2. STAR Project Summary
Excerpted from the STAR Monthly Report for Febrary 1997.
Project Management Summary and Highlights
In the STAR Assembly building, Magnet assembly continues to go very well. The inner and outer end rings have been erected and aligned. In March, installation of 6 more backlegs will bring the steel assembly to the mid-plane. At this point Coil installation can begin.The Magnet power supply bids are due back in early March and the pole tip support structure and pole tip trim coil design is very nearly complete. The electronics platform design effort, through W.A. Schmidt, is progressing nicely - delivery and installation of the platforms is still planned for late this Fall.
The TPC assembly is also progressing very well. In February, TPC management made its second visit to Travis Air Force Base to see the massive C5 transport and discuss loading details with senior "loadmasters." STAR management initiated an attempt to get this air transport for "cheap" through political channels.
Integration is nearly finished developing the cable tray and cable routing plan. The first meeting was held to begin transferring the information in the plan to CNV who will be responsible for detailing the trays and supports and for procuring these items.
A Collaboration review of the STAR DAQ took place this month at BNL. The Review went quite well with excellent presentation of the material. Several issues were identified. The report will be forthcoming.
STAR Management is still actively pursuing an on-line software leader. We are hopeful that there will be some good news to report in the next month or two.
Joan Tarzian, our Deputy Project Manager, has left STAR and LBNL and moved to Spain to join her husband. Liz Mogavero of BNL will take over Joan's project responsibilities beginning with completing the January CPR.
STAR's input on the second iteration of the RHIC Facility Conventional Construction for Detectors MOU was completed this month. This second iteration represents good progress towards an agreement although there are still several significant differences remaining.
The STAR grounding plan was withdrawn from its Experimental Safety Committee review because of numerous issues requiring further attention. A new grounding plan/concept is presently being developed which would require all transformers from the South platform to be moved to the North platform as well as requiring isolation of the North platform from the detector.
TPC Summary and Highlights
The IFC has made excellent progress in February; the inner skin, core, doublers and outer patch are in place. Completion of the outer skin should be achieved by mid-March. A technique for forming the OFC's resistor and high voltage cable covers has been refined and tested on a short prototype. Installation and alignment of mirror bundles on laser rafts has been completed. A schematic of the gas supply system for Cosmic Ray testing at LBNL has been prepared. Orders have been placed for the methane, argon and nitrogen gas supply manifolds. A delegation from LBNL visited Travis AFB in a fact finding mission to explore the feasibility of transporting the TPC via a C5 transport. At this time air transport of the TPC appears to be feasible and desirable. Work has begun on the "clean" enclosures for the TPC ends. The assembly space has been cleared of unnecessary hardware, the TPC has been moved to a position in line with the large roll-up door, and the east tent has been erected.
Magnet Summary and Highlights
The Pole Tip Trim Coil drawings and specifications were reviewed within the Magnet Group and are now being updated. Procurement of these coils will take place in March. The design of the Magnet Power Buss and support hangers has begun. The bids for the power supplies are due in early March.
Electronics Summary and Highlights
Systems Test
System test worked on bringing the inner sector data up to production quality by fixing minor problems such as gas leaks. A large quantity of data was collected with the sector mounted at several inclinations. One FEE card was configured to read out the TPC anode wires. The inner sector data has undergone preliminary analysis, and the resolution matches expectations. Considerable planning work is being done in preparation to migrate the system test into the cosmic ray test involving the entire TPC drift volume.
Front End Electronics (FEE)
All the FEE boards from Munich have now been tested and 89% worked as returned. The 96% build SCA chip order was sent to Orbit and should be back in 12 weeks or less; the SAS order is being prepared; and the other parts for the 96% build FEE boards are beginning to be procured.Debugging of the 2nd readout board prototype is almost complete, and FPGA programming has proceeded in parallel with the debugging.
The prototype power supply mechanical chassis, power wiring, and controller board are now being assembled.
Data Acquisition (DAQ)
The DAQ Review was held in February.The ASIC underwent preliminary testing and the device appears to be usable! Extensive testing will commence in March. Barring any serious problems, production quantities will then be ordered from the foundry.
SUNNY includes all final mezzanine card functionality except for the ASICs. The present version, constructed as a PCI card, is complete and ready for testing.
Six Sector Broker CPUs based on the 604 Power PC chip, are in house at BNL.
Trigger
A new MWC front end prototype was sent to LBNL from Rice in order to test the new pre-amp and discriminator for single wire hit counting. Results from this board using the test are expected within a few weeks. Design of VPD TDC continues. CTB slats are being prepared for the 10-tray test with 20 slats on hand including Hamamatsu PMTs (R5946).In software, the HTML tutorials have been set up for FPGA feeding. Also, in order to be compatible with STAF, the event sets are being changed to an xdf format.
Slow Controls
In the prototype state manager, the initialization of the TPC readout board, verification of the FEE low-voltage power supplies status and the configuration of the FEE charge-injection pulsers have been interfaced for use in the TPC cosmic ray test.An EPICS database has been constructed holding the housekeeping voltages and temperatures for the TPC readout board (in integer format). It will be read out by the mini-DAQ system.
Both the EPICS GPIB drivers for the Keithley switch system and the digital multimeter used in monitoring the current on the inner and outer field cage resistor chain have been tested and do not function. The solution has yet to be found.
Computing Summary and Highlights
Simulations
No significant activity took place this month.
Analysis Software
The TPC analysis packages, tpt, tte, and tid, were updated, tested and installed on the irix and sun4os5 operating systems:. In addition, tpg, tfs, tpt, tte and tid were updated and installed on the aix operating system:.The 1996 TPC system test cosmic ray data was reanalyzed and the following improvements were made: (a) space point position resolution along the pad direction was corrected for 1/cos(theta) effects, (b) space point position resolution along the drift direction was corrected for the actual 9.2 MHz sampling frequency used, and (c) improved outlier rejection, statistics and cuts on the track sample were used. The final resolutions were 400 microns along the pad direction and 775 microns along the drift direction which is essentially the same as found in the first analysis.
Translation software was developed to convert raw data from the new system test mini-DAQ into STAF data structures; the TPC pad monitor was upgraded, making it more user friendly with respect to histogram plotting; the STAR Note #282 was issued, defining an explicit mini-DAQ data format for the TPC cosmic ray tests this year; and svm, the SVT-TPC track-to-track matching software package, was moved into STAF.
Software Infrastructure
The analysis framework worked on ongoing user support and maintenance, preparing documentation, and adding additional functionality to STAF. New service packages were developed for STAF on the user interface to tables, table operations, and connection to the HBOOK graphics package.The infrastructure software was built for the Solaris on (an) Intel prototype processor cluster at the RHIC computing facility.
Efforts were made to become familiar with and to develop an interface to ROOT.
The STAR Off-line Analysis Notebook (STON) developed further, as a user interface was worked on for running the Venus event generator in a way that also couples to the configuration data files maintained under AFS.
On-line software
Refinements were made to the Run Control program for the TPC cosmic ray tests at LBNL. These changes account for additional data formats being added for the cosmic ray test, removal of the STAR trigger, and the inclusion of slow controls.STAR Physics Working Group Meetings, May 20 at BNL. For further information, please contact John Harris at Yale.
Open Discussion on STAR (Day 1) Trigger, May 21 at BNL. For further information, please contact John Harris at Yale.
BNL AGS/RHIC Users' Meeting, May 22 and 23 at BNL. For further information, please contact Bill Christie at BNL.
STAR Collaboration Meeting, July 20 - 26, at BNL. For further information, please contact John Harris at Yale.
Greetings from Long Island. March has been a continuation of the very mild winter weather that we've had here on the island this year. Easter weekend we had temperatures up into the 60 F range and clear skies. The Crocus flowers bloomed about the third week of March, the first green shoots of the Tulips and Daffodils are starting to poke out of the ground and the buds are starting to appear on the trees. Spring is almost here.
As always, steady progress was made in the Assembly building during March. At the end of February both the East and West endring assemblies had been attached to the STAR magnet. With the endrings in place the assembly continued with the installation of three more backleg flux return bars on each side of the solenoid, bringing the magnet assembly up to the half way point (lower 15 out of 30 return bars installed). The coils will be installed before any more of the backleg bars are put on.
Four of the main coils and both of the space trim coils were unwrapped and brought into the assembly building this past month. If you look at the updating picture of the inside of the assembly building on the WWW you can see part of the stack of coils in the lower left hand corner of the picture. This provided my first opportunity to see and touch a full STAR coil. They are quite impressive.
In April one will see a noticeable change in the pictures of the magnet in the assembly hall. The magnet pieces that have been assembled to date will be painted. Gone will be the present primer red color. The magnet will be painted "Brittany Blue", which I believe is the same color as the structural steel beams in the assembly building. The seismic restraints will also be installed on/in the floor of the assembly building and the WAH.
3. Notice of Meetings:
STAR Run-Time Committee and Physics Working Group Convenors Meeting, May 19 at BNL. For further information, please contact John Harris at Yale.
4. Christies Corner
5. Comings and goings at STAR
Joan Tarzian has left the STAR project management group and LBNL.