STAR Newsletter for May 1999
31 May 1999
Editor: Bill Christie, BNL
Things are moving along well in STAR software and hardware, as we prepare for first beam and eventual interactions in STAR at RHIC. We have made effective use of RHIC's delay in closing the interaction region, as the collider people track down and fix their problems. Many people are contributing in STAR on debugging TPC electronics, and there is considerable activity in the DAQ, Trigger and Online Room bringing STAR online.
The May Computing and Software Meeting/Workshop (last week) at BNL was very productive, with the software and physics working group meetings all week. There was much discussion on the issues facing STAR software and offline analysis. Since the Software Infrastructure group has completed the main part of their infrastructure work and the code has been stabilized, they are focusing on documentation, ease of use, cleaning up code and automation. In concert with this there is a need for STAR software users to "exercise the code" and to educate themselves about the STAR software now. As announced by the STAR Analysis Coordinator (Thomas Ullrich) to the Collaboration in e-mail at the end of the meeting (28 May), there will be a by-weekly offline analysis software meeting at BNL, with phone hook-ups. Everyone involved or planning to be involved in STAR data analysis or offline infrastructure work should attend. A summary of where we stand at the end of last weeks activities and discussions can be found on the web under "Computing", "May Computing Meeting/Workshop", and "Final Summary". I would also like to point out that the Physics Working Groups (PWG) will focus their activities at BNL for the summer, with the PWG Convenors present and organizing discussions on data analysis. Everyone is encouraged to participate. In summary, I am very pleased with the outcome of last weeks workshop, and wish to congratulate Torre Wenaus and his group for their work and plans for the software (as mentioned above), and look forward to STAR's efforts on analysis and offline software, and exercising the software.
The STAR Executive Software Group, as announced in a letter to the Collaboration dated May 4, has gotten off to a good start. They have begun to address important questions of the direction of STAR software and critical issues and problems facing us in STAR software. The members of the SEG are Thomas Ullrich (chair), Torre Wenaus, Claude Pruneau, and Peter Jacobs. You can find their mandate and decisions they have made on the web under "STAR Computing" and then under new at "STAR Executive Committee Page". I am very optimistic about the results of this group's work.
I'll take this opportunity to fill everyone in on construction happenings through the end of May. I've called an end to the monthly reports that we've been using to communicate construction project activities since 1993! Construction is essentially complete - if you haven't been here to witness it yourself, we've entered into a period of intense detector commissioning. Howard Wieman, as Commissioning Czar for the RHIC Engineering Run, will bring you up to date on these activities.
The TPC construction is complete with the exception of the full laser calibration system. In April, we were finishing up the last utility connections, including replacing some faulty water fittings on the TPC face. Gas shifts (with P-10) began April 30th, after we'd completed the final Operational Readiness Review (ORR) and rec'd permission from RHIC and Safety.
On the Conventional Systems front, the fiber cables went up on the Festoon in April - the festoon is a mechanical system of tracks and hangers that captures and carries the optical fiber bundle and allows it to stretch and contract when the detector moves between the WAH and the Assembly Building. This allows us to move and operate the detector, in either location, without any optical disconnects.
The rack smoke, inner detector High Sensitivity Smoke Detection (HSSD) system and rack inergen release systems installation were completed in mid May. These safety systems were integrated into the STAR Global Interlocks and functionally tested. This pretty much concludes the safety and interlock systems for the baseline detector. The interlocks and safety systems have been in operation for more than a month - they have functioned as designed on several occasions, but have otherwise been fairly trouble free!
Fabrication, assembly and installation of DAQ and Trigger electronics continued in April and May. DAQ board production/loading is moving along, with approximately 50% loaded and at BNL. By mid May, 2 crates of production DAQ (4 super-sectors of the TPC) were installed in the DAQ room and by early June, 3 more crates worth (25% of the TPC) will be installed.
For Trigger, the CTB ADC boards were fabricated, 5 boards had been loaded and were being tested at LBL. The DSM board is now tested for all communication and control. The test program developed will become the routine for production boards as they arrive. The interface and control boards necessary for operating the system are tested and ready. The system will be assembled at LBNL and operated using standard trigger code before being shipped to BNL sometime in June. In the mean time, the CTB has been configured for cosmic ray tests using a combination of production and "borrowed" hardware. This will suffice for the RHIC Engineering Run.
In Computing, Offline software development concentrated on improvements based on MDC2 QA results and readiness for real data and completing the infrastructure for the commissioning run. A modified ROOT I/O mechanism was developed to improve robustness against job crashes. A QA process involving nightly production runs with several platform and software configurations was instituted. The release procedure was revised so that the "new" version is released weekly after successful testing in "dev". In Online, development of the event pool and its interface to DAQ advanced, as did work on interfacing Online to DAQ and Trigger. Event flow from DAQ to the online event pool is working as of mid May.
RHIC is approaching the time when the experimental halls will be closed to begin the processes of circulating beams in the ring. The final steps are the testing of the Personnel Access Safety System (PASS) which will be used to control access to the tunnel and experimental areas. It is hoped that the PASS system will be certified and approval to direct beam into the ring will be granted Tuesday June l5. At this time we will lose scheduled access to work on the STAR detector system. Access will be allowed perhaps once a day, but the time will be kept short to minimize impact on the work of the accelerator group. We also expect unscheduled access to the detector when the accelerator group has to shut down for repairs. Needless to say this is a hectic period as we work to get the detector operating before this deadline when we lose access.
During this time we are operating with P10 in the TPC and require round the clock shift coverage to comply with RHIC safety requirements. Manning these shifts adds a considerable manpower burden on the collaboration, but at the same time having the shifts provides an opportunity to have more people learning to run the detector systems. More trained people will be required as we move into real data taking mode with the detector fully operating around the clock. During this initial commissioning period it will not be p ossible to keep all the new people coming to do shifts busy with prearranged tasks, however, this is a unique time to join in and learn first hand about STAR and see the equipment as it is brought into operation. Once access to the wide angle hall is restricted, it will be much more difficult to gain the hands on knowledge required to keep the various systems operating. We welcome the added participation with more people learning about operation of the various systems such as TPC field cage, anode wire system, laser system gating grid and pulser system, slow controls monitoring of the detectors, trigger system, CTB modules, Zero degree calorimeter and online controls. You will get the benefit of seeing systems brought online for the first time, but at the expense of the inefficiencies and delays associated with getting interactive systems working together for the first time.
Workshop on Global Reconstruction Software, the week of June 14th, at BNL. For further information please contact Spiros Margetis.
STAR Collaboration meeting, August 2nd and 3rd, 1999 at BNL. For further information please contact John Harris.
Greetings from Long Island. The weather here on the Island has been wonderful this Spring. One abnormal weather event was that we had a few hot and humid days for the last day of May and the first few days of June. Normal June weather has daily high temperatures in the mid to upper 70 F range. For these few days we got up into the mid 90's. The water temperature in the Long Island sound and the Atlantic ocean around Long Island is about 60 F and rising.
The last month has been an intense period of testing, debugging, testing, debugging, etc. of the TPC readout chain of electronics. Just in the last few days this process has been completed, and we now have the TPC electronics configuration that will be used for the Engineering run. Some fraction of the TPC electronics have higher noise levels than their design specs., but it's thought that the source of this problem is understood, and it will be remedied during the summer shutdown.
In parallel with the TPC electronics testing, the DAQ system, which is being used in the electronics testing, has been coming online and expanding during the past month. The DAQ system evolution started as micro-DAQ, with the ability to readout one TPC readout card, then went to a system with one VME crate with the ability to readout twelve TPC readout cards, then to a system with two VME crates able to readout 24 readout cards, and presently consists of three VME crates able to readout 36 readout cards! To remind the reader, the TPC readout consists of twelve supersectors on each end of the TPC, for a total of 24 supersectors. The readout of one supersector consists of reading 6 readout cards, so the present installation of DAQ hardware at the STAR site enables the readout of 6 supersectors, which is 25% of the complete TPC. The DAQ system will continue to grow through the Engineering run. The expectation is that half of the complete system will be installed by the end of June.
The STAR magnet was closed up (poletips inserted) on June 10th, and will undergo final tests for a few days. So far these magnet tests seem to be going very well.
The RHIC collider is also in the final stages of preparation for the Engineering run. The entire "blue" ring of the collider has been down at 4.6 K for a while now. They have done some power supply testing on the blue ring and my understanding is that the main dipole and quadrupole systems have checked out well. In the last week or so they have started to check some of the interaction regions magnets (DX and DO) in the ring and so far this is also going well. The big push now is to get the complete PASS (personnel safety system) for the collider, including all of the interaction regions, tested and certified. Once this is done the collider can start the final review, known as an ARR (Accelerator Readiness Review). My understanding is that once this ARR is complete BNL then asks DOE for permission to inject beams into the collider. The present schedule calls for this ARR process to start next week, with the hope that it can be completed in a matter of days. This would have the first beams injected into the blue ring perhaps as soon as the end of next week (~June 18th).
For those of you who would like to follow the cooldown and commissioning of the RHIC collider, there is a Web page, updated often, that gives the current status and schedule of the collider. You can get to this Web page via the RHIC home page (then click on RHIC Cool down), or by going to http://www.rhichome.bnl.gov/RHIC/machine_status.html.
In addition to the monthly Newsletters, I, and no doubt many others, will send out E-mail to the collaboration as RHIC comes online.
Simon Bennett has left the STAR group at WSU for a position in the private sector.
Experimental Spin PhysicsA research center focusing on the physics program of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), hard QCD/spin physics, lattice QCD and relativistic heavy ion physics has been established by the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, Japan (RIKEN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. An experimental division on spin physics was established in 1998. The RHIC will be the first polarized proton collider, beginning in 2000, and the Center will play a major role in developing the RHIC spin program. RIKEN-BNL Fellow (up to a five-year appointment) and Research Associate (two-year appointment) positions will be offered for the fall of 1999. Members of the experimental division of the Center will have the opportunity to participate in the detector program at RHIC.
Scientists with appropriate backgrounds who are interested in applying should send a curriculum vitae and three letters of reference to Dr. T.D. Lee, Building 510A, Brookhaven National Laboratory, P.O. Box 5000, Upton, Long Island, NY 11973-5000, before June 30, 1999. BNL is an equal opportunity employer committed to work force diversity.
Brookhaven National Laboratory
On the frontier of science and technology
Some background information: Professor T.D. Lee is Director of the Center. Professor Masayasu Ishihara of RIKEN is the Group Leader of the Experimental Division and Dr. Gerry Bunce is the Deputy Group Leader. The Theory Division has 3 Fellows and 6 Research Associates (Oct. 1998). The Experimental Division started in 1998 with 1 Fellow and 1 RA, and works closely with the RIKEN SpinGroup staff of 6 physicists at BNL.
The Fellow position is intended to be at a level equivalent to Assistant Professor. Dr. Matthias Grosse-Perdekamp is the first Fellow and Dr. Alexander Bazilevsky is the first RA.
SN0381 - R. WellsTime Projection Chamber - Assembly and Test Installation Beam Support Column Load Test.SN0396 - R. Jared, W. Hunt, F. BieserSVT Readout Electronics Final Design Review Committee ReportSN0397 - R. Brown, A. Pendzick, S. White, B. Christie, H. Matis, H. Wieman, Y. Makdisi, B. EdwardsA Final Design Review (FDR) for the STAR EMCSN0398 - R. BossinghamHypothetical Deflagration of P10 from the STAR TPC: Maximum Plausible EffectSN0399 - K. TurnerHigh Pt Physics with the STAR Experiment at RHIC (for the STAR Collaboration).SN0400 - A. Boucham, S. Bouvier, M. Drancourt, B. Erazmus, M. Germain, S. Giliberto, G. Guilloux, H.H. Gutbrod, B. Kubica, R. Lednicky, F. Lefevre, C. LeMoal, P. Leszczynski, L. Martin, T. Milletto, T. Pawlak, W. Pinganaud, J. Pluta, J. Rafelski, O. Ravel, F. Retiere, L. Rigalleau, C. Roy, L. Arnold, J. Baudot, J. Coffin, G. Guillaume, L. Guthneck, S. Higueret, F. Jundt, C. Kuhn, J. Lutz, A. Michalon, C. Suire, A. Tarchini, J. Berst, J. Blonde, C. Colledani, L. Hebrand, W. Dulinski.Proposal for a Silicon Strip Detector for STAR