Technical News

• Thunderstorm stopped the polonium run near the end;
• A problem occurred with the robots handling the targets. A radioactive unit could not be placed in an empty slot on the shelf (the robot moved to a position which was already filled). The problem could not be solved remotely. An intervention was undertaken by R. Catherall in order to store the target properly. The reason for the robot malfunction is under investigation.
• One of the ASTEC power supplies broke, which forced the responsible team lead by J. Schipper to replace it with a unit purchased from Heinzinger, namely the model PNChp3p3 65000 - 40 UMP/60/M. The custom made ASTEC supplies, which are now 19 years old, cannot be maintained for much longer. The plan is to replace them with commercially available units from Heinzinger, perhaps three, two operational and one spare. Following the request from COLLAPS, the new power supply has stability and precision within 10^-5 from the nominal voltage. It has also been modified to achieve a faster recovery time of less than 10ms. However, the new unit needs to be tested. One concern is the reproducibility, specified only at 10^-3. Concerning the voltage readout, it is practically unchanged. The same voltage divider and voltmeter are in use.
• Apparently a faulty vacuum gauge in the CD0 line causes the valves to close. At the moment there are no uncontrolled movements of valves. However, one needs to investigate the problem.
• The H3 beamline at HRS has a broken turbopump. Recovered the operation by using just one of the turbopumps. Intervention planned for Thursday afternoon.

Experiments

• Despite the thunderstorm that stopped the polonium run, results had been obtained even beyond the original scientific program! The users are satisfied by the performance of the target and ISOLDE in general;
• Huge stable isobaric contaminations discovered by ISOLTRAP for the neutron-rich argon beams with A=42,…,48. They attempt ⁹⁷Kr at the moment. Considerable contamination from ⁹⁷Mo. Perhaps, there is a problem with the VADIS ion source.
• Next run will be on manganese. ISOLTRAP will start, and then MINIBALL will look for iron coming after the decay of manganese in the trap. This will be followed by solid state physics collections. The emission channeling chamber will be installed at LA1.

Talks

• Alexis Ramus, IPN, Orsay, gave a talk on: Transfer Reactions induced by ²⁰O and ²⁶Ne beams at SPIRAL.
• Talk by Kay Potzger on SS Physics, next Wednesday at 2:30pm.
• Next Thursday at 2pm follows the second set of talks for the summer students. ISOLTRAP, COLLAPS and Solid-state physics will be presented for 30 min each.