Minutes of the Feb 3, 2006 Tevatron Dept Meeting

* News (Ron) - Ron reminded everyone to return the equipment inventory sheets
soon.  The new video projector and PC in the Penthouse are nearly ready to
use for making electronic presentations.  Pushpa Bhat has stepped down as
Run 2 Upgrade Project Manager; Jeff Sims will replace her, while Mike Martens
will continue his involvement as Technical Advisor.  The upgrades are 85% 
complete, and the hope is to close out everything by September 2006 and hand
off remaining tasks to the individual departments.

* Weekly Summary (Mike Martens) - The Tevatron has returned to operation
following the warm-up to repair the insulating vacuum leak in A4.  There
have been 5 stores this week with initial luminosities ranging from 0.7
to 111 E30 cm^-2 s^-1.  The available number of pbars has been low this week.
Store 4616 (0.7 E30 initial lumi) was a dedicated, very low luminosity 36x36
store for the CDF and D0 diffractive physics programs.  In store 4618, one
pbar transfer landed in the wrong bucket as result of a coalescing mistake
in the Main Injector.  This store ended unintentionally due to failure of a
CAMAC abort module.  The mistiming that caused the TEL to wipe some pbar
bunches at injection was corrected.  The TEL still suffers from occasional
power supply trips, but engineers have been adding diagnostics to aid their
investigation.  The CDF and D0 IP positions have been adjusted to compensate
changes over the shutdown.  The CDF vertical position could not be fully 
restored because some dipole correctors are near their current limit.

* Trip to CERN (Vladimir Shiltsev) - Vladimir recently went to CERN to do some
field measurements on an LHC dipole and quadrupole.  They are interested
in determining if high frequency (few kHz) magnetic field changes 10^-11 dB/B
can affect the beam.  The synchrotron radiation screen in the magnets is 
relatively light, and the liquid helium that cools the screen could cause 
small vibrations at frequencies near the LHC betatron ~3 kHz athat could lead 
to emittance growth.  Implementing a fast feedback system could become a LARP 
project.

* BLM Upgrade Status (Jonathan Lewis) - Jonathan has a prototype system running
in the E1 house and it replicates the functions of the current system.
Fast-time plots, flash frames, and snapshots all work.  The abort functionality
has been tested in the MI prototype, but software is needed to implement it.
Jonathan showed a couple of plots comparing the BLM readings from the current
and new system during scraping - things look OK.  The first pre-production 
modules are expected by the end of March.  The full production run should begin
after 2 weeks of testing.  He expects to instrument the whole Tevatron by the
end of the long shutdown, so that we can begin exercising it during start-up
before deciding when to decommission the old system.  He has talked to CDF 
and D0 about replacing their BLMs with the new system. 

* Water Level Status (Jim Volk) - Jim noted some interesting behavior in the
"home-made" hydrostatic level systems (HLS) in B, C (only partially installed),
and E sectors.  A long-standing problem with the water has been resolved.  It 
turns out the Tygon tubing used to connect the sensor bottles absorbs water. 
The Tygon was replaced with polyethylene tubing.  The C sector system (C11-C22)
seems relatively stable and shows no interesting features.  The E sector system
(E11-E33) is well-behaved, except for 1 magnet in E11.  The B sector system
(B11-B49) shows 1 quad that apparently jumps around during acceleration - that
may be a candidate for stand replacement.


* Recent Optics Measurements (Alex Valishev) - Alex analyzed the 150 GeV
central orbit lattice measurements taken last week.  The data quality is quite
good.  He estimates the beta functions are good to 5% and the quad and skew
quad strengths are good to 10%.  There are no surprises - the known rolled
quads at D16 and A39 are readily visible.  The model has been updated, and no
changes are needed.  The low-beta lattice measurements were compromised due
to the T:VA49 dipole corrector that tripped off during his measurements.
However, he was still able to measure the beta functions at the IPs to an
estimated 10%.  Again, there are no surprises.  The CDF beta* are 28 cm (horz)
and 33 cm (vert), while D0 beta* are 27 cm (horz) and 31 cm (vert).

* Plan for Next Week

  - Continue emphasis on returning to pre-shutdown conditions, while filling
    in with studies when possible.
  - Differential Chromaticity Octupoles (Alex) - 2 hr proton-only
  - Commission OTR with Beam (Vic) - 4 hr proton-only
  - Commission IPM with Beam (Andreas) 1 hr proton-only
  - TEL Beam-Beam Compensation (Xiaolong) end/middle of HEP store
  - Attempt special 2x1 store @ 1.6 m beta* for CDF/D0