PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 13 held on March 27th 2025

Coordinator for this week: Martin Jäkel

News from the PS & SPS Physics Coordinator

M.R. Jäkel, P. Martinengo

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

PS Machine Report (Y. Dutheil)

• 90.6% overall availability (96.7 for EAST_N, 96.9 for EAST_T8, 96.7 for EAST_T9, 89.9 for NTOF)
• Downtime dominated by 2 events
  • Long RF fault on Friday
  • DSO test for AD on Wednesday morning prevented extraction to TOF
• Beam provided
  • various intensities provided to nTOF, up to maximum flux, with sporadic short interuption due to a new interlock using measured beam brightness on the target
  • stable EAST beam production
• First investigations into long-spill prospects ongoing
  

Safety (Marcus Jankowski)

• Please submit the ISIEC requests one week in advance (https://ep-th-safety.web.cern.ch/isiec-safetyclearance)
• A slot is reserved for safety inspections in EHN1 on Wednesdays between 3 pm and 5 pm
• Please wear your PPE (safety shoes, helmet, dosimeter)

n_ToF (Alice Manna and Paolo M Milazzo)

Three measurements are running:
• EAR1: Annular Silicon detector for (n, cp) reactions
• EAR2: Ionization chamber for fission studies (235U sample)
• NEAR: Study of radiation hardness for diamond detector and cycling proof of concept for activation measurements (see pictures).

EAR2: change of experimental set-up on 27.03: array of LaBr3 and an HP Germanium detectors for the study of the 87Sr(n, g) reaction

East Area Beam Status (Laurie Nevay)

On call phone number: 67500 (this week Johannes)

T09: Good operation week. The longer spill of 0.8 s with 15 GeV primary protons is being checked for the user. Should be ready to use towards the end of the week.
T10: Issue with beam stopper of T10, not letting the (hadron) beam be turned on for about 1 day. Some time was lost, some time was spent testing with muon beams. Final repair to be carried out during the next East Area beam stop, under discussion still.
T11: No user. Shutter closed until next operation.

East Area Users Tour de Table

T8 Main: IRRAD/CHARM (F. Ravotti, S. Fiore)

We restarted as soon as the East Area intervention on T10 was completed on Friday by performing a calibration of the IRRAD Beam Instrumentation with low intensity beams (E9-E10 pps). From Friday night we began the facilities commissioning with standard beam (8E11 pps) - this is mainly to calibrate the radiation field with various CHARM configurations. Access on Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week. In IRRAD we installed a first active experiment (SY-BI) on Wednesday, long-term material samples from EP-DT and TE-MSC will go in on Friday. First CHARM user teams will begin on Wednesday next week. We continue (announcing the daily plan using the operation e-group) until then.

T8 beam steering is in general very good (Thanks!). Please, watch out to certain spills (depending on CPS) that might be off on the X-plane of several mm.

Current list of registered IRRAD experiments so far (15 in total):

1. 1x SY-BI (straws)
2. 3x DRD3 and EP-RD (LGAD and high-level fluence detector samples)
3. 1x LHCb SciFi upgrade
4. 2x CMS-PPS (LGAD and cooling system samples)
5. 1x EP-DT (polimeric materials)
6. 2x ALICE (CMOS/LGAD and FOCAL)
7. 1x EN-EL (GaN transistors for LED lights)
8. 1x SY-STI and HSE-RP (development of lower momentum p+ beams)
9. 3x TE-MSC (magnets isolation materials, RT, inert-gas and cryogenic)

For CHARM we have up to now 37 requests from users from ATS and EP

T9 Main: WCTE (M. Hartz)

• Dipanwita completed the beam tuning on Monday afternoon. Thanks!
• We are now collecting data at different momentum settings to determine the optimal momentum operation point with our aerogel Cherenkov threshold detectors. Confirming the particle identification performance at each setting. Example at 300 MeV/c (left without positron veto, right with positron veto):
  
• While confirming the beam settings, we are collecting data with the detector in self-triggering mode while debugging issues with initialization of boards. It appears that we can run stably with ~30k particles per spill and ~3k triggers per spill, which is sufficient for collection of data at low energy. In fact, we could receive a higher rate at low energy running, so we have requested running in the configuration with 0.8 sec long spills instead of 0.4 sec.
• Working on offline data quality checks of data. For example, we see clear peaks in total charge from positrons in detector for different energies, but deviation from linearity needs to be studied.
  
• We would like to take calibration data throughout the WCTE operation period, and it is optimal to take it when there is no beam being delivered. We would greatly appreciate any advanced warning for scheduled beam off periods.
• We plan to confirm operation in our tagged gamma mode tomorrow. We may use both the electron/positron beamline setting hadron beamline setting, which still has many positrons at our beam momentum.

T10 Main: BI STRAW (Robert Garbrecht Larsen)

We are continuing measuring on our straw detector at different energies and intensities. In general beam availability has been good.

T10 Incoming Main: MEDIPIX (Week 14) (Benedikt Bergmann)

• Team at CERN: Milan Malich (responsible), David Netusil, Ondrej Ruzicka will arrive for installation on April 2.
• I will fill ISIEC and request safety visit.

North Area Beam Status (Laurie Nevay)

• Hardware commissioning on-going, interrupted by two power cuts. There is a chance that another power cut will need to be scheduled next week by EN-EL. More information will follow shortly.
• Beam commissioning will start on April 4th, followed by a foil callibration test.
• For information:
  • Start of physics EHN1: April 14th
  • Start of physics EHN2/ECN3: April 17th

Incoming Main HIRADMAT (Week 14) (Please Put Your Name Here)

North Area Users Tour de Table

M2 Incoming Parasitic: AMBER (Week 14)

AoB

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