Minutes from the ISOLDE Physics Group meeting on October 16, 2014

No comments on the minutes for the meetings of October8^th .

Technical news

GPS

• GPS run was extended until Monday morning to take advantage of the longer repair time at HRS.
  
  • IS525 ¹¹Li experiment ran until Sunday morning.
  • Rare earth collections at GLM and GHM until Sunday afternoon followed by target cool down before HRS intervention
• The Ta-foil target for IS525 performed well
  
  • A few trips in the transfer line heating at the beginning.
  • ¹¹Li yield stayed around 1000 cps in the LA1 beta detectors until the end of the run.
• Target 518, CaO, installed on Monday for ^31,32Ar production.
  
  • There was a problem clamping the new target in. Traced back to the electro-valve of the pressurized air tube providing pressure to the piston. Fixed now.
  • There are no immediate plans to exchange the platform piston (as in HRS) since it has not failed yet.
  • There is a backup target ready in case current one breaks.
• Scanner 482 does not react to users commands.
  
  • Exchange planned for last week, but it was not possible due to a missing o-ring.
  •  It has been now been postponed until November or the winter shutdown if the intervention is more complicated than anticipated
•  IS577 users report a mismatched in the numbers between Tape Station and IDS that could be due to some problems with RIB transmission into IDS. It might be connected with the new auto tuning program that they used with stable Ar with Tim Giles and his student Jake.
• Faraday cup FC68 was reported to be not working by users, it started working again a few hours later

HRS

• Intervention to exchange the broken piston to the new commercial replacement happened on Monday.
  
  • As in previous years the commercial pistons will now be removed at the end of the year, every year.
  • The piston will be fitted with a spherical tip to ensure it can be realigned when coupling the target.
  • The potentiometer used to control the target coupling was showing problems. Replaced Tuesday afternoon.
• Target 515, UC_x­, now installed and heated. Ready for physics runs next week.
• The Cathi Fellow that wrote the separator software has been re-hired. He’s currently working on the reliability problems observed earlier this year.
• Pressure air leak in faraday cup FC680 (in front of ISCOOL) reported. Fixed now.

RILIS                                                  

• The RILIS was used for IS525 to increase ¹¹Li yield by 50%.
  
  • RILIS was operated in ‘on call’ mode. In this mode operators come periodically to change dyes and optimize lasers.
  • The 3^rd pump laser broke on Monday, the UPS is the main suspect of the problems.
  • The RILIS team is negotiating to borrow a new spare from the supplier company.
  • The replacement laser will arrive in week 46.
• Most of the scheduled physics runs are unaffected, as they can be run with dye laser schemes.

Safety

• The courses needed to complete the training for local safety contacts of permanent experiments are being organized. All locals should take the ISOLDE electrical safety training – dates to be announced.
• The practical RP course is adding a new module on how to open safety a vacuum chamber.
• Please keep the ISOLDE SAS doors closed !
• The fence around the west entrance tourniquet will be installed in the coming days.

IS577 at IDS

• The goal of the experiment is to measure the ³¹Ar beta delayed p, 2p, and 3p emission
  
  • The states populated in the different proton emission branches play a role in the astrophysical rp-process. Aim to study proton-gamma branches from levels in 30S near the proton threshold.
• The experiment runs with low heating settings to protect the CaO target.
• 1 to 1.5 ³¹Ar decays/s observed with 70% transmission at IDS. Contaminations of ^16,17N in molecular form observed for less produced cases.

Schedule

• The GPS and HRS schedule is presently fixed through November 15^th. If you did not get the schedule, please contact Magda. 

AOB

There will be a short ISOLDE seminar on Friday at 13.30 by S. Lahirli from VECC, Kolkata on Production yields using  PbBi targets.

The meeting was followed by a seminar by C. Fahlander on the “Search for Superheavy Nuclei”

The next meeting will take place at the same time Thursday next week (2pm, 23^th October 2014). The seminar by A.M. Lima Lopes has been postponed until Friday 2:30 pm

Minutes taken by MMF and MS