Chairman: Karsten Risager

Scientific Secretary: Mats Lindroos

Present: Juha Äystö, Peter Butler (chair), Luis Fraile, Roland Garoby, Mark Huyse, Jacques Lettry, Mats Lindroos, Helge Ravn

1. Minutes of last meeting

The minutes from the last meeting 30 September 2003 were approved.

The chairman remarks that a report from the ISOLDE upgrade group to the INTC  has been requested. The meeting will be held earlier in the year to allow for this.

2. Status of REX-ISOLDE upgrade

Peter Butler stated that it was not possible today—considering the available funds for Nuclear Physics in UK— for the British community to ask for a grant to fund the next REX upgrade to 4 MeV/u.

Mark Huyse reported on the proposal submitted by the IKS-KU Leuven group for the upgrade of the energy of REX-ISOLDE. The proposal got very good referee feed back but was not financed within the special program for investment this year. However, the upgrade of REX remains a high priority for the group and there is a standing request for money for investments at CERN. The priority for the coming year is to ask for the REX upgrade. The result will be known by the end of April.

Mats Lindroos told the meeting that the four REX staff posts have been filled and that they all started there work at REX-ISOLDE. A regular meeting is held every week on Wednesdays at 16:00 in 6 2-008 to coordinate the operation and transformation of REX-ISOLDE experiment to a CERN facility. Minutes from these meetings are available at http://isolde-consolidation.web.cern.ch/isolde-consolidation/REX-integration/REX-integration.htm. A solution for the REX control system has been identified and discussions on how to implement it are in progress. The development program and schedule from 1 April to 15 May (physics start) will be decided after input from the upgrade-group (see point 7).

3. Proton beam upgrades to 2010 and status of LINAC4 and the SPL

Roland Garoby reported that the R&Don a new injector for the PS Booster, linac 4, is making good progress with substantial support from ISTC. Simulation work at the AB department has shown that the booster intensity can be increased with the requested factor of 2 using linac 4. The duty factor of the PS Booster can also be improved using a  0.9 second super cycle. These two action toegther should result in a total intensity increase which comes close to the upper limit (Radition Protection)  of 10 microAmps for ISOLDE. The present plan is to get an approval for linac 4 in 2007 which would render it operational for 2010. The plan for SPL is to have the approval by 2008 so that it can be operational 2014.

4. REX-STAR

Mats Lindroos explained that Heinz Haas has worked as a consultant in the AB OP group for two months working on a plan for installing an ECR (phoenix type) source at ISOLDE that can supply highly charged ions for both REX ISOLDE, a high voltage platform and possibly for ISOLTRAP. The solution proposed (see file below) by Heinz does not require the move, or removal, of any existing experiment, it is compatible with the present ISOLDE experiments lay-out and it permits extraction of highly charged ions for the platform (and possibly ISOLTRAP) from the EBIS as well. The AB OP group will make a engineering and cost study in 2004 and report back to the upgrade group in September 2004.

5. Status of EURISOL design study

The EURISOL writing committee will meet for the last time in Italy 25-28 February to finalize the proposal. The proposal will be taken to Brussel to be submitted at the EU commission headquarters  Tuesday 2 March by a member of the committee. The proposal will be made available for the participants as soon as possible over the web site (http://www.eurisol-ds.lnl.infn.it/).

The level of CERN participation has been agreed with the AB and PH departments and has been submitted (in memo form) for consideration by the CERN  management.

6. Status of TDR

The upgrade committee will attempt to submit a Technical Design Report (or at least a Conceptual Design Report) for the required upgrade of ISOLDE to handle 10 microAmps of primary proton beam at 1.4 GeV before the "COGNE" meeting in Villar, september 2004. Thomas Nilsson is at present discussing the possibility of coming as project associate to CERN to the author and edit such a report.

7. Priorities for target, ion source & REX development

Luis Fraile, the new ISOLDE physics coordinator, presented a new priority list for ISOLDE target and ion source R&D. The list is simply a summary of all ideas and requests priorities by the level of support through ISOLDE proposals and LoIs. The list also includes requested REX development, in particular for the low energy part of REX. The committee approved the priority list and asked Luis to add local contact person and status for each item.

The committee also agreed on a common procedure for prioritizing development work at the ISOLDE facility:

• The physics coordinator has 30 shifts in reserve to schedule during the running period for development at ISOLDE.
• The users interested, or requesting new developments  should contact the physics coordinator (Luis Fraile), the technical coordinator (Mats Lindroos) and the head of the ATB section responsible for ISOLDE target and ion sources (Jacques Lettry). An e-mail with a copy to all three is a good starting point.
• Jacques Lettry will continue to organize and chair the bi-weekly target meetings. The idea with the meetings is to bring together all those interested in developments at ISOLDE, to organize the work and present the results.
• Luis Fraile will establish and keep up-to-date a list of target and ion source R&D at ISOLDE. First priority for approved experiments that are waiting for R&D to run, second priority for LoI's and  experiments that can run with existing target&ion source systems and third priority for other R&D. Name of the ISOLDE responsible and a comment on status will be added as soon as possible.
• All possible additional contributions, both in material and man-power, from the Users are always welcome. It will speed up the development work and ease the use at the experiment of the final product.

8. AOB

9. Next meeting

The next meeting of the upgrade group will take place in autumn 2004 in connection with the INTC meeting.

Minutes by Mats Lindroos