Commissioning and running of sPHENIX

[shimomuramaya <maya AT cc.nara-wu.ac.jp>]

Dear sPHENIX,

Here is the SCM minutes on August 10.

*************

General (Stefan/Kin)

• Kin : From C-AD ESSHQ : “... the lab is expecting a memo from the site office that they will be doing increased surveillance in CAD facilities due to our recent events.

I can tell you they look at EVERYTHING!  Please be vigilant in your work practices, clean up your work areas, and address obvious safety issues in your work areas.  If there are out of date signs in your areas, let Frank Craner know.”

• Kin: The last truck will arrive this evening but since we insist on having Cryo until the end of Friday, the Cryo group will NOT retrieve He for the last truck on Friday/weekend but on Monday morning.  Therefore, the Magnet can remain “ON” for the weekend.
  
  

Current Priority Items (PC)

• Make use of magnetic field, which we’ll have until Friday (maybe +weekend?) :  take data with tracking detectors:  TPC, MVTX, INTT, TPOT, HCAL

Work Control Coordinators (Chris/Joel)

• Nothing to report

Plan of the Day (Stefan/PC/all–to be revisited at end of meeting)

• Work on the searching for TPC single pulse peak

• Take the cosmic data with HCAL trigger with tracking detectors.
  
  

========================================================================

Evening (Virginia)

• Took cosmics data with HCal + tracking detectors

• INTT LAD2 and cooling interlock alarms around 7pm. This was the second time this happened yesterday, the first just before our shift started. Rob Pisani restored it both times.

• Noticed near the end of shift that the trigger live rate had decreased from ~45Hz to ~25Hz (raw rate stayed the same around 55Hz)

Night (Silas)

• Continued taking cosmics 

• Noted that all triggers had a similar factor of 2 decrease between raw and live rate, even clock

• TPC slot 2 channel 7 had 0 current on LV had to power cycle that slot

• Recovered clock errors from MVTX, noted in elog

Day (Christine)

• Cosmics, cosmics, cosmics!

• TPC out much of the day for investigations

• MVTX was not actually taking data at one point so expert asked to have it removed.  Was fixed and put back in the run. (--> See MVTX report)

• EPD took GTM7 to do some tests.

• Live rate stayed low all shift.

========================================================================

Magnet (Kin)

• Magnet at full field, which can remain ON this weekend. 

MBD (Mickey)

• Adjusted laser delay so it was centered in the MBD gate

• Took a look, and the 10 ns shift could have occurred either in some NIM modules or the FPGA card that are used to generate the laser.  Will follow up with JK.

Took a series of laser runs to check the new MBD ADC firmware (which now selects the peak maximum from the timing channels to send to the LL1)

• There is still the misalignment, and now also in the charge channel.  It’s something we can correct in offline.  Not sure if Chi will work to remove the misalignment in a future rev.

Trigger (Dan)

• 
  

GTM/GL1 (Martin/Dan/John K)

• Work on DB logging in progress. Will switch gtm1 to v48 unless someone (like TPC) objects.

DAQ (Martin/John H)

• Nothing new to report

MVTX (Cameron)

• MVTX readout strobe length was found to be ~500 ns in an 89 us window. Michael and Jo worked last night to fix this and increase the readout strobe length to the full 89us

• We’re back in the big partition again and this should be improved now

Found some timeouts being configured too short after fixing the strobe length, thus stopped data taking this morning,  to have this fixed by Michael in the ITSCommLayer. Now fixed, and MVTX back in the big partition. Last night’s data was therefore empty frames only.

Working on combined MVTX/INTT cosmic event, trying to match BCO from INTT and MVTX then find a cosmic in that 500 ns window from data taken before today

TPC (Tom Hemmick, Jin, Takao, Evgeny, Charles, David, Bob, Ross, John K., Thomas)

• Today 08/10:

• GEM HV at 4700 V (58/72 modules)

• Testing additional spark criterion in fast protection (multiple low ADC sparks in quick succession)

• Additionally searching for single pulse peak threshold 

Jin tested shutting down FEEs to test laser response

• Interestingly, response seems to decrease slowly over time after FEE shutoff

• Also the baseline shifted up (and has now started to shift down):

• U312 (module most likely attached to pad plane) came loose after FEE shut off (as expected) - it will re-attach to pad plane after FEEs are turned back on

• Will perform gain scan with FEEs off after SCM, we wish to add to this plot:

• Tonight 08/10 - 08/11:

• We will finish our gain scan and most likely park TPC at 4200 V

• However, we will come back later tonight at 8 - 9 PM and start ramping up again

• Pressure predicted to hit a minimum of 29.6 in Hg tonight

• Represents our best shot (no guarantees) at seeing cosmics from a gain standpoint

HCal (Silas)

• No news to report

EMCal (Sean)

• Nothing new to report

TPOT(/INTT) (Hugo)

• Nothing to report on the detector side

• A few pretty event displays:

INTT (Genki)

• INTT is taking data stably.

• 
  The number of hits from all ladders per event as a function of runs.
  How to interpret: Don’t see the absolute values of the y-axis. Some noisy channels are include in this plot. You have to see relative change over runs.

sEPD(Rosi/Tristan)

• On track to install North box Wednesday

• Remove prototype box Monday or Tuesday

• Analyzing pulser data to understand level of cross-talk (looking at 250 ns pulse vs 30 ns pulse).

Gas/Cooling ()

• TPC group (Tom) in discussion with Rob about many things related to gas - hard to summarize here but it MAY affect the running over the weekend 

ZDC (Peter)

• Nothing to report. 

• Considering about turning off the ZDC. 

Background Counters ()

• 
  

Online Monitoring (Chris)

******end of the minutes *****

Best, 

Maya

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Associate Professor
Division of Natural Sciences 
Nara Women's University 

BNL Bldg.510C Room2-223

Email: maya AT cc.nara-wu.ac.jp
Office: 631-344-2778
Cell : 631-504-2144
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