Minutes of the REX integration meeting on Wednesday, 03.03.2004

Participants: Mats Lindroos (chair), Pierre Delahaye, Fredrik Wenander, Thomas Sieber,

Luis Fraile, Erwin Siesling

1. Miscellaneous

- The REX operating team brought up once more that during the REX experiments the transport and optimization of the beam from the ISOLDE target to REXTRAP should be in the responsibility of the ISOLDE operators. The reason for this is the lack of manpower at REX as well as the ISOLDE operators having more experience (faster beam tuning). Mats agrees in principle with that and will try to find a solution with the ISOLDE operators. This point will also be discussed during the meeting about REX operation next week.

- There is once more the strong demand from CERN side that the responsible people at REX shall divide the workload of the project into work packages according to the CERN EVPM system. Mats will provide a scheme next week, which will be taken by Fredrik, Thomas and Pierre as a basis for this division.

- Concerning the support from MSL for the EBIS development, the procedure should be that MSL writes an application for a technician post for one year to the Swedish research council. This application will be supported by CERN (Mats). Mats will contact Leif Liljeby for this.

2. Control system

- The money for the subsistence of Stephan Emhofer has been allocated in the collaboration budget. Furthermore the collaboration provides 200 kCHF for the REX control system, starting in 2005 for 4 years. The idea is to use this money to finance a half or full position in the control group. If this works out, we hope that the control group can start working on the REX control system in summer this year.

- The migration of the ISOLDE FECs to Windows XP is still a problem. Frank Locci and Gerrit Jan Fokker managed to upgrade the system partially, the computer for the scanners is running now under XP. Concerning the upgrade of the REX FECs Mats has contacted Ivan Deloose and J. Cederkall, trying to find out what payment they demand for that work. For security reasons and most of all to be in time for the startup of REX (see below) the upgrade must be finished until beginning of April.

3. Startup of REX, schedule of first test operation

- The EBIS will run not before 8. April.

- The new diagnostic boxes will be built in the REX beamline by the end of march. There is some delay because Jacques Pier-Amory is making a break, working in between on the cage for the REXTRAP test ion source.

- The conditioning of the new 200 MHz resonator and the work on the low level rf-system will most likely take until beginning of April. From that moment Thomas will try to get a residual gas beam from time to time when there is a break in the charge breeder tests.

- For the setup of the accelerator and for the beam optimization at 3 MeV/u to the second beamline, Thomas needs a preparation time of at least 2 weeks before the experiment (in May) and 3 weeks in total.

- If the LINAC test source is working better with the new diagnostic boxes, there is the chance that the accelerator tests are to some extend independent from the EBIS.

- Concerning the test of the injection and charge breeding of the AlF and the SeCO molecules, Mats proposed that the physicists who will run these experiments come to ISOLDE and participate in the tests (end of April). After the molecule tests there will be a short test (~2 days) for the charge breeding of Li.

- Since the alignment of the beam transport from Trap to EBIS is still planned to be checked with beam, some additional time in April must be reserved for this.

- Luis will make a schedule for the REX test operation and send it around by the beginning of next week.

4. EBIS

- Fredrik has send a gate valve of the EBIS for repair. It will be back by the end of march. Costs for repair 2100 CHF.

- EBIS baking will not be finished this week (Þ next week).

- David Porret has started to work on the REX vacuum system (interlocks).

- Fredrik sees a general problem with the protection of the power supplies and instruments of EBIS and Trap. Many of them have no interlocks for vacuum or sparking protection. For example the rf-generator of the Trap recently broke again due to high voltage sparks in the test source.

5. Alignment

- Erwin Siesling tries to recover data from Claude Chollet to reconstruct how the alignment has been done and to find the coordinates of the reference points at ISOLDE and in particular at REX.

- Fredrik wants to have a written general report about the alignment at REX. It is not yet clear who shall write it.

- Erwin was trying to get support from the alignment group. His main problem is that the way Claude did the alignment does not fit to the standard alignment procedures at CERN. He is also planning to buy a new Theodolite which he wants to discuss with the alignment group to be at least compatible with their instrumentation.

6. REXTRAP

- There are still fluctuations in the beam from the test source due to high voltage breakdowns. A power controller shall be installed there.

- A new cage for the test source is at the moment designed by Jacques Pier-Amory.

- The student who will do some measurements on the trap will arrive next week.

Minutes by Thomas