1. Technical news:
· Last Monday, during a target change at GPS, (which until the shutdown involves also the HRS robot placing the target on the HRS shelf), the reference point was damaged. A new calibration point was built and normal operation was restored on Wednesday afternoon, which caused a delay in the installation of the target.
· Finally late on Wednesday the CaO-CP target was installed. Bad vacuum persisted throughout the night. On Thursday afternoon, after problems with vacuum interlocks, the target was decoupled and the cause of bad vacuum was identified with a leak in the target line water cooling. The repair was however not successful. A used CaO target was installed instead by the end of the day.
· A power cut on Friday did not improve the situation. It was caused by a faulty security element which was already changed, and it affected Meyin site and Point1.
· At HRS a UC target with rhenium transfer line for enhanced surface ionization is installed (to be used at CRIS, a factor of 10 improvement is expected for francium).
· WITCH report ion-beam instabilities. Later this has been tracked down to the electronics boxes at REX.
2.Physics and schedule:
· The experiment on 31Ar was canceled due to the problems with the robot and CaO target.
· On GPS: Finally on Saturday morning the proton scan was done and beam was delivered to the WITCH setup. They saw 20 times less beam than expected (due to the use of the old backup target). Nevertheless, WITCH took advantage of the beam to built statistics. As WITCH has to show results this year, it will run again next week with a new CaO target. For that WITCH will take the time slot of an LOI on bio-NMR at COLLAPS. The WITCH team thanks all the technical staff involved in recovering from the robot and target problems, in particular Emiliano and Miguel, Alex and Joao Pedro, and of course to Monika for giving up her LOI beam time.
· CRIS is presently taking beam from HRS. The aim is to look at n-deficient Fr isotopes.
· Upcoming production test with a NaCl+ZrCl target has been postponed to next year due to target problems.
· Next Monday, the new CaO will be put up for WITCH.
3.A.O.B.
· ISOLDE will be supported by a vacuum picket (i.e. 24h on-call support service) continuously starting from next year.
· There will a technical stop next Tuesday from 7.30 till 17.00 power cuts can happen, due to tests by EDF.
· Online radiation safety course might be introduced next year.
· There will be a French-Swiss safety visit at ISOLDE on Nov 21-st.
4. Seminars:
· Dr. Ushasi Datta Pramanik (University of Calcutta) presented “Recent research activity of exotic nuclei and development of ultra fast timing detector”.
· For more information and links to the slides please visit the ISOLDE - seminars page.
Minutes by DTY