3 July 2014

Minutes from the ISOLDE Physics Group Meeting July 3, 2014

No comments to the minutes from the ISOLDE Physics Group Meeting on June 27, 2014.

TECHNICAL NEWS:
- GPS separator: is in operational state, at the moment delivering beam to RILIS for the laser development tests. Most critical thing remaining is the repair of the 1st FC (the former FC20) which should be functional before beam can be taken from GPS (this FC is the only one that can measure the total beam coming from the target and it is therefore essential to setup the ion source). The first attempt to repair it took place last Tuesday but it was unsuccessful.
- HRS separator: is in much better state than last week. There are still some vacuum-related problems with one turbo pump on the front end. The pump is not running and the team doesn’t know yet the origin of the problem (it can be a controller problem or cabling problem or the pump in itself has to be replaced). New magnet controls are working, but they are not yet reliable - they are crushing every 12 hours. Work is on-going to improve this situation.
- General problems with control of the beam instrumentation have been reported. To be followed up by the CERN experts.
- Target area: several problems on the GPS side. The Faraday cage door collides with the new robot rail and it needs to be modified before the robot-target-change cycle can be tested. The last GPS target change was done by hand and while performing it the team noticed that the clamps holding the target are not moving properly and they have to be fixed. The water pipe welding has been finally completed.
- The GPS and HRS robots should be ready for July 11. After that the completed robot-target-change cycle has to be done to validate the robots, the new controls and the controls of target shelves. After that the usual tests will follow.
- Protons for ISOLDE are delayed to July 22 due to all work that remains to be done.
- Call for volunteers for clean the Faraday cages in the front ends will be made. The cleaning with take place on July 16.

Safety:
- Online RP course tailor made for ISOLDE is finally available online: e-learning SIR course for ISOLDE. This course is required for everybody (users, CERN staff, contractors) who wants to access ISOLDE after July 1. In addition, everyone is requested to follow the basic RP course for supervised areas (required to obtain a dosimeter).
 All ISOLDE physicists are requested to follow the CERN online electrical awareness course available on https://sir.cern.ch/sir . Magda will check its completion when signing access requests.
- Division of the hall has been postponed minimum to the start of protons at ISOLDE.

ISOLDE General:
- Due to the technical problems at ISOLDE the physics program had to be delayed. All the experiments which were supposed to run before August 10 have been contacted in this matter. As of August 10 the physics schedule remains unchanged.

AOB:
- The physics group meeting was followed by a seminar of Christophe Sotty on “Investigation of the Tilted Foils Technique (TFT) to polarize radioactive beams” https://indico.cern.ch/event/327405/.
- Next PG meeting will take place at the usual place and time and it will be followed by the seminar of Akira Miyazaki on “Direct measurement of the positronium hyperfine interval using milimiter waves” https://indico.cern.ch/event/323085/.

Minutes taken by MS