13.5 A Gev was smooth
• Beam size much larger, various focussing efforts by Maarten and the people taking care of the upstream line
  
  This is the best situation so far
• Starting now the high intensity test, results to be analyzed in detil in the next days
• On detector side, the MWPC prototypes, after technical issues, are now working as expected (more characterization in the next days)
  
  Correlation between strips on the two sides
  
• Also performing a measurement of charged particle multiplicity with different target nuclei in the remaining period
• Thanks to Maarten and everybody involved for the smooth beam operation

Parasitic Users

AoB

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