STAR NEWSLETTER NUMBER 60

1. From the Spokesman:

Reported by John Harris

As stated in last month's newsletter, much work needs to be done to get the STAR detector hardware and software into shape for operation by next June, less than 8 months from now. The urgent need is for STAR Collaboration members to sign-up for TPC shift-work for the next month. To sign up, see the TPC shift sign-up sheet on the STAR/TPC webpages at:

http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/STAR/html/tpc_l/tpc.html

Excerpted from the STAR Monthly Report for August 1998.

Near the end of August, the TPC group received permission to operate all major TPC systems. The group has been running P10 gas for most of August, but now field cage high voltage, sector high voltage and laser systems can also begin test and operation. This is a significant milestone that reflects a huge amount of effort on many people's part. Next up - cosmic ray testing, sector swaps (to fix minor scale problems) and ultimately installation into the Magnet in November!

FEE installation continues (albeit slowly - manpower). There are sufficient FEE cards attached now to allow us to view cosmics once again with the "mini-DAQ" system.

All subsystem managers will participate (actively) in a 1.5 day long scheduling workshop on September 10-11 at BNL. At this meeting, we will hear current delivery and installation plans for each major element, resolve conflicts and plot the course for the final seven months of installation and detector commissioning activities! (Remember, April and May are months for breaking connections, rolling into the beamline and reconnecting/buttoning up. June 1st begins accelerator commissioning and we begin taking our first data!)

TPC Summary and Highlights

Fabrication of the TPC installation hardware has begun but some detail design work remains. The support columns which mount the installation beam to the magnet have been welded but not machined. The installation beams themselves have been designed and are out for bid.

In addition to the monthly cost and schedule reporting , a revised TPC cost and schedule to complete has been generated and forwarded to STAR Management.

Magnet Summary and Highlights

Electronics Summary and Highlights

Front End Electronics (FEE)

The HDLC link for the FEE board continues to be problematic. Our software, which worked on the old board, fails on the new board. Another crate of 1200 FEE cards is ready to be shipped to Brookhaven, and MPI-Munich is ready to ship another box of FEE cards to LBNL.

Data Acquisition (DAQ)

Trigger

Slow Controls

Computing Summary and Highlights

Conventional Systems and Integration Summary and Highlights

Greetings from Long Island. I'm a bit late again getting this newsletter out this month so you'll find comments about some topics/events that have occurred in the first week or so of October. Weatherwise, it's starting to looklike Fall here on Long Island. The deciduous trees are just starting to change their colors and there is a scattering of leaves starting to show up on the ground. The high temperatures in the last few days have been in the low sixties range (F), and so far I haven't felt any brisk Fall winds.

There is lots of activity going on out at the STAR site. All of the electronic equipment racks in the DAQ room and on the South electronics cart are being wired up for power and plumbed for their cooling water supplies, returns, and radiators. The extension rails for the magnet poletip carraiges have been put in place in the Assembly Building (AB), running to the East from the magnet, and will be grouted in soon. Work has started, and will continue for quite some time, extending the water cooled power buss lines for the magnet from the North West corner of the AB, South into the Wide Angle Hall.

The magnet is presently in the power supply testing stage. This testing started about mid-September by putting power into dummy loads, and has progressed to the stage where electrical current is being run through the magnet coils. The current in the coils has been increasing as the tests proceed and has gotten up to about 3,000 Amps. If you don't recall, the nominal current in the main magnet coils for operation at 0.5 T is about 5,000 Amps. A convenient design feature of the STAR magnet is that the magnitude of the central magnetic field in gauss is almost equivalent to the current in the coils in amps. Steve Trentalange (UCLA) has been standing by with the magnet mapping apparatus and has been taking field data in the brief intervals when there has been current in the coils. I've been impressed that with a moments notice Steve can turn on the mapper, take some data (and given enough time translate the mapper a bit through the the magnet), and literally within a couple of minutes make assorted contour plots and such of the magnetic field. It gives quite a bit of assurance that when the power supply testing finishes, the magnet mapping will get started quickly.

September was also a big month for the TPC as the group got all of the necessary TPC subsystems up and running so that they could take Cosmic ray data. This included having the requisite "clean" gas in the TPC, the 29 or so kV on the central cathode, the 1200 V or so on the anode wires, the gating grid biased open, some prototype trigger barrel slats working on the top and bottom of the TPC, a full sectors worth of electronics installed and running, and the mini-Daq system up and running. It took an enormous amount of effort by the relatively small group of people working on the TPC to get to this point. This is a big milestone in getting the STAR detector systems up and running. The three sectors that were suspected of having broken wires were taken off of the TPC and swapped with spare sectors. Howard Wieman and his TPC crew have been working on setting up a sector test lab in the Physics building here at BNL to allow them to study the sectors that have been removed, and then repair and test them.

These are exciting times here at BNL seeing the STAR systems get completed and brought to life. There is still alot of work to go between now and the end of the project, and help is welcome.

6. Employment opportunities

Postdoctoral Research Position

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

The Ohio State University

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Group at The Ohio State University invites applications for a postdoctoral research position. The focus of the work will be on simulation and analysis of data from the tracking detectors of the STAR experiment at RHIC, scheduled to take data in 1999. The successful candidate must have a Ph.D. in physics or related field, and should have strong programming skills and experience in experimental relativistic heavy ion physics. Depending on the experience and desires of the candidate, it is envisioned that the candidate may spend a significant part of his or her time at Brookhaven, although this can be discussed. The OSU Relativistic Heavy Ion Group currently consists of three faculty members, three postdoctoral researchers, four graduate students, two undergraduate students and an electrical engineer. Interested candidates should send an application consisting of a curriculum vitae, a description of research experience and interest and the names of three references to Professor Michael A. Lisa, Department of Physics, Smith Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 or via E-mail to lisa@mps.ohio-state.edu. The Ohio State University is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer and encourages all qualified candidates to apply.

7. New STAR NOTES since the last Newsletter