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DRAFT CERN/DG/Research Board 2012-425 Minutes-198 12 January 2012 ORGANISATION EUROPEENNE POUR LA RECHERCHE NUCLEAIRE CERN EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH _______________________________________________________________ CERN RESEARCH BOARD MINUTES OF THE 198th MEETING OF THE RESEARCH BOARD HELD ON WEDNESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2011 Present I. Antoniadis, S. Bertolucci, P. Bloch, H. Breuker, P. Butler, P. Collier, E. Elsen, M. Ferro-Luzzi, R. Forty (Secretary), R. Heuer (Chair), P. Janot, M. Kowalska, S. Myers, E. Rondio, R. Saban, E. Tsesmelis, C. Vallée Apologies F. Hemmer Items 1. Procedure 2. Accelerator schedules for 2012 3. Report from the LHCC meeting of 21-22 September 2011 4. Report from the SPSC meeting of 25-26 October 2011 5. Report from the INTC meeting of 3-4 November 2011 CERN-DG-RB-2012-425 / M-198 09/03/2012 6. Any other business DRAFT CERN/DG/Research Board 2012-425 2 DRAFT CERN/DG/Research Board 2012-425 1. PROCEDURE 1.1 The minutes of the last meeting [1] were approved without modification. 2. ACCELERATOR SCHEDULES FOR 2012 2.1 P. Collier presented the accelerator schedules for 2012 [2]. This will be the final year of the current LHC running period, before the long shutdown for consolidation work to allow the machine to approach its design energy. For this year the physics running is planned to start in April, most likely with an energy of 4 TeV per beam, and 50 ns bunch spacing, although the final decision will be taken following discussion at the Chamonix workshop at the beginning of February. The physics run will end with a month dedicated to ions in November, most likely in p-A configuration. The accelerators will then be off for 2013, with the injectors restarting in 2014, so that fixed-target physics and test beam will be available during that year, before the LHC restarts. M. Ferro-Luzzi commented that the LHC experiments may request optimisation of the details of the schedule to maximise the integrated luminosity before the summer conferences, and that his successor as LHC Programme Coordinator would collect input from the experiments ready for Chamonix. 2.2 The injector accelerator schedule sees the start of physics for CNGS, nTOF and ISOLDE in March, AD physics in April and North Area physics in May, running until 3 December. Six weeks of the run are devoted to sending ions to the North Area for NA61, scheduled to start at the end of August, and during that period test beams will be interrupted. The beam to CNGS will include some bunched beam running, for further investigation of the super-luminal effect presented by OPERA. This will most probably be around May after an initial high intensity period of running. In the current plan ISOLDE would receive about 80% of its requested beam, while DIRAC would receive over 90% of their request. S. Bertolucci suggested that any shortfall should be shared equally. C. Vallée commented that DIRAC is expected to present results from the current run before the SPSC will make a recommendation concerning their continued running in 2012, and at that point the need for the large number of spills requested by DIRAC will be scrutinised. The accelerator schedules were approved. 3 DRAFT CERN/DG/Research Board 2012-425 3. REPORT FROM THE LHCC MEETING OF 21-22 SEPTEMBER 2011 3.1 E. Elsen reported on the latest meeting of the LHCC [3]. The increase in luminosity of the LHC in the period up to the meeting (and beyond) had been very impressive, with effective Machine Development periods devoted to increasing the intensity per bunch, reducing the emittance, and focusing the beams to a β* of 1 m for the general-purpose experiments. LHCb was successfully supplied with luminosity leveled at their requested value, by adjusting the vertical offset of the beams. The luminosity has been determined with a precision of 3.5%. The decision had been taken to stay with 50 ns bunch spacing to optimize the luminosity delivered during the year, as the general-purpose detectors were able to handle the increased pile-up compared to 25 ns operation. The ALICE run had been affected by machine-induced background after solenoid polarity change. S. Myers commented that the cause of this had now been understood and would be solved. 3.2 E. Elsen then discussed some highlights of the rich physics harvest from the LHC experiments, presented at the summer conferences. These included the world’s most precise measurement of Bs oscillations from LHCb, measurements of particle production ratios in Pb–Pb collisions from ALICE, top-quark mass measurement from ATLAS and top charge and mass asymmetries from CMS. No signal of physics beyond the Standard Model had yet been seen, and the range of possible mass for the Higgs boson was being significantly constrained, so that if it exists it would have to be light. TOTEM had run successfully with a β* of up to 90 m, and made a first measurement of the total cross-section. 3.3 Concerning the upgrades of the LHC experiments, the LHCC had heard a report on the ATLAS Insertable B-Layer (IBL) pixel detector. Two competing technologies (3D and planar) had been evaluated and both were considered by ATLAS to be mature and could be made to work within the envisioned time-frames and budgets. The LHCC has requested a document detailing the proposed hybrid plan which will be reviewed at the next session, with the goal of enabling a final LHCC recommendation. The upcoming LHC experiment upgrade sessions will also include discussion of the 4 DRAFT CERN/DG/Research Board 2012-425 Letter of Intent (LoI) for ATLAS Phase-1 upgrades, the Technical Design Report (TDR) for their Fast Tracker Trigger (FTK), the LoI for ALICE upgrades, a framework TDR for the upgrade activities of LHCb following their LoI, and a report on the CMS Pixel Detector TDR. 3.4 A Letter of Intent has been received for an experiment to test collimation in the LHC using bent crystals, named LUA9 (a development from UA9 at the SPS). The LHCC recognizes the potential of this technique, but is concerned about the possible impact of such an experiment on the operation of the machine. The studies will be confined to Machine Development periods. R. Heuer stressed that care should be taken to arrange this so as to avoid any significant disturbance to the routine operation of the LHC for physics. The Research Board took note. 4. REPORT FROM THE SPSC MEETING OF 25-26 OCTOBER 2011 4.1 C. Vallée reported on the latest meeting of the SPSC [3], including annual reports from NA60, NA49, NA61, NA63, UA9, CAST and OSQAR. NA60 and NA49 are continuing to exploit their data sets, and the SPSC recommends continued support for their data analysis. 4.2 NA61 has published the 2007 data on pion production in p-C collisions, and the SPSC looks forward to physics results from the 2009 data set. The committee recommends that adequate beam time is allocated in 2012 to allow for the completion of the energy scan with secondary light ions prior to the shutdown in 2013, and that full use is made of the ongoing development of primary light ion beams, with the aim of delivering a primary argon beam in 2014 and a primary xenon beam in 2015 [4]. 4.3 NA63 has achieved progress in the analysis of the LPM magnetic suppression and structured target resonance data, and continues to publish their results. The experiment proposes to study positron production in a diamond by energetic electron impact and to study bremsstrahlung from ions [5]. P. Collier stated that the new North Area interlock system has not yet been installed, and as a result no primary ions are at present allowed in the North Area unless protons are at the same time prevented from entering the SPS. Given the accelerator schedule, primary ions for NA63 are therefore 5 DRAFT CERN/DG/Research Board 2012-425 not possible during 2012. The SPSC advises the collaboration to instead focus on the positron production in crystals in 2012, and encourages the collaboration to finalize the experimental setup. The proposal will be reviewed further before making a recommendation. 4.4 UA9 has achieved progress in both hardware and analysis, and has obtained encouraging proton and ion collimation results with crystal channeling. The SPSC supports the request by the collaboration for further beam time in 2012 at the level that has been provided in 2011. 4.5 CAST successfully concluded their 3He programme and published the first results. The SPSC is looking forward to the final publication of the 3He data. The collaboration is refurbishing key components of the set-up during shutdown for longer term operation and installing improved shielding on the micromegas detectors [6]. A further three-month 4He run of CAST is requested in 2012 to improve their sensitivity over a limited range of axion masses around 0.4 eV/c2. This was approved by the Research Board. 4.6 OSQAR has submitted first results of its regeneration experiment for publication. The collaboration plans to achieve in 2012 an improved axion search limit that will be competitive with recent results of the ALPS Collaboration. The Research Board approved the OSQAR run in 2012. 4.7 The SPSC received a Letter of Intent for a demonstration experiment in proton- driven plasma wake-field acceleration [7]. This has possible technological implications for future accelerators at CERN and elsewhere. The committee recognizes the opportunity to use the SPS beams for these studies, and encourages the collaboration to work towards a Technical Design Report in order to allow the technical feasibility, the timescale and the resources to be assessed within the overall CERN programme.