Minutes of the ISOLDE Physics Group Meeting, November 23^rd 2016

There were no comments to the minutes of the previous physics group meeting.

Technical news

• GPS/HRS

• The two separator courses have finished (Monday-Wednesday starting last week, on both separators).
• There were some SPEDE tests taking place over the week-end at Miniball (see Physics and schedule).
• CRIS took stable beam from HRS to the TATRA tape-station system installed behind their setup.

• REX/HIE-ISOLDE
• REX-EBIS tests have been performed, more tests will follow in the next days and over the week-end.
• Some helium-sniffing tests have been performed for investigating the leak in cryomodule 2. The action tripped some of the vacuum interlocks. Two of the cavities in cromodule 1 have field emission, but hopefully this will not require removing the cryomodule again.
• RILIS

• Molybdenum ionization tests have been performed over the last week.

Physics and schedule

• The SPEDE spectrometer adds to the Miniball setup a conversion-electron detector placed at backward angle. During the last week-end the detector was tested using ¹³²Xe on ¹⁹⁶Pt and ¹⁵⁴Gd targets. The collected data will be analysed to disentangle the useful signal from the delta-electron background.
• There will be some further stable-beam tests from HRS to VITO tomorrow (Thursday) night.
• Next Monday the cooling water system will be turned off and the shutdown will begin. The facility will go in hibernation mode.
• The maintenance of the water cooling system will begin soon after. Cooling water will be available again January 23^rd next year.
• Targets which are broken or no longer needed will be removed to the intersecting storage rings January 21^st, 22^nd.
• The non-conformities which were found in the ventilation system of the class A lab will be fixed starting end of January and will produce a break in operation until March. Efforts are ongoing to prepare the pills for three UC_x units before the lab can no longer be used. This will ensure that there are UCx units available for the start-up of physics in 2017.
• The old control room will be reorganized as storage space for the facility and potentially some of the experiments. Some ISOLDE control consoles will nevertheless be kept and possibly upgraded. 

Safety

• The OFSP (Office Federal de la Sante Publique) will visit ISOLDE early next year as a consequence of the finger dose received during the last Terbium collections, which slightly exceeded the threshold above which it is necessary to inform the Swiss authorities (10 mSv).  A general action will be organized to prepare the various ISOLDE setups for the visit.
• The ISOHALL/ISOWORK separation will be reintroduced for the duration of the transport of the third cryomodule, scheduled January 24^th.

Visits

• Two guides are still needed for a visit of 18 Czech technical university students taking place next Tuesday from 11:00.

AOB

• The next deadline for INTC proposals is January 11^th. The corresponding INTC meeting will take place February 8^th.
• The deadline for contributions to the ISOLDE laboratory portrait is November 30^th.
• The users are kindly asked to register in time for the ISOLDE workshop, in order to start preparations.
• Next week there will be an end-of-the-year celebration.

Seminar

The meeting was followed by a seminar of Hanne Heylen from MPIK Heidelberg on Nuclear moments of the neutron-rich Al isotopes at the border of the island of inversion

The next PG meeting will be held Wednesday November 30^th at 14:00 followed by a seminar by Thierry Stora from CERN on CERN-MEDICIS: Innovative radioisotopes for medical applications

Minutes taken by VM