1. Technical news and physics and schedule:

· The collaboration looking for beta-delayed fission in francium continued last week with laser-ionization studies of astatine (using the same ThC target), performed jointly with the RILIS team. The outcome from the measurements so far is very positive (even 194 and 196At were observed).

· Solid-state experiments are taking place at the GLM line since last Friday. Yttrium target with a hot-plasma (YO-HP) ion source is in use in order to produce Se, Ge, Cr and Co beams. Part of the physics program got very good and relatively clean beams. Problems with HV fluctuations and trips and contaminations disturbed part of the beams (but further tuning of the ion source allowed improving the situation and reaching the physics goals).

· High-voltage problems appeared last week on GPS. There was a problem with the recovery time of HT2, but also the voltage seemed to be very unstable (0.5-1kV). Investigation is ongoing. HT1 had problems with its modulator, but that was replaced by Jan Schipper and now the power supply is operational.

· The engineers are looking for a solution preventing the “dance of valves” - self triggering of vacuum valves at the GLM beam. The local pressure thresholds have been raised. In the future the problematic valve will be changed.

· The radioactivity in the target area seems to disturb the new picoammeters, which sometimes show “status undefined”, but they recover after a reset (call the operator if this occurs again). An automatic reset is being implemented and the picoammeters will be brought outside the separator area.

· Occasionally scanners also behave unexpectedly - a restart of the control PC helps.

· Cryo pumping has been started and the REX linac is currently under high vacuum. REX delivered beam to MINIBALL, where successful commissioning of the T-REX chamber for Coulex experiments, as well as tests of electron detection have been conducted.

· Reminder: Weekly schedule and details of each target (with mass markers, users and requested beams, etc) are available on the web.

2.Safety

· New software for the ISOLDE radiation monitors is now in place. We will organize an introduction session to interested members of the local group after the ARIS conference.

· Shipping of many radioactive samples went quickly this week, following the agreement recently established with RP.

· Fire detectors in the ISOLDE buildings have been replaced.

3. Seminars:

· Francesca Zocca (BE-BI) presented “Ongoing developments on HIE-ISOLDE beam instrumentation”.

· On June 8-th there will be a talk by Klaus Blaum (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik - Heidelberg) on “Precision Penning Trap Experiments with Stored and Cooled Exotic Ions”.

· For more information and links to the slides please visit the ISOLDE - seminars page.

Minutes by DTY