Minutes of the ISOLDE Physics Group Meeting, April 12^th 2017

The KU Leuven affiliation of Victoria Escalona was added to the minutes of the previous meeting.

Technical news

• ISOLDE/REX

• The PSB is back on track after a possible 1-week delay was being considered.
• The protons will be delivered to ISOLDE next week. Next Friday the SEM grid will be installed, while next week the necessary tuning will be performed.
• During the last week a lot of attention was dedicated to REX. All the machine is operational until the 9-gap accelerator. Some small problems with the 9-gap will be fixed tomorrow. So far the beam was transported until behind the REX RFQ.
• The EBIS cathode was turned on after the week-end, the new one is still slightly bent but is operational. Some baking is required.
• The DSO patrolled ISOLDE and the beam permit for the facility will be signed through EDMS before Thursday evening (the EDMS signature system is used this year for the first time).
• The cycling of the GPS magnet is now a bit faster than at the beginning of the year, but still somewhat slower than last year. The beam-position-reproducibility problems reported at the end of last year are now not observed anymore.
• ISCOOL worked fine at 60 kV, even in bunched mode.
• RILIS
• The work on silicon ionization continued, moving to the two-photon excitation scheme. The two-photon excitation was observed, but only the broad-band component resulting from two photons travelling in the same direction. The Doppler-free component resulting from two counter-propagating photons could not be distinguished from the broad-band background. A narrow-band laser beam (providing higher spectral brightness) would be required to achieve this, but none was available for this test.
• The tests are continuing today, but will switch to the selenium scheme when the SEM grid is being installed.
• Targets
• The CaO target for the argon run still requires some outgassing. It will be installed next Wednesday.

Safety

• There is an ongoing review of some safety files of fixed installations, some experiments might be asked for clarifications in the near future. COLLAPS reported that they were already contacted concerning their safety file.

Physics and schedule

• After the new target is installed, IDS and VITO will be sharing the beam over the week-end (end of next week).
• The 8:45 morning meetings to check-up on the status of the machine and experiments will recommence.
• It is not clear whether there will be a piquet service available next week.
• The VITO team are currently preparing their experiment.
• The ENSAR2 decision will be soon communicated to the different requestors.

Visits

• There are no big groups visiting ISOLDE in the near future, only individual visits are scheduled.
• On April 20^th a big group from Leuven will visit the facility.

Seminar

• The meeting was not followed by a seminar.

The next PG meeting will take place on Wednesday, April 19^th, at 14:00. It will be followed by the seminar of Angela Bracco from INFN, Milano, on "Study of giant resonances: selected topics."

Minutes taken by VM