Present: J. Billowes, Y. Blumenfeld, P. Butler, R. Catherall, J. Cederkall, A. Di Pietro, L. Fraile, H. Fynbo (replacing K. Riisager), M. Garcia-Borge (Chairperson), A. Herlert (replacing K. Blaum), A. Jokinen, M. Lindroos (P.T.), S. Siem, N. Marginean (replacing V. Zamfir), B. Jonson, Y. Kadi (P.T.)
 
Excused: K. Blaum, S. Franchoo, K. Riisager, P. Van Duppen, V. Zamfir

The meeting starts at 09.00 h

1. Introductory remarks by the chairperson

The chairperson opens the meeting and welcomes J. Cederkall as the new Swedish representative to the ISCC replacing T. Nilsson. She also announces that P. Van Duppen will take over as the new Belgian representative to the ISCC committee. K. Blaum, K. Riisager, S. Franchoo and P. Van Duppen are excused from the meeting.

The chairperson welcomes H. Fynbo who will stand in for K. Riisager at the meeting as well as N. Marginean who represents V. Zamfir and informs the committee that A. Herlert will stand in for K. Blaum.  She thanks K. Riisager, K. Blaum and V. Zamfir for finding a replacement and encourages the other members to arrange to be represented when they cannot attend the ISOLDE Collaboration Meeting. In this way more people have the opportunity to learn how the committee works.

2. Approval of the minutes of the 54th meeting.

The minutes of the 54th ISCC meeting are approved.

3. Technical developments and BE & EN Department news (R. Catherall) (see overheads)

R. Catherall discusses the modifications and repairs made during the end of the shutdown period. He goes on to summarize the status of REX-ISOLDE, the REX-linac, the RFQ and the Booster.

The committee is told of the large amount of work that is going into producing a set of highly detailed drawings of the ISOLDE facilty on the Catia system. He presents a 3-D model of a section of the facilty to give an idea of what will be available. Y. Blumenfeld requests that a detailed drawing of the facilty be prepared that is suitable to be used by physicists in their presentations.

The ongoing projects in the EN-STI-RBS section (T. Giles, T. Stora and E. Noah) are summarized. These include the calibration of the new fast tape station, FTS (moving time around 200 ms) , against the old tape station which is in progress.

R. Catherall explains to the committee the problems that have been encountered with the front end pistons and the stepping motor controllers which have made for a difficult start up.

The committee also hears that there has been minimum support from the vacuum controls group as their priority is the LHC.

The committee is informed that ISOLDE is being given a safety audit with most of the ISOLDE community undergoing interviews.

R. Catherall discusses the problem of the minimal operational radiation protection service. Only 1 technician is available to ISOLDE and so, when he is absent from CERN, serious delays can be caused for both the technical group and for ISOLDE physics runs. At a minimum, ISOLDE requires 1.5 radiation protection technicians during the shutdown period and 1 for the rest of the year as long as holidays are covered. Y. Blumenfeld informs the committee that a meeting has been requested with T. Otto, the responsible section leader, to discuss this problem.

R. Catherall tells the committee that there will be 2 technical students in EN-STI this year; one will be working on Fluka simulations on shielding in the target area for 6 months from March while the other will be working on electronics development on FE6, tilted foils/motor controls for 1 year from June.

The board for the WITCH/REX-ISOLDE technician has been held and the selected candidate, Julien Thiboud,  will start in September. The committee is informed that, at the moment, there is a lack of resources for target development at ISOLDE.

Y. Blumenfeld explains that, at the next fellows selection meeting, priority will be given to the RILIS candidate, M. Sjoedin, as a replacement is required for B. Marsh who will soon be leaving CERN.  In this situation it will be difficult to get a position for the candidate Pekka Suominen to work on targets. Other scenarios have been considered as negotiations with CERN to partially support his post from the collaboration. During the prepartion of this document it has been anounced that Peka Suominen will be at CERN from 1st of January for a period of 3 years, 50 % supported by the collaboration and 50% by the EC COFUND program.

In response to a question from L. Fraile about the 2µA limit set at ISOLDE, R. Catherall explains that this limit can now be overcome in specific cases.

4. Scheduling and PH Department news (A. Herlert / Y. Blumenfeld) (see overheads)

A. Herlert summarizes the status of experiments at ISOLDE; 10 new experiments were approved at the February INTC meeting giving a total of 72 active experiments for the 2009 beam period. He then presents the CERN accelerator schedule for 2009 and tells the committee that protons started on 14^th April and so physics at ISOLDE had been able to start on 20^th April giving the possibility of 31 weeks of physics until November 23^rd. He states that during 2009 several periods of machine development are planned and that only the LHC will continue running through the winter months.

The committee then hears that this year 627 RIB shifts have been requested by 51 experiments and that more that 50% of these shifts have requested the use of RILIS. There are 460 shifts requiring a UC target and 273 requesting the use of REX-ISOLDE.

A. Herlert then presents the 2009 physics schedule; 425 RIB shifts have been scheduled for 39 experiments. RILIS will be used for 235 of these shifts (achievable due to help from IKS Leuven) and a UC target for 282.

The evolution of requested, scheduled and delivered RIB shifts since 2004 is shown.

The situation of experiments and consequences of this years schedule for REX-ISOLDE, targets and RILIS is then discussed in more detail.

A. Herlert summarizes this years off-line period and the successful 2009 startup, which was unfortunately delayed due to the delay in installation of the new ISCOOL rf amplifier. However, even though there was only one day of off-line tests possible, IS449 achieved some valuable results. He goes on to discuss the few problems encountered so far and then details the successful physics runs achieved to date.

The committee is informed that the ECR setup will be moved from its position in the ISOLDE hall at the beginning of June and will be transported to GANIL at a later date. Any equipment from the ECR which was paid for by the ISOLDE physics group or any other group should be reclaimed as soon as possible. The committee stresses that before the ECR is shipped to GANIL the authorisation should be sought from all parties involved, including the STFC which actually owns the ECR.

Y. Blumenfeld tells the committee about the current student/fellow situation at ISOLDE:

• H. Tornqvist will soon start as a PhD student at ISOLDE; the DG fund will pay for 5months of his placement and the rest will be paid by the ISOLDE group account.
• The PhD student G. Tveten is now on maternity leave.
• K. Flanagan has now declined his CERN fellowship as he has been offered a very prestigious advanced British fellowship which will allow him to work on the CRIS experiment at ISOLDE.
• There is a good chance that ISOLDE could get a fellow at the next selection meeting so any good candidates should contact Y. Blumenfeld by email as well as making an application through the official CERN channels.
• An extension of J. Van de Walle’s fellowship up until Dec. 31 has been requested. (During the preparation of this document the extension has been granted)

Y. Blumenfeld reminds the committee of the following events:

• ISOLDE Workshop and Users meeting  – CERN, 18-20^th November 2009
• EURORIB – Lamoura, Jura, 6-11 June 2010
• HFI2010 – CERN, 13-17 September 2010

A. Herlert informs the committee that the new ISOLDE website has been set-up and now the process of transferring data from the present site is in progress. The ISOLDE publication list has also been updated. There is a call to the collaboration members to send information to J. Weterings about the thesis work done totally or partially from data taken at ISOLDE. (Title of Thesis, author, date of defense, University).

5. Summary of “New Opportunities” workshop and of meetings with CERN management ( Y. Blumenfeld)

The New Opportunities in the Physics Landscape at CERN workshop, organised by the CERN management, was held at CERN from the 10^th to the 13^th May 2009. Y. Blumenfeld tells the collaboration that after a call for abstracts was made to the ISOLDE community an impressive 31 abstracts were submitted. Due to the tight schedule of the workshop only 8 of these could be selected as short talks of 5 min to be given along side the 4 main ISOLDE presentations which were given by K. Riisager, P. Van Duppen, M. Hjorth-Jensen and M. Lindroos. M. Huyse gave an introductory talk on INTC subjects (ISOLDE and nTOF), P. Butler a summary talk and Y. Blumenfeld gave a talk on EURISOL in the SPL session.

B. Jonson summarizes the workshop saying that the ISOLDE talks were of a very high quality. When S. Bertolucci, the CERN Director for Research and Computing gave his summing up at the end of the workshop he stated that it was just the beginning of the process of planning the non-LHC physics program which would probably last about 18 months.

Y. Blumenfeld informs the committee that a meeting was held with S. Bertolucci where, as requested, an overview of the physics and organistion at ISOLDE was given. These meetings will take place 2 or 3 times a year.

6. General Interest brochure on ISOLDE (B. Jonson)

B. Jonson presents his ideas for the ISOLDE brochure; the actual style of the brochure will be determined by CERN.

7. Budget 2009 (Y. Blumenfeld)

Y. Blumenfeld explains that France has now paid its contribution to ISOLDE for the period 2007/2008 and has also been invoiced for the period 2008/2009.

At present the collaboration is funding the post of D. Voulot and half the part-time post of J. Weterings. It is also paying half the cost of M. Seliverstov for a 12 month period and from September it will fund half the WITCH/ REX-ISOLDE technician post. The collaboration is also paying for M. Fraser while he works on the HIE-ISOLDE project and will fund R. Casten while he visits ISOLDE during July 2009. The collaboration also supports a number of students from various universities during their stay at ISOLDE.

A discussion is held about whether 300kCHF a year for this and the next 3 years should be made available by the collaboration for the HIE-ISOLDE project. Representatives present at the meeting vote unanimously in favour of this motion, noting that the money should be used for specific projects and should be tracked in detail. The collaboration hopes that this action will help CERN to make a decision about the HIE-ISOLDE project in the very near future because grants already given to the project could be in jeopardy if CERN does not give the go-ahead soon. This decision is crucial as some countries are not able to apply for grants until the project is underway.

8. M.O.U. issues - new members (Y. Blumenfeld)

The committee is told that Norway is still in the process of signing the MoU even though it has paid its contribution for the last two years. Also, Portugal, which has been involved with ISOLDE for the past 20 years but which has never been a member of the collaboration, would like to join but has a problem with the fact that there is a “fixed” fee. A suggestion is made that new member countries be given the option to pay a fee of CHF 10,000 a year for each scientist (someone with a PhD) involved in an approved experiment at ISOLDE, up to a maximum of CHF 60,000 per year for a period of 5 years. This suggestion is approved by the committee.

9. News about new collaboration agreements (Y. Blumenfeld)

Y. Blumenfeld informs the committee that the collaboration agreement with LNL in Italy is ready to be signed while negotiations with GANIL are still in their preliminary stage. The collaboration agreements with two Indian institutes are due to be signed in June.

10. Updating of the ISOLDE M.O.U. (M. J. G. Borge / Y. Blumenfeld)

The chairperson requests that all ISCC members check that the information required in the annexes of the MoU is up-to-date and that they should inform J. Weterings of any necessary changes within 2 weeks.

11. HIE-ISOLDE (M. Lindroos)

M. Lindroos explains the planning for the staged implementation project which now has two stages, HIE-ISOLDE 1 and HIE-ISOLDE 2. Within HIE-ISOLDE 1 the HIE-LINAC R&D is making good progress after being authorized by the CERN management within the EUCARD I3 programme and with a Belgian grant. Testing of the first cavity for the SC linac is expected in June /July at TRIUMF in Vancouver. Beam quality development is on-going.

The new cavity prototype is presented and the committee is told that a fellow from Italy is working on this project along with the PhD student A. Gustaffson who will be working on the sputtering techniques.

M. Lindroos then presents the new cryomodule design and then discusses the “road map” for the upgrade of RILIS.

The 300.000 Sfr remaining from the Knut and Wallenberg grant will be used to buy two new dye-lasers for RILIS.

Y. Kadi is introduced by M. Lindroos as his replacement when he leaves CERN in August (leave of absence to participate in the ESS project). Y. Kadi introduces himself to the committee and summarizes his experience to date.

Y. Blumenfeld thanks M. Lindroos for all his work over the past few years and especially for pushing the HIE-ISOLDE project to where it is today.

12. INTC matters (P. Butler)
P. Butler informs the committee that no new proposals are to be presented at the INTC meeting but 5 status reports will be given. He goes on to say that CERN has set up a committee to study how protons should be distributed between the different facilities at CERN and that this committee (held on 8th April) has recommended that there be no change in the protons delivered to ISOLDE, about 40%, for the present.

12. A.O.B

• Y. Blumenfeld informs the committee that ENSAR is being revived. The call for requests will be made in July with the deadline being December 2009.
• The next ISCC meeting will be held at CERN on Monday 16^th November 2009 at 09:00.

The meeting ends at 12:40.