Minutes of GUI meeting 17th November 2009

Chairman:  Yorick Blumenfeld

Scientific secretary:  Thierry Stora

Present: Jonathan Billowes, Yorick Blumenfeld,  Alex Herlert,  Karsten Riisager, Thierry Stora, Matteo Pasini (for point 2), Pascal Sortais (for point 3), Moumita Maiti (for point 4)

Excused: Jacques Lettry, Mats Lindroos, Roberto Losito, Thomas Otto, Piet van Duppen, Mark Huyse, Yacine Kadi, Klaus Blaum, Maria Garcia Borge, Peter Butler, Richard Catherall, Patricia Roussel Chomaz.

1. Minutes of last meeting (YB)

The minutes from the last meeting were approved with the following amendment: Karsten Riisager was not present.

2. Status of HIE ISOLDE and views for the future (Mateo Pasini)

Mateo replaced Yacine Kadi and reported (see slides below) on the status of the HIE-ISOLDE project, more particularly on the HIE-LINAC Work Packages. Mateo reminded the committee about the staged Upgrade of the LINAC, and the good progresses on the QWR, High-Beta RF cavities prototyping. Tests are foreseen at TRIUMF to probe quality factor and RF injection before end of 2009, and the cryomodule detailed design will progress as soon as the required manpower becomes available. A test stand is prepared at CERN for the cavities first trimester 2010, and the complete configuration will be tested before end of 2010.

The designs of the low-beta cryomodules for low energy beams useful for astrophysics have low priority in the project and have been postponed.

Since HIE-ISOLDE is now an approved project, material and manpower resources are expected to become available within the different groups at CERN, ie for ventilation, cryogenics, water circuits, etc.

Some shielding studies must be carried out to properly integrate shielding issues with 900 keV X-Rays coming from the RF structures of the LINAC.

3. New 1+ ECR ion source for RIB (Pascal Sortais, LPSC Grenoble)

Pascal introduced  (see slides below) recent developments on 1+ECR based on compact 2.45GHz, l/4 RF cavities first developed as plasma sources. The source has been optimized to have efficient RF coupling, is compact, and plasma can be easily ignited. Low power SMA cables can be used to couple some Watts of RF power. Extraction hole of 0.3mm diameter has been used so far. It is proposed to use. It is proposed to develop a new version equipped with a quartz plasma chamber to ionize CO and CO2 molecular beams to deliver Oxygen radioactive ion beams. This development will take place in collaboration with LPSC and Pekka Suominen at CERN.

4. Plans for Nuclear Chemistry at ISOLDE (Moumita Maiti, SINP Kolkata)

Moumita presented (see slides below) plans for performing chemical separation of radioisotopes present in irradiated materials, for instance Pb/Bi or Hg samples. This is of interest for isotope harvesting, for instance for medical and pharmaceutical applications. Other aspects of future collaboration will be the preparation of enriched long-lived targets, by irradiation of suitable materials and subsequent chemical separation, to be used during off-line beam time. A first beam of interest is 163Ho.

 

5. Priorities for target and ion source development (Alex Herlert & Thierry Stora)

Thierry reported on the last TISD (see slides below) run to perform the characterization of the neutrons produced by the ISOLDE converter. This was doned in combination with a new target material, BeO, for the production of 6He beams. Higher yields and not optimally tuned ion source delivered record yields of 6He, higher than the UCx targets. This reaction scheme, (n,alpha) and (n,X) could be used for other isotope productions, such as 30Si(n,alpha)27Mg of interest for solid state physics. A large collaboration from different institutes participated in the experiment, and results were also of great use for neutrino physics, validating the production of the antineutrino emitting ion (6He).

Alex reported on the new requests for beam developments. This is the suppression of 27Al for 27Na beams to be delivered at REX-ISOLDE (priority 2), and the suppression of CO2 contaminants for 44Ar beams also at REX-ISOLDE (priority 1).

The priorities for beam development were sorted by the committee as the following:

142Sm and 140Nd by testing RILIS in low work function cavities to suppress isobaric contaminants.

12Be by testing thin Ta foils on frames.

Tests of High-Density uranium carbide targets which hopefully should be imported from Russia.

Test of the LIST Trap.

6. AOB

n.a.

7. Next meeting

Date will be communicated in a forthcoming Email.

Minutes by Thierry Stora