Minutes from REX meeting 2004-07-28

 

Present: Pierre Delahaye, Mats Lindroos (chair), Romain Savreux, Richard Scrivens, Thomas Sieber, Luis Fraile, Fredrik Wenander

 

 

 

General issues

 

* After the minutes have been published a reminder with link should be sent to the following email lists:

            ab-dep-is-team (AB-ISOLDE Team)

isolde-physics-group@listbox4.cern.ch

miniball@mpi-hd.mpg.de

 

* The budget planning for next year should start:

            Priorities set by REX team

            Input from Nicolas David, David Porret, Sophie Meunier, RF group etc..

           

* Thomas will produce a priority list for spare parts and necessary work, presented in August. From this, a shopping list (spares and development) adding up to 50 kCHF should be extracted and provided to P. Butler until the end of the summer.

 

* The question was raised if some money from the Belgium application on energy upgrade could be redistributed to consolidate already existing machine and buy spare parts.

 

* The board for the REX control technician is the 16/8-2004.

 

* The XP upgrade is almost finished. The EBIS NT FEC runs once again XP. The VME-GFAS problem still remains, but the system is operational with the quickfix by Joakim Cederkall. It remains to upgrade the EBIS and one of the control room console computers.

 

* The memory problem with the beam diagnostics FEC was solved by Ivan Deloose. Preliminary test indicates a stable operation. Thorough tests will be performed by Pierre and Fredrik.

 

* An updated version of the REX homepage is coming together. A final version should be released in the end of August. Jennifer Weterings carries out most of the editing. Still missing parts:

            Motivation (Fredrik)

            Linac part (Thomas)

 

* The new ISOLDE operator begins the 1s of Oct. His name is Magnus Eriksson.

 

* The level of support from the vacuum group was discussed. This question and the responsibility will be raised with the vacuum group leader.

 

* A meeting about the 17F run has been held. Different approaches were discussed, and it was concluded that the AlF solution is not viable due to the strong contamination of CO2 from the plasma ion source. A possible molecule could be LaF, however, the efficiency inside the EBIS remains unclear. Contaminations in the ISOLDE mass spectrum should be checked. Alternatively, 17F without carrier could be considered, as the REX beam will anyway be contaminated by 17O from the residual gas inside the EBIS. The ~100 pA contamination of 17O from the ISOLDE target can be handled with less efficiency in the REXTRAP. To separate 17F from 17O a stripping foil in front of the last bending magnet in the REX Linac has to be employed, and the 17F9+ be selected. The practicalities (energy loss, type, mounting) of the stripping foil has to be solved. Luis should contact the spokesperson for the experiment.

 

 

 

REXTRAP

 

* Pierre reported on the progress of his stab of summer students.

 

* Romain looks into the new Labview based control system for the REXTRAP. He and Pierre will go to GSI in September. He should also interact with Chabouh Yazidjian who knows the ISOLTRAP control system. The control system should be changed during next shutdown. The effort is big and careful debugging needed. Romain Savreux should be around until the migration is complete. Romain’s salary should be allocated for in the next year’s budget.

 

* Lisa produces an A/q- spectrum with restgas contaminations that should be published on the REX homepage and can be used as a guideline for which A/q-values that are uncontaminated. Thereafter she should measure the x-ray background from the Linac.

 

* Anne should simulate different mass resolving techniques inside the trap using SIMION.

 

* The ‘new’ VME is still working without interruption. The ion source sparking has temporarily been cured.

 

* Tests of charge exchange will be continued when noble gas beam is available from ISOLDE.

 

* The scintillator tube to be mounted in the REX mass separator was broken at installation. A replacement tube is searched for by Luis. If this can not be found, Pierre should ask if maybe P. Butler could pay for a new tube.

 

 

 

REXEBIS

 

* The implementation of the slow extraction from the EBIS has yet not been carried out. Joakim Cederkall estimated it would take one week to implement it. Fredrik will ask him for a price offer. The slow extraction may also be limited to 300 us by the 200 MHz Dressler amplifier due to a limited duty cycle. Thomas will check this.

 

* The 60 kV HT supply for the EBIS has been repaired by FuG Electronics Germany. The supply should be picked up by Munich driver on Friday, for delivery to CERN on Monday. Nicolas David installs it on Monday/Tuesday. The cost for the repair was 2900 euro. P Butler kindly offered to pay.

 

* Lars, the summer student of Fredrik, is continuing the calculation of the theoretical mass spectrum. It should result in a programme that can be used by the users to predict absolute residual gas contaminations for different EBIS conditions (breeding time, pressure etc).

 

* The EBIS needs LqHe filling on this Sun evening or Mon morning. Pierre will take care of this.

 

* A request of oil change/repair of the mobile roughing pump for REX has been sent to the vacuum group. The responsibility and level of support is unclear, so the task is pending.

 

* Fredrik will be absent 30/7 to 2/8 for a visit to the Manne Siegbahn Laboratory in Stockholm to discuss EBIS related issues, doctoral students, and development work.

 

 

 

 

LINAC and Miniball

 

* Berdermann will arrive on Friday 30/7 and repair the 200 MHz amplifier over the weekend.

 

* Thomas has some ideas how to produce 3 MeV/u without with the currently available RF power of the 200 MHz amplifier. The 7-gap resonators will still operate at a bunching phase but at a raised power level. Calculations to check this before a possible test next week are on the way.

 

* The Munich modules for adjusting amplitude and phase do not work according to their specifications. If the amplitude is varied also the phase changes, which should not be the case and explains our scaling problems in the past. Either Munich or CERN rebuilds the in total 10 modules for around 10 kCHF.

 

* The two broken roughing pumps for the MINIBALL can not be cared for by the vacuum group. An external company should do the job.

Contact Service 40-30, tel 164210, bat 927-R-T26

 

* Thomas mentioned that he still needs some input from the experimental/physicists side to specify the REX upgrade plans towards our russian colleagues. Decisions about energy variability etc. shall be made now in September.

 

* Thomas is absent one week for the LINAC conference, leaving 16/8. Matteo Pasini replaces him.

 

 

Minutes taken by Fredrik Wenander