Beam Delivery Report

A daily (more or less) report on beam delivery at TRIUMF, and part of the Beam Delivery group's Guide for Experimenters.

18:35, 14 April 2009 (PDT)

BL1A startup didn't go as planned last night because of a problem with the ISIS slits. As a result, today was an impromptu maintenance day in the hopes of getting the things requiring vault access out of the way. We've restored 40 µA to ISAC and will run BL2A as the sole user overnight, then shut down for an ISIS filament change tomorrow morning. Protons may be available by midnight or so tomorrow; the plan is to work on BL1A and machine tuning until Thursday morning, then bring ISAC back online as scheduled.

At ISAC, stable beam is being tuned through the TIGRESS chamber while the low-energy section is scaled to 22.44 keV for ¹¹Be. We'll switch over to RIB this evening, then run ¹¹Be to TIGRESS overnight. There has been a request to switch to ²³Na just before the proton beam goes off tomorrow morning; ISAC Ops will coordinate this with TIGRESS and the Main Control Room. – Morton

22:33, 10 April 2009 (PDT) – EASTER WEEKEND UPDATE

PIF is finished for the time being, and the BL1A shielding blocks have been restored. Otherwise, everything is as it was yesterday. TIGRESS will continue to run at ISAC until Monday evening, at which point BL1A startup will begin.

For future reference: We probably won't issue updates on weekends and holidays unless something happens that would affect beam delivery. Current operating conditions can be inferred from the MCR and ISAC logs. – Morton

13:49, 9 April 2009 (PDT) – EASTER WEEKEND UPDATE

PIF is continuing at < 1µA while 40 µA go to ISAC for setup of the next experiment. Shielding blocks are still being replaced on BL1A with the goal of bringing beam into the Meson Hall Monday night. BL1A startup is scheduled to begin 20:30 Monday and continue during Tuesday's day shift. Meson Hall channel rates will be needed.

TIGRESS will take ¹⁰Be over the weekend (experiment S1209). The mass change and TRILIS setup are complete, with the beam parked on IMS:FC14. The accelerator tune to TIGRESS is still being worked on, but we should be able to switch over to RIB this afternoon. S1209 will continue until 20:30 Monday.

We're not scheduled to deliver RIB during BL1A startup, so BL2A will be limited to 20 µA overnight Monday. BL2A will go off completely by 07:00 Tuesday for Target Hall work. It should be available again by 14:30. – Morton

15:04, 8 April 2009 (PDT)

The cyclotron is currently delivering 40 µA to ISAC and < 1 µA to PIF. This will continue over the weekend. The BL1A shielding blocks are being put back in the hopes of bringing BL1A online Monday night.

At ISAC, ¹¹Be is still going to β-NMR. They'll run until tomorrow morning, at which point we'll start tuning ¹⁰Be for TIGRESS. Sophia and Marco are tuning ²⁰Ne through the ISAC-II linac to TIGRESS in preparation for the switch to RIB tomorrow. TIGRESS will run until BL1A startup on Monday evening. – Morton

22:29, 7 April 2009 (PDT)

In case you're wondering: We're trying to come up with a way to give an overview of the current and near-term state of beam delivery at the lab. The ISAC and MCR logs are great for record-keeping, but they're not well-suited to looks into the future. What we want to do is provide staff and experimenters with a sort of "weather report" for the next few days so that they know not only what's going on, but what we're hoping to accomplish from a beam delivery standpoint.

The format will change as we figure out what we actually need to post. In the meantime, feel free to forward comments. – Morton

21:56, 7 April 2009 (PDT)

Right now, the cyclotron is delivering 40 µA to ISAC and < 1 µA to PIF. There's no maintenance scheduled for tomorrow, so things should continue like this through the weekend.

At ISAC, ¹¹Be is being delivered to β-NMR for a polarizer test. Sophia is setting up the accelerators with ²⁰Ne for this weekend's TIGRESS ¹⁰Be run. Tomorrow should be more of the same, with stable beam tuning through the TIGRESS vacuum chamber in the afternoon or evening. We'll switch to delivering ¹⁰Be to TIGRESS on Thursday. – Morton