Collider-Accelerator Department
THE PARTICLE POST
April 2000
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Collider-Accelerator Department
THE PARTICLE POST April 2000 |
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It has been a long and very busy 7.5 months since the end of the RHIC engineering run last summer. The entire department has been involved in an outstanding effort to systematically correct and test out all the system components and support the construction of the 4 experiments. As the Particle Post goes to press we can already see the results from the extraordinary effort. Hopefully by the next edition we can celebrate the acceleration of both beams to 70 GeV and beam collisions.
The AGS high-energy physics program completed the E821 run, muon g-2 experiment, in grand style. E821 collected 7 billion positron events that will yield an anomalous magnetic moment accuracy of 0.5 parts per million. The AGS established a new fast extracted beam intensity record of consistently delivering 60 tera-protons per pulse. E821 will be back next year, along with E949, the rare kaon decay experiment.
With the beginning of spring comes a season of reviews. The SNS , BAF and the 70 MeV Cyclotron projects underwent reviews by DOE Basic Energy Sciences, NASA and DOE Nuclear Energy respectively. The results were excellent grades for all. Congratulations to all involved. At the end of March, the RHIC program underwent a review by DOE Nuclear Physics and in April DOE High Energy Physics will review the high energy program. Results should be available for the next issue. The Integrated Safety Management (ISM) pre-visit occurs on 4/ 11-13 and the full review from 5/1-12.
The AGS fixed target program experiments, MECO (E940) and KOPIO (E926), have reached the final hurdle for construction and operations approval by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF Science Board will be acting soon on the request to approve funding and start of construction.
Derek Lowenstein
Harvey Lotko retired on March 31, 2000 ending 43 years of service to BNL. We all wish him well and will miss him.
Paul Sparrow will assume Harvey's responsibilities and brings over thirty years of BNL experience to the job. We are very pleased that Paul is with us and look forward to working with him.
Kerry Mirabella joined Mike Nekulak's project management staff to support the SNS effort at C-A. Keri is a seasoned professional who will provide strong assistance to all those involved with this project. We are pleased that Keri has joined us and wish her success.
Budget Trim # 3 is underway. This budget exercise will help us adjust our labor budgets to the actual cost for the last five months and better ascertain where we stand financially across all programs.
In the next week or two a desk reference of all accounts for the C-A Department and the Superconducting magnet Division will be made available for the Group Leaders, Secretaries and Management. This reference document will be updated at least twice during the fiscal year or more frequently if necessary. Stephanie Lamontagne and Marie Gavin have been working on this , not so easy exercise, and we appreciate their efforts. The Desk Reference includes a chart of accounts by program, and in numerical order. The reference gives signature authorization and contains the DOE Budget and reporting classifications that are require for foreign travel and other documents.
A request was made to Purchasing to provide credit card activity by group leader. This was requested by the group leaders so they can review what is being purchased and by whom. The credit cards are a very successful tool and if measured by the dollar volume of purchases have made a significant impact on how we do business. The ease with which one makes these buys presents a financial control issue when budgets get tight, so we may be asking you to limit expenditures from time to time when we have too much month at the end of the money.
John Hauser
The muon g-2 experiment completed a very successful run. Over 7 billion muon decays were recorded which, combined with the 1999 run to give 10 billion, is anticipated to give a statistical precision of +/-0.5 parts per million on the measurement of g-2. This number, which is the advance of the muon spin direction as the muon travels around the storage ring, has been calculated precisely with our known understanding of the forces in Nature. If our result agrees with the theoretical calculation, the implication is that we indeed understand these forces, and that there are no surprises or differences from theory at a very sensitive level. There are a number of speculative theories which try to extend our present understanding of the known forces by including new force carriers and new particles which would change g-2.
g-2 is presently known to +/-5 parts per million, from our 1998 run. This new precision is comparable to searches for new physics signals at the LHC, the very large collider being built in Geneva, Switzerland.
A final g-2 run is planned for next year, to reach the experiment goal of +/-0.35 parts per million. This level matches the expected theory precision, and also our ability to control and know how experimental conditions might affect the measurement. After next year, there are two proposals to use the g-2 storage ring (the largest single superconducting magnet in the world) to measure neutrino mass and to measure the electric dipole moment of the muon.
G. Bunce
The semi-annual DOE review (Lehman Review) was conducted at Oak Ridge National Lab during March 14-17. The review went very well and the feedback from the Committee was positive. In addition to endorsing the super-conducting RF linac, the DOE review team acknowledged the new technical baseline (248 meter ring, etc.) and suggested we now "go and build the damn thing".
Besides R2A2s and Performance Goals, other Project-related activities included (1) a Procurement Workshop at ORNL on March 21-22 that was attended by Dave Dale, and (2) a Procurement/Production Workshop at BNL on March 24 attended by ORNL’s Rudy Damm, Jeff Geouque, and Erich Kant.
SNS Project Office Design Reviews are being scheduled for next month. They will be held at BNL and include: RF Cavity and Power Amplifiers, April 14; Magnet Requirements (Physics), April 17; Vacuum Systems, April 26-27. In addition, a Target Groups Workshop is scheduled to be held at BNL on April 24-25.
W. McGahern
On Friday March 24 the RHIC PASS was approved by Derek Lowenstein to inject beam into RHIC. This completed the process of getting this system ready for RHIC operation with beam.
Preliminary design of the Access Control system for BAF was completed. A proposal to design an Access Control system for the Medical Cyclotron accelerator was completed.
N. Williams
Beam Components and Instrumentation
For the AGS, we have successfully switched over the instrumentation for RHIC operation. For RHIC, we have installed and commissioned both scrapers and the movable BPM system. The RHIC polarimeter is installed and under vacuum. The device cabling in the ring is complete and the house wiring remains. To complete the house wiring a chassis is being designed the built that will tell the status of the polarimeter and interlock both planes from running into each other. The polarimeter work should be complete by mid May. The group has completed the majority of work on the RHIC loss monitor system. The remaining work includes perfecting the system for use at PHOBOS, as well as long term studies of drift, individual channel offsets, and threshold settings. And finally, work on another top priority, the completion of the MP6 bypass instrumentation continues. All of the wiring is completed with the excetion of some of the wiring to the individual devices. Overall system testing with full integration into the control system has started. We should be finished with MP6 bypass instrumentation by the end of April. Miscellaneous work continues on projects such as the AC dipole, RHIC injection kickers, booster F6 magnet replacement, and etc. New projects on the horizon are the 7835 tube pinchoff test stand, booster F7 and f6 quarter cell magnet rebuild. Last but not least is the impending beam separator rebuild. Work on this project should start mid April.
Tom Russo
The installations of the pin diodes and their stands are complete, one stand on either side of each primary collimator, sectors 7 and 8. This concludes the RHIC tunnel work for the Collider Mechanical Support. The majority of the Group continue with magnet press work in building 924. As more drawings become available, assembly of crystal collimator components will begin. Spin Rotator Warm-to-Cold Transition prototyping will be on-going beyond May.
G. McIntyre
Experimental Support and Facilities Division
It's 3:30 AM and the V1 beam line for the g-2 experiment goes unstable. A sleepy experimenter phones 4662(Main Control) and asks for "Support". Moments later the white "Support" van pulls up to a power supply shed with tools and meters. The trim pot on a regulator card is turned one quarter to the right and the green wave form on the portable 'scope goes from rough to smooth. "Support" pops into the g-2 control room and says "You're back in business, Gerry ".
It's been a relatively quiet night at the end of a long AGS run, but things will start jumping again with the start up of RHIC. The people of "Support" are masters of things electrical, but they are also capable of dealing with a fantastic variety of problems which occur in the Collider-Accelerator complex. Late night requests from experimenters for meters, fans, wire, batteries, etc are all typical in the course of a typical shift. Scientific research at a large accelerator/collider center is a team effort, and the "Support" Group is what keeps thing humming 24 hours per day. They check out the magnets and power supplies prior to start up and then they know how to minimize down-time whenever trouble happens.
A friendly, "We got it fixed", is welcome message to any physicist.
Bill Anderson is the manager of a crew of 15 in the Collider Accelerator Support Group. The denizens of the night and workers of the day include: Henry Ashby, Jay Bartalomy, Tim Costanzo, Joe Curley, Joe DeCicco, Rich DiFranco, Frank Dusek, Charles Gardner, Harold Gassner, Jim Meier, George Murdock, Frank Scheifele, Pete Schnitzenbaumer, Ken Wokosky and Chris Zarcone.
Alan Carroll
With the completion of the
g-2 run, a large effort is dedicated to the study of the failure modes of the
distributed ion pumps in preparation for next year's mu-minus run, which
requires better vacuum.
In RHIC, pressures of low 10-10
Torr are achieved at all four experimental regions after insitu bake. Both
YI7 and BI8 scrappers and the BI12 polarimeter were successfully installed. All
three RHIC vacuum systems, the warm bore, the cold bore, and the insulating
vacuum, have reached the design vacuum levels and are ready for beam
commissioning.
The semi-annual DOE SNS
review went very well attributing to our progress so far, and a technical review
of the whole vacuum system design is scheduled for the end of April. Detail
design of the HEBT and Ring vacuum components continues. The PO for the chamber
bakeout furnace was placed and cryo pumps were also purchased. The utility at
building 975 will be upgraded to accommodate the furnace. The test bed for the
SNS vacuum control based on ControlLogic PLC, VME and RS485 interface are being
set up.
Staff and technicians residing at buildings 830 and 820 were moved to offices and vacuum lab in 911A. The clean room and hi-bay area of building 820 were cleaned and re-arranged, ready for assembly of Booster (BAF) and SNS vacuum chambers
H. C. Hseuh
We offer our heartfelt sympathy to Ray Zaharatos and family. Laura was not only a fellow coworker in the Physics Dept. , but a friend, and will be truly missed.
We WELCOME Aboard
| Raymond Diaz | Ray is an engineer transferring from the Reactor Division and will be working with Charlie Pearson in the ES&F Division |
| Bartosz Frak | Bart is working with Ted D'Ottavio's group in Controls |
| Nicholas Kling | Nicholas joins the Main Control Room |
| Aaron Korostyshevsky | Aaron has transferred to C-AD and is located in the 2nd floor Design Room working with Jim Alduino |
| Ann Marie Luhrs | Ann Marie comes to us from the Reactor Division and will be in the film badge office |
| Andrew Meyer | Andrew joins the Main Control Room |
| Kerry Mirabella | Kerry is working with Mike Nekulak on the SNS project |
| John Ritter | John is a staff engineer working with Joe Tuozzolo on the SNS project |
| Richard Scott | Richard is working with Vinnie LoDestro in the Linac Group |
and say FAREWELL to
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Ed Dale |
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Alan Morgillo |
Alan was in our Cryogenics Group and will be leaving the BNL family |
We wish all of you good health and happiness in your new adventures.
We wish all our April Birthday folks a happy and a healthy year ahead. Birthday people ONLY
click on cake 
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A spotlight award was
presented to the Mechanical Support Group. WE CONGRATULATE Richard Anderson, Harold Dorr, Matthew Kessler, Mark Lavery, Scott Seberg, Ed Ulrich and Alan Weston
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Service Awards - Bill
Anderson, Charles Carlson and Gary Smith
were each presented with an Olympus Camera for their
35 years of service at BNL.
Joe Zebuda was presented with a Cross Pen and Pencil Set for his 20 years of service at BNL.
DOE Order 110.3: Conference Management
It is now required of all DOE employees to obtain approval from DOE to attend
or host conferences.* This approval is in addition to your Foreign and Domestic
travel approvals. If you are aware of a conference that you might be interested
in attending or especially hosting, please inform Mary Campbell (maryc@bnl.gov)
and she will guide you through the process. Since, at this time BNL's procedure
& policy is still being developed it is requested that you inform Mary at
least three
months prior to the conference start date.
*There are exceptions to this order. Once Mary Campbell reviews the details
of the specific conference she will inform the attendee/host if their conference
falls
within an exception.
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Our own GORDON DANBY together with James Powell, also formerly of BNL, are recipients of the Benjamin Franklin Award which is considered the highest award given to a member of the university community. Gordon and Jim have worked tenaciously on the Maglev (magnetic levitation) since 1961. The U.S. government has renewed interest in the project and has funded seven research projects and $950 million for the design and construction over the next few years. Gordon and Jim are currently part of a seven-person consortium "Maglev 2000" formed to build a half-mile test rack in Titusville, Florida. It is the belief that the Maglev could travel at more then 300 mph. We sure could use that on the LIE. |
Are you tired of getting all those uninvited, unwanted
telephone solicitations? In 1991, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer
Protection Act which requires telemarketers to 1) identify themselves and the
company from which they are calling, 2) limit calls to the hours between 8 AM
and 9PM, 3) avoid making calls with prerecorded messages, and 4) record and
respect all requests not to call. YOU can also take another step:
Log on to http://www.essential.com ,
click on teleguard. It's really quite simple! They will tell over
1000 telemarketing companies to remove your name from their call list. And
by law, they can't call you for ten years! An information packet will be
sent to you with the names of the marketing companies that have been
advised.
I don't know about you, but when I ask a
pharmacy to renew a prescription I not only expect the prescription to be the
correct one I also expect it to be for the complete quantity, unless I'm told it
is only partially filled. Do you expect to go home and count every last
pill to make sure you have your correct dosage? I don't! If you're
having a problem with a pharmacy/pharmacist you can contact, in letter form, The
Office of Professional Discipline, 1121 Walt Whitman Road, Suite 301, Melville,
New York 11747.
CONGRATULATIONS to
Steve and Diane Bellavia on the birth of their son ALEXANDER JOSEPH
born March 10th and weighing in at 8 lbs 11 oz. Alexander
had big sister Larissa waiting at home for his arrival!
Travels
of Eric Forsyth - The Fiona Cruise to Antarctica 1998-1999 is available
on video
and can be borrowed from the Main Office, Bldg. 911B.
- that any news that you have pertaining to our department or personnel is appreciated. For example: what's going on in your work area, length of BNLemployment anniversary, birthdays, weddings, new births, retirements, "gossip". It's up to you - it's YOUR Particle Post; just send your input to me lopresti@bnl.gov.
(Note: calendars will be updated as information is submitted)
Bring May Flowers 
MAY
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