Present: J. Billowes, K. Blaum, P. Butler (chairman), L. Fraile, M.J. García Borge, M. Huyse, A. Jokinen, M. Lindroos, D. Lunney, T. Nilsson and K. Riisager

Excused: J. Äystö, A. Di Pietro

1. Introductory remarks by the chairman

Peter Butler opened his first meeting as ISCC chairman. Peter explained that he has accepted the appointment as ISOLDE collaboration chairman requesting that J. Billowes will remain the UK representative and that he as chairman will not have voting rights. He also welcomed the new members, Thomas Nilsson for Sweden and Klaus Blaum for Germany.

2. Approval of the minutes from the last meeting

The minutes from the last ISCC meeting were approved.

3. Technical developments and AB department news

Mats Lindroos reported that the shutdown work at ISOLDE is in full progress. The GPS front-end has been tested after a change of extraction electrode and it now holds the nominal HV of 60 kV. The GPS switchyard has been opened (for the first time since the start at the PSB ISOLDE facility) and the different problems in the switchyard have all been successfully addressed. The RFQ cooler has recently been moved from the workshop to building 275 and the off-line commissioning will start this month. Mats also told the meeting that the AB department recently has approved an annual budget for the ISOLDE and REX experimental areas of 250 kCHF and a new post in the ISOLDE operation section has recently been opened.  Mats reported that The Knut and Alice Wallenberg (KAW) foundation have granted the money requested (14.5 MSEK or approx. 2.4 MCHF) by the Stockholm-Gothenburg-Lund-CERN proposal for the renovation of the RILIS and for the construction of an off-line laser lab (LARIS) for the further development of the RILIS system at ISOLDE. The collaboration committee was very encouraged by this good news and thanks the KAW foundation on behalf of the ISOLDE collaboration.

4. Scheduling and PH department news

Luis Fraile reported on the proposed accelerator schedule for 2006, approved by the CERN Research Board on 1 September 2005. Protons will be delivered to ISOLDE from 18 April 2006 and the Physics experiments will start on 24 April 2006. The on-line operation for ISOLDE will end 28 weeks later, on 6 November 2006. There are 503.5 remaining shifts for approved experiments to be scheduled. ISOLDE experiments will requests 258 more shifts to the INTC on the 20 February 2006 meeting. Apart from the user requests, the main constraints for the schedule are the maximum of 10 UC_x targets that can be made available by the AB-ATB-IF group, the operation of the RILIS and the REX-ISOLDE operation.

The experiments, offline runs and RILIS developments for the 2006 shutdown were then detailed.

5. Budget 2006

The budget for 2005 is in good agreement with the spending plan. The REX posts are a heavy economic burden for the collaboration. Karsten presented the proposed spending plan for 2006 with a projection for 2007 and 2008.

6. EU contracts

The EURONS contract has now run for a year and the first cost statement shows that we can use more money in the future for User support. The programme can support more than one trip per year per user to ISOLDE.

The EURISOL DS contract is also completing its first year and the work on the cost statement for CERN has just started. Good progress has been made on all tasks in which CERN is implicated even though the spending in the first year is lower than projected due to the well known problem of hiring people from the first month of the contract.

7. INTC and NUPAC

The last INTC meeting was to a large extent dedicated to conclusions of the NUPAC meeting. The NUPAC report is now public and available through the CERN Document Server (http://cdsweb.cern.ch/) and directly at http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/cern/preprints/intc/public/intc-2005-035.pdf.

The INTC NUPAC report was presented to research board and the scientific policy committee in December. The continued operation of the ISOLDE facility was endorsed by both committees and the AB department was requested to prepare a full proposal for the HIE-ISOLDE project for Research Board 8 June 2006. The first step is now to assure a new agreement for the REX posts with the objectives for the collaboration of asking CERN to take over the financial responsibility for the REX posts as soon as possible.

Peter Butler pointed out that the agreements in the financial provisions of the present MoU runs out in June 2006 and he asked Mats and Karsten to start the work on preparing a new MoU with the target of having a first draft of the MoU available for the May meeting of the collaboration committee.

8. Building 170 and the HIE-ISOLDE project

Mats presented the status of the hall extension project and the status of the HIE-ISOLDE proposal preparation. As a first step within this project, the Miniball array can be moved into the extension during  the shutdown 2006-2007 but will require a budget of 850 kCHF. A final decision on the lay-out and the budget must be taken so that first orders can be done from CERN latest 15 March. The Belgian representative gave his agreement to make use of the existing Leuven HIE-ISOLDE grant to cover to these expenses and speed up the process. This contribution should be adequately reflected in the new ISOLDE collaboration MoU.

The Miniball steering committee will discuss the move and agree on a way to get feed-back on the proposed layout from the Users. Joakim Cederkäll is the linkman for this project for the Users.

The HIE-ISOLDE project proposal has just started. The first major decision to be taken is whether the linac technology should use superconducting cavities or continue with IH structures. This decision is proposed to be taken after a pre-study and an external review in the first week of May. The total project budget is estimated at 21 MCHF with 2/3 requested to CERN and 1/3 to be funded externally. Mats requested a 300 kCHF/year contribution from the Collaboration during 5 years in the period (2007 – 2011) to contribute to the HIE-ISOLDE costs. The ISCC will discuss this application in connection with the new MoU, and take a decision on the coming months.

9. Spectrometer for HIE-ISOLDE

A working meeting to discuss the design and concept for spectrometer associated with REX-ISOLDE took place at CERN on 21-22 November 2005 in the framework of the INTAG JRA06 of the EURONS project.  The participants were inclined towards a RMS-type spectrometer to better fit the Physics programme at the expanded REX-ISOLDE facility. A bid for funds for this project, lead by Phil Woods, will be issued during 2007. Other international partners interested in contributing to the project are Leuven and the CERN PH Department.

10. Report from the EURISOL town meeting

Peter Butler reported on the EURISOL-DS town meeting held in Caen from 28 November to 1 December 2005. The steering committee of the Design Study was advised by the International Advisory Panel there is a lack of an activity in which the potential users of EURISOL would keep the scientific case up to date and feed back to the technical activities of the Design Study. With this aim there is the proposal to call a EURISOL Physics meeting in September 2006. The members of the collaboration did not support the idea and proposed to organize instead a joint ISOL meeting with already existing meetings, for instance the Spiral II workshop. It was also suggested to make use of the EURISOL-DS town meetings to present Status Reports of the existing ISOL facilities in Europe, with focus on the present activities, limitations and future upgrades.

11. Fellowship applications

Two fellowship applications for ISOLDE within the EU Marie-Curie programme were put forward by first-class candidates.

The deadline for applications for fellowships within the CERN programme is 6 March. High-quality candidates interested in the ISOLDE research programme are strongly encouraged to apply.

12. A.O.B.

The members of the Collaboration committee will be asked in next meetings to give input on possible dates for next ISOLDE Workshop and Users meeting. The initially proposed date is February 2007 in conjunction with the INTC February 2007 meeting (dates still not available).

The ISOLDE Collaboration would like to acknowledge the tireless support that Ulli Köster has provided to the experimental and development activities at ISOLDE during his stay at CERN, and would like to wish him success at his new post at ILL.

Next meeting will take place on 28th June 2006 (to be confirmed), during the NIC IX conference held at CERN.

Minutes by Mats Lindroos and Luis Fraile