Liquid-Hydrogen System
Last week, the absorber, condenser and associated pipe work were cooled to operating temperature. Over the weekend, Josef Boehm, Mark Tucker and Phil Warburton brought the H2 liquefaction system into operation. Liquid is now being condensed steadily and the absorber fill has begun. It is estimated that around 1.5 l of liquid has been accumulated so far. The status (“shifter” and “expert” panels) is shown below.
This is an important step! The LH2-fill rate is a little slower than expected making it necessary to revise the block-diagram run plan. The revised plan will be presented at tomorrow’s Operations Meeting. The likelihood is that it will be necessary to advance “LH2 empty” data taking to exploit the time during which the absorber is filling.
Data Taking: Cycle 2017/02
Under the leadership of Paolo Franchini, MOM for the first part of the Cycle, the experiment has been brought into operation. The readout has been tested successfully. Melissa Uchida has devised, and implemented, the waveguide-swaps for the tracker. A first re-calibration of the VLPCs has been carried out, a second calibration will take place today. Over the weekend, David Adey refreshed the spare AFE boards; the boards are “live spares” for the tracker readout. Finally, Alan Bross and Sandor Feher have brought the spectrometer solenoids up. The magnets have been run at the currents required for the first configuration that will be used in the Cycle.
Decay Solenoid
The decay solenoid has been recommissioned. It has been shown to be operational. At present there is a gremlin in the interlock chain that defeats remote operation. The fault is being addressed.
Conferences: COOL17 and NuFACT17
The new material presented at the recent video conferences has been finalised. MICE talks at COOL17 (Dimitrije Maletic, Melissa Uchida) will take place at COOL today. The contributions to NuFact (Francois Drielsma, Chris Hunt, John Nugent and Jaroslaw Pasternak) will follow next week.