PS-SPS Users Meeting for Week 21 held on 22 May 2025

Coordinator for this week: P. Martinengo

EuroLabs : Application are open. Please submit your requests.

News from the PS & SPS Physics Coordinator

M.R. Jäkel, P. Martinengo

Proton Run 2025

Newly vacant beam slots :

Please contact SPS.Physics.Coordinator@cern.ch if you want to apply for any of theses slots.

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)

Pressure rise in T2 TBID observed after increase in intensity sent to T2.

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 (Ruben Garcia Alia)

SPS Machine Report (Panos, Stephane)

Short term schedule:

Availabilities:

Fire Alarms (BA1 & BA6)

Operation

Beam & Systems

Safety (James Devine)

TT42 Main: n_TOF (Alice Manna, Paolo M Milazzo)

Heavy interventions have been completed in all experimental areas on 20 and 21.05.
In particular,

East Area Beam Status (J. Bernhard)

On call phone number: 67500

T9: Good operation.
T10: Beam files preliminarily checked for Polar-2.
T11: No user.

East Area Users Tour de Table

T8 Main: IRRAD_CHARM (F. Ravotti / S. Fiore)

Very good week - intensity delivered to T8 >2.5E16 p/w. The TID in CHARM reference position (R10 this week, where a lower dose-rate is delivered) was about 300 Gy (see below). Beam centering continue to be extremely good >97% of centred spills on both axes.

During the access on Wednesday, in IRRAD we installed a new setup for irradiations in controlled atmosphere for TE-MSC. The MWPC in IRRAD Zone 1 was also re-installed in preparation for the T8 MD slots scheduled for the beginning of next week (see below). All other IRRAD experiments continue. In CHARM removed setups by CAEN-ATLAS, installed new by BE-CEM.

** Preliminary Plan T8 MD slots May 26-27 **

  1. Mon. 26th in the evening: IRRAD experiments out of beam (we will call the CCC to confirm);
  2. Tue. 27th @ 1am: CHARM Target out of beam;
  3. Tue. 27th 1am-5.30am: T8 MD with lower momentum proton beams;
  4. Tue. 27th morning till 9.30pm: IRRAD experiments back in beam (standard beam conditions);
  5. Tue. 27th 9.30pm till Wed. 28th 4am: T8 MD with lower momentum proton (and Oxygen ions if time will allow it) beams;
  6. Wed. 28th 4am: beam OFF and areas in ACCESS mode

The plan has been agreed with Marc.
In case there will be the time for propagating also Oxygen ions to T8 already (second priority), the maximum ion intensity per spill that can be extracted from the PS (as per agreement with RP) will be of 2E10 charges/spill and maximum energy 1 GeV/n. During the MD slots, EAST spills not used for T8 can be re-directed to the other EAST destinations, if needed.

From the beginning of the year:

T9 Main: WCTE (Xiaoyue Li)


T10 Outgoing Main: SHIP LS-SBT (Annika Hollnagel)

Test Beam exposure for SHiP SBT with two LS prototype cells.

Successfully concluded (nearly) 2 weeks of test beam on Wednesday 2025-05-21:

Successful rotation(horizontal -> vertical) of prototype A on Monday 2025-05-19. (Many thanks to the transport group!)
Swift disassembly on Wednesday 2025-05-21.


T10 Main: Polar-2 (J. Hulsman, H. Li)

T10 Incoming Main: P349+ (Please insert your name)

North Area Beam Status (J. Bernhard)

On call phone number: 67500

H2: Good operation.
H4: Good operation.
H6: Good operation. CERF started yesterday with high intensity beam.
H8: Good operation.
M2: Good operation. Intensity on T6 to be increased on 28.05. to 150 units.
P42/K12: Good operation. Yesterday, a pipe belonging to the fire brigade water network close to ECN3 was damaged during works, but is already repaired.

TT66 Main: HIRADMAT (Please insert your name)

TT41 Main: AWAKE (M. Bergamaschi)

Issue with electron beam RF source on Saturday, intervention needed on Sunday to replace Thyratron, now+ ok.

Soffered by Fire-alarm in SPS that limited beam time on Sunday and Tuesday.

Contine with physics program till end of next week

TELMAX Outgoing Main: PAX (Michael Roosa)

Last week we finished up a very successful test beam in the TELMAX zone of the AD.

We successfully deployed a Transition Edge Sensing x-ray microcalorimeter to measure antiprotonic atoms and characterized future areas for performance improvement.

North Area Users Tour de Table

H2 Main: LHCB_ECAL (L. Martinazzoli)


Successful data taking so far:

Observed some issue with 60 GeV/c:

H2 Incoming Main: NA61_SHINE (Bartosz Maksiak, Aleksandr Dmitriev)

H4 Main: NA64e (Vladimir Poliakov)

Smooth data taking.
We recorded around 55k spills and accumulated around 2.5x10^11 EoT.

H6 Outgoing Main: CMS MTD ETL ETRO (Marcos Fernandez)

Test beam time devoted for the MIP Timing Detector (MTD) of CMS, in particular for the Endcap Timing Layer (ETL). This is a new detector that will be operational in the CMS upgrade.

We tested hybrids made of 16x16 HPK LGADs with their readout chip called ETROC. Two setups were running:

We would like to express our grattitude to SPS coordination for granting extra parasitic time in H6B and to Laurie for his very responsive support everytime we needed.

H6 Main: CERF (T. Lorenzon)

H6 Incoming Main: DRD3 (Marcos Fernandez)

Three groups coming (sequentially) to test different LGAD brands (timing detectors), inside the telescope and making use of the existing coldbox:
- Torino-INFN (DC-RSD LGAD), 28-31 May
- IFCA-Santander (TI-LGAD), 1-10 June
- Brown University (AC-LGAD), 8-11 June

The ETROC suitcase will continue taking data in the parasitic position

H8 Outgoing Main: CMS PPS (F. Garcia)

The CMS-PPS team has tested two types of LGADs (standard/TI-LGADs).

A wide physics program was accomplished with a lot of data collected in different conditions and data in currently in analysis.

The beam conditions were excellent with a very narrow beam and high intensity with ~2mm rms in both planes and ~8e5 pions/spill. Many thanks to Maarten for this effort.

The safety inpection was smootly and no insidents registered. Many thanks to James et al.

The infrastructure team in the North Area has provided all that was needed. The XSCA2 was working well and thanks for Sylvain and Michael et al.

We would like to have a similar beam like this one in our next slot in July, if possible.

There were not incidents and all operation was quite smootly.

H8 Main: LHCB (L. Martinazzoli)

Thanks to the infrastructure team for the help during the installation (DESY, XSCA, gas pipes, etc…)!

K12-P42 Main: NA62 (Michal Zamkovsky)

Overall good beam quality, but many empty bursts.
The transition from T4 to T10 is different compared to last week — while 36 units worked well previously, 40 units seems to be optimal for us now.

M2 Main: MUONE (Aldo Arena)

The detector commissioning is going quite well.
The Electromagnetic calorimeter is, after some iterations, calibrated within 2% ADC counts (thanks A. Gutierrez and F. Gray).

The trackers part of the commissioning got a little delay since we still lack the chiller. It has been ordered and it should be in its way, but if it will not arrive soon would be a problem.
The noise scans of the 2S Modules of the tracker gave good results, comparable to the lab results.

We are starting the threshold adjustments and synchronization to the main DAQ of the tracking stations with low intensity muons and then continue with the sychronization of the ECAL.
We got the Safety Clearence for the run and the physics data taking is planned starting June 1st.

H8 Parasitic: STRAW_TRACKER_RD (Please insert your name)

H8 Incoming Parasitic: ATLAS_TILECAL (G.Usai and T. Mkrtchyan)

Preparation started.ISIEC submitted but no feedback on inspection time. One crate need to be installed in the counting room. Would we be able to have signals from Cherenkovs routed to the patch pannel?, Vacum chamber crossing zone 158,was the dismounting scheduled?

M2 Parasitic: AMBER (Christophe Pires)

Nikolay Anfimov will be the run coordinator for the next months.
Preparation ongoing, no other news.


AoB


Minutes by the respective speakers, edited by M. Jäkel, M. Malkin, and M. Schwinzerl