1. Technical news
· HRS delivered beam successfully to the T-REX experiment.
· GPS delivered beam successfully to the Solid State and Bio Physics experiments at GLM. Fluctuations were identified in the Hg beam intensity which could be compensated by adjusting the target heating. There were difficulties in injecting the beam to the Bio Physics chamber: the collaboration is considering redesigning the chamber to improve injection.
· Monday: successful intervention on the target water cooling.
· GPS target change at GPS on Monday to nanostructured CaO. The current situation with the GPS target shelf required to set the GPS target on the HRS shelf. In the process, the GPS robot hit it calibration pipe and two attempts were necessary to repair the problem, the latest on Wednesday. The delay puts the 31Ar experiment in jeopardy. The priority is to start the WITCH experiment on Friday before the end of the day.
· RILIS has provided beams of Zn successfully. The required UV transition causes damages to the doubling crystals. The use of the dye and Ti:Sa lasers in parallel allowed to used reduced power on the crystals and provide the same final beam intensity but with better stability. The direct feedback on the MiniBall count rate also ensured that the RILIS team could correct the beam position (wandering because of temperature fluctuations) without having to wait for the users' call.
· REX experienced various minor difficulties with no visible effects to the users.
2. Physics and upcoming schedule
· 72Zn(t,p) at T-REX went so good, they even have Coulomb excitation data. They might consider using the T-REX setup for Coulomb excitation in the future on a more regular basis.
· Solid State & Bio Physics went very well, with over 100 collections on ice and over 30 collections in other samples, to probe local structures, using mostly 199mHg. The very good yields resulted in the collection time to be reduced down to 8 minutes. The turn around went well in spite of the large number of groups involved. The proton sharing conditions were also satisfactory. => General note about operation at ISOLDE: proton sharing 90/10 works much better than 50/50.
· Coming up: p emissions in the decay of 31Ar at LA1 (GPS), 35Ar recoil energy spectrum measurement at WITCH for neutrino angular correlations (GPS), in-flight resonant ionisation spectroscopy of Fr at CRIS (HRS), molten salt target test for beta beams production and for testing cooling solutions for the ISS (18Ne, 71-72Kr) (GPS).
3. Safety
· 3H target removed from MiniBall and stored in the target room.
· Difficulties with RP for 3 users who were coming to CERN for a second short visit this year. Users should subscribe for the radiation course upon their first visit to CERN! The local contacts should encourage people to take the course.
· A new cabinet for chemicals will be installed between NICOLE and REX. The key will be in the ISOLDE Control Room key cabinet. Very special chemicals (e.g. laser dyes) should not be stored in it. Please identify your chemicals with the name of the experiment and reserve the refills for traveling experiments.
4. A.O.B
· Commemorative workshop on Rutherford at CERN on November 15th, including amongst others a talk by Sean Freeman (University of Manchester). YB strongly recommends the ISOLDE community to attend this event.
· There were too many abstracts for the ISOLDE workshop and 10 had to be rejected. We apologize to those authors and we are always open to receive them for seminars next year.
· The INTC meeting will happen next week. Open sessions on Thursday afternoon (Council Chamber) and Friday morning (Bldg 40).
· ISOLTRAP and BioPhys have experienced sudden disappearance of their material, either from storage in the hall or from 'safe' long-term storage. While it is understandable that one might need to borrow equipment from another experiment, it is kindly asked to respect the ownership of the equipment, inform said owner, keep an update on the whereabouts of parts and pieces.
5. Seminars
· Alex Murphy (University of Edinburgh) presented a seminar on '44Ti Core Collapse Supernovae'.
· Next week, we shall receive Dr. Ushasi Datta Pramanik (University of Calcutta) who shall present a seminar on 'Recent research activity of exotic nuclei and development of ultra fast timing detector'.
Minutes taken by TEC