Minutes of Hall A Group Meeting November 3, 2009

1) Installation: (Ed Folts)

a) Almost ready for beam in the Hall

b) Left arm is in position

c) Will move the right this afternoon

d) Jack is working on the pre-shower

e) Checklist is essentially done

f) Plan:

i) Close tonight for beam tuning and Compton studies

ii) Open again tomorrow (11/4) to finish cabling, target cooldown, and survey the right arm

iii) Begin taking beam to the experiment in the evening

g) Bogies are not working, moving a spectrometer requires a team of 8 people in the Hall supervised by Ed.

i) Moves will have to be setup in advance

ii) Ed is working on the bogies on the bench while the Hall is locked

2) Al Gavalya

a) Continue working on Compton

i) Providing a test stand

ii) Meeting to finalize acceptance of the laser enclosure

iii) Several items are in the shop

iv) Tying up loose ends

b) PREX targets are in the target lab

c) Macon is working on water lines etc. for the PREX test setup

d) Susan is detailing the actuator for the beam degrader

e) Al has taken the redesign plans from France as far as he can

3) Bert Manzlak

a) New safety documents for PVDIS are in the counting house. Please read and sign them. Contact Bert if you have questions. (manzlak@jlab.org)

b) There was a first aid case in Hall B last week. Reminds us to report all injuries, even minor ones to health services.

c) Hall C is decommissioning HKS and installing Qweak. They have for the present purposes a "Conduct of Installation" document that you must read and sign in order to go into the Hall unescorted. Also, you need a hardhat in Hall C.

4) Alexandre Camsonne

a) Working on the Compton electron detector

5) J-P Chen

a) Attending the EICAC workshop

b) Re target training; anyone who wants it should contact J-P. (jpchen@jlab.org)

6) Ole Hansen

a) New version of the C++ analyzer will go out tomorrow (11/4)

i) Some small improvements

ii) New pre-optimized HRS database

b) Has circulated an e-mail re the need for the absoft FORTRAN compiler. Response so far has been thin. If you have any strong feelings contact Ole (ole@jlab.org)

7) Bogdan Wojtsekhowski

a) Busy with experiment preparations

b) Re e-ion collider, figure with one year of running can measure neutron and proton form factors out to Q² = 50 GeV²

c) Considering a possible dark matter experiment being pushed by people from SLAC

8) Sirish Nanda

a) Compton upgrade from the green laser point of view

i) Have run a series of tests

ii) Infra-red seed laser to a crystal to double the frequency

iii) Worked pretty well up to ~700 Watts

iv) Above 700 Watts thermal effects distort the mirrors

v) Would like to go to 1.5 KWatts

vi) Looking into better, low loss, mirrors

9) Dennis Skopik

a) Physics division has a large number of evaluations outstanding. We need to get them in. Kees says he's waiting for the peer review.

b) New regulation coming down from DOE. If you are on foreign travel for more than 20 days in a year you must be tested for AIDS.

10) Doug Higinbotham

a) Re new database in the C++ analyzer; many people worked very hard on it. It works really well from 1 to 3 GeV/c

11) Kees de Jager expresses appreciation for the huge efforts made by the technical group to recover from the site-wide power outages and HAPPEX III and get us back online. Applause!

-JJL