Minutes of the ISOLDE Physics Group Meeting, January 17^th 2018

There were no comments to the minutes of the last ISOLDE PGM.

New staff

• A number of new members join the ISOLDE group beginning of this year: Ronald Garcia-Ruiz as research fellow, Simon Sels and Joona Konki as applied fellows and Jared Croese as PhD student.
• Two CERN technicians are partially payed by ISOLDE and can be used for some work by ISOLDE users (mechanical work, cryogenics etc.). They will be introduced in one of the following meetings.

Technical news

• HRS/GPS/REX/HIE-ISOLDE
• The new HRS modulators for the HV pulsing on proton impact are being tested. The GPS will remain on the old modulators, which means that the HV swapping will no longer be possible, because the new system will have a new software.
• The beam optimizer does not work anymore, it is important to put it back in operation. The sweeper software would also be very useful for the SSP collections and more.

• Targets
• The first target transport has occurred and maintenance of the class A area will begin next week.  

Physics and schedule

• The 2018 physics run will being April 9^th. Protons will be available a bit earlier for testing the modulators.
• The beam requests should be returned by February 5^th. The April-June period will be dedicated to low-energy physics, with HIE-ISOLDE starting up afterwards, depending on the outcome of the commissioning work. The HIE-ISOLDE run might be organized in two blocks with low-energy in between (still to be decided). The proton stop is so far scheduled for November 12^th.
• There will be a busy INTC session on February 7^th, with 15 INTC documents from ISOLDE, not counting LOIs.

Safety

• The hand-foot monitor now requires acknowledging the access card before use. This makes the use of a safety feature dependent on having the card and, in case of contamination, makes it certain that the card/pocket is contaminated too. This new procedure should be critically reviewed.
• It is now necessary to wear the CERN access card in plain view while on CERN premises. So far no coercive action has been taken, but the change has been published in the bulletin (note that no  circular was sent to the CERN users/staff).
• There will be a full day of power cuts on Saturday, January 27^th.

AOB

• The DG address took place on Monday. ISOLDE was mentioned among others.
• The Economat (cupboard with general office supplies) will be maintained for some limited supplies, but the interested users should send an e-mail to Gerda with the type of products of interest.

Seminar

• The meeting was not followed by a seminar.

The next PG meeting will take place on Wednesday, January 31^st, at 14:00 in the ISOLDE visitors’ room (26-1-022). It will be followed by the seminar of Sebastian Rothe from CERN, with the title “Astatine - the rarest element on Earth: From laser spectroscopy to fundamental atomic properties”.

Minutes taken by VM