Minutes of the ISOLDE Physics Group Meeting, January 25^th 2017

Technical news

• The cooling and ventilation work in b. 508 will start on February 2^nd. Representatives of the company performing the work will be present at the beginning of the next ISOLDE PGM  (February 1^st, 14:00) for questions and clarifications.
• Two important points need to be addressed: whether the proposed solution offers sufficient cooling power (question of Mark Bissell) and whether there will be a need to access the laboratories in the supervised area (which are normally closed).
• It was pointed out that the laser labs in b. 508 are not considered part of the class C area, although they are part of the zone with restricted access.
• On Saturday the used targets were moved from the class A lab to the intersecting storage rings. The intervention went well.
• This week Christophe Mitifiot is performing checks of the MEDICIS montrac system. A maintenance of the two ISOLDE plus one MEDICIS robots is also planned (in order to have all three robots back in full operation).
• Water cooling was started and the front end is being checked by operators. So far no problems were reported.
• The third HIE-ISOLDE cryomodule was installed yesterday.
• The scattering chamber was decoupled by Ismael Martel form the second HIE-ISOLDE beam line. It will be replaced by the new ISS spectrometer. The spectrometer is already being cooled in b. 190. In 2-3 weeks it will be moved to b. 170. The third HIE-ISOLDE beam-line will be partially dismantled to allow moving the spectrometer in.

Schedule

• The beam requests for the 2017 running period have been distributed. Representatives of the different experiments should send the requests back as soon as possible.
• HIE-ISOLDE will be ready end of June, until then only low-energy experiments will be running. After June HIE-ISOLDE and low-energy runs will alternate.
• A draft of the agenda of the next INTC meeting has been sent to the concerned speakers.  Feed-back concerning the proposed time slots for the different presentations should be given by next Monday.
• There was a discussion with the hostel management concerning the usual block booking of CERN hostel rooms for ISOLDE users traveling for experiments. The number of reserved rooms was reduced from 20 (as last year) to 15. The booking covers the period April 15^th – end of November. A representative of each IS experiment should send the common request for hostel rooms at least 30 days in advance of the arrival date. Users are enouraged to try first to book their room via the on-line application, before requesting one of the ISOLDE-reserved rooms.

AOB

• There will be drilling taking place in the extension in the following days in preparation for the installation of the ISS spectrometer. Although the drilling is supposed to be dust-free, extra precautions can be taken for the sensitive equipment. People who are interested to cover their setups with plastic foil should contact Răzvan Lică, who purchased a new roll.
• People ordering liquid nitrogen on the ISOLDE budget should use again the 31560 budget code.
• Hanne Heylen proposed two itineraries for the ISOLDE-group outing in February, to decide upon next week. The two options are appended at the end of this document.
• Local ISOLDE physicists should not forget to send Liam Gaffney the titles and brief descriptions of their summer-student projects by next week’s meeting.

Seminar

• The meeting was followed by a seminar of Pauline Yzombard from the AEgIS experiment on “Status of the AEgIS experiment”.

The next PG meeting will be held Wednesday February 1^st at 14:00. It will be followed by a seminar by Liam Gaffney from CERN (Miniball experiment) on "A complementary approach to shape coexistence in nuclei".

Minutes taken by VM