Beam Test Log
Beam Test Log
Sunday, July 19
- New TMB EPROM's installed, now the Bxn can be defined by either ALCT (mode '420') or CLCT (mode '1420'), in addition to old modes: both LCT's pretrigger and hault, TMB'500'; both LCT's free running, TMB'500'.
- ATLAS is running with high source intensity, not useful for us.
- Later - low energy beam most of the time, ineffecient for us. With 120 GeV original H3 hadron beam we have about 20/spill at 40 GeV X5 hadron beam, and with 20 GeV it's siply impossible to work - scintillator trigger on junk.
Saturday, July 18
- More data for trigger studies. New TMB EPROM tried, failed.
Friday, July 17
- Continue long runs for LCT free run / TMB'500' mode, with and with out source
- Beam often not useful.
- Measured plateau of singles rate in muon halo in spill.
Thursday, July 16
- Long runs with/without source at nominal voltage, free running LCT's.
- Different modes of LCT generated trigger running: ALCT free, CLCT self-pretrigger and hault, TMB in '420'-mode (bunch crossing is sent to DAQ MB); long runs with/without source in LCT free run, TMB'500' mode.
Wednesday, July 15
- 60 GeV electron beam upstream is not useful.
- Hibrid calibration of the cathode electronics. Not successful. Fixed blown fuse.
- Data with ALCT, CLCT in Free run mode, scint, trigger.
Tuesday, July 14
- Different comparator board settings' studies - peaking time, peaking modes.
- External DAQ MB (Buckeye) calibration.
- Anode cables' delay calibration.
Monday, July 13
- We're stuck with "bad" beam conditions for a while. There's a calorimeter in front of us, so They want electrons and hadrons. They absorb them, so we get some muons. Mon.-Wed. - primary beam varies between 20 and 100 Gev; Wed.-Fri. - 20-25 GeV; Fri.-Wed. - 100 GeV. We do not get much of a muon beam when the primary momentum is low, and they are all scattered and get into the chamber at weird angles, - bad beam in other words. 100 GeV primary is useful.
- Chamber positioned close to horizontal. Studies of self-triggering with cosmics. Now ALCT is in free run, CLCT is in pretrigger and hault.
Sunday, July 12
- New EPROMSs installed on comparator boards - outputs are now all 400ns long and no pulses on adjacent half-strips. Long runs with these settings.
- Bad beam conditions. Started studying self-triggering with LCT boards in pretrigger and hault. Then free-running. The CAMAC readout and triggering is not synchronized anymore, so the first event read out from the TMB does not correspond to the one in DAQ MBand TDC's.
Saturday, July 11
- Continue HV and anode threshold scan.
- Long runs (60k evts.) without and with nominal (absorption 10) background rates and optimized anode thresholds and HV. Gotta be the good and useful data.
Friday, July 10
- Radiation / HV scan - that's a lot of data.
- HV and threshold scan for anode electronics.
Thursday, July 9
- Random trigger with source up - HV scan for OSU preamp behavior studies.
- Peaking time and peaking mode studies on comparator board at 3.8 and 3.7 kV without the source.
- Radiation/HV bidimensional scan started.
Wedneaday, July 8
- Anode cable delays calibrated (N.B.)
- high voltage and current added to the data stream.
- Chamber self-triggering is accomplished with cosmics. Works fine. Same with the source with absorption from 5000 to 20.
- Internal calibration of buckeye strips 17-32.
Tuesday, July 7
- Trigger timing adjusted, or I should say, perfected.
- Monitoring of analog signals from old OSU anode electronics added
- HV scan at nominal LHC background rate - 20 kHz per strip (or wire group). Looks difficult, especially tracking and triggering with strips.
- Ntuples for all runs are made. Off-liners are welcome to check out and compliant to Bryan.
Monday, July 6
- Radiation scan at nominal high voltage. Currents per plane and rates in selected anode groups are monitored. The chamber doesn't trip at the rate level 5 times the one expected at LHC.
- HV scan without irradiation.
Sunday, July 5.
- Eventually got fully recovered from the move. No beam though.
July 2 - 5.
- Switching the electronics on, different improvements, debugging DAQ MB and TMB, making them work together.
Wednesday, July 1.
- GASPLEX board 5 calibration (relevant bacause we have strip #80 data with this board.
- 6am Started disconnecting the chamber, 8:30 finished, 9:00 loaded the chamber into the box, 9:50 loaded on the truck, 10:30 unloaded at bldg. 190, 11:30 - installed in GIF. Wow!
- most cabling done
Tuesday, June 30.
- Long and tedious calibration of new cathode electronics and GASPLEX.
- Theta scan (narrow strips, low noise conditions) combined with trying new anode RAM tables - good ones and bad ones, to see the difference, 10k events per each.
Monday, June 29.
- Very long run (100k) with narrow strips and for resolution studies.
- Phi-scan with narrow strips and new comparator thresholds.
- Attempted to use TMB to send trigger and clock to DAQ MB. TMB works in external trigger mode. Success with 1200ns latency setting on the DAQ MB, although 800ns seemed to be more appropriate.
Sunday, June 28.
- New anode threshold scan (100 - 155). Threshold settings are down to about 30 fC, on average.
- Different comparator board settings tried - peaking time and peaking pattern studies, total of 13 settings.
Saturday, June 27.
- HV-scan with new comparator threshold (12.5mV) and offest current settings.
- New anode RAM table (lct48a_ramtable_25).
- Tedious calibration runs on the new cathode board (both external and internal caps used.
Friday, June 26.
- HV scan with new comarator threshold (spot 6). This should be repeated after noise studies.
- Strip #80 studies (spot #8 - narrow strips, new anode elec's, GASPLEX): Phi-scan (0, 2.5, 5) @ Theta=0, HV=3.8kV
- Noise studies: observing pedestal width change as certain pieces of electronics are swtiched on/off, or disconnected, HV on/off, etc... A minor problem on the cathoode board fixed, timing adjusted, noise is now down to 6.5 channels FWHM (~1fC), and does not depend on other electronics or HV. As a result of this improvement, anode electronics also started working stable at thresholds about 30 fC (see June 27). Yeah!!!
Thursday, June 25.
- Another scan for the delay of external trigger for LCT cards.
- Comparator threshold reduced from 30fC to 14fC. Comparator offsets reduced from 1.77fC to minimal value of 1.34fC.
- Moving to another control room and recovery.
Wednesday, June 24.
- Muon mometum scan finished.
- 3 values in Theta with iron - 15, 25, 35
- No iron, data close to SiBT @ 3.8kV, theta=30, phi=0. Done with narrow strips.
- Back to wide strips, iron, close to SiBT. 8:04am. End of our run in control at H2. Compliments to the accelerator this night.
- Plan for Wednesday: calibration of #2 cathode board with intrinsic system - all 6 planes; calibration of 1 plane old-fashioned way - with external cap.
Tuesday, June 23.
- Lots of data with narrow (9mm) strips. Adjustment of cathode DAQ latency. HV scan with silicon.
- Beginning of iron era: HV scan, phi-scan, iron moved closer (30cm from the chamber), muon momentum scan.
Monday, June 22.
- HV scan with old anode elec's, new anode elec's off. Andrei noticed that the pedestal width on a selected strip goes down from 10 channles FWHM (new anode on) to 7 channels (new anode off).
- There was also adjustment to the external trigger delay for the LCT modules. While this data is waiting to be looked at, the trigger delay is set to about 150 ns wrt the input pulses from anode electronics (250 ns wrt T0).
- The chamber is moved so that the area with rather narrow strips (9mm) is in the beam - spot 7. In the remaining time while we're in control the plan is to do regular scans (HV, Theta, Phi) in this area, and then scan the muon momentum with iron in front of us - presumably on Tuesday.
Sunday, June 21.
- 00:01 Start HV scan with all new fully functional electronics (chamber spot 6). Couldn't resist posting some cool LCT event displays: a single track event 1 and 2 , a double track event, triggering in a harsh environment - 1 , 2 , 3 .
- HV, Theta and Phi scans are done in the wide strip area.
Friday - Saturaday , June 19-20.
- Unsuccessful attempts to put LCT modules in the global readout. Apparently, 24 bit transfers were never used on RD5.
- Decided to run in local DAQ mode. All (!!!) electronics in functional now. LCT works in pretrigger and hault mode with external trigger.
- LCT event display debugged and shows some pretty pictures.
Thursday, June 18.
- A lot of HV scan data with new cathode electronics without comparator board.
- Comparator board mounted and cabled, noise on strips measured - went up insignificantly: from average 1.5mV to 1.6mV.
- Rather successful standalone tests of the LCT modules in local DAQ mode.
Tuesday, June 16.
- Continue with new cathode electronics calibration. Another discovery: the amplifier is apparently sensitive to finite strip resistivity to the ground at the same level as GASPLEX. Jason found out, that by unplugging the strip with low resistivity to the ground from the card he makes the calibration pulse visible. This poses the same requirement on the strip resistivity to the ground as for GASPLEX - should be over 200 MOhm to be ignored.
- Pedestal widths are measured. They go from 3.8 to 3.0 channels (1.5 mV) when the new anode electronics is switched off, and there's no dependence on old anode electronics. There are some double peaks (not understood). The plan is to attach the comparator board on Wednesday.
- Trigger LCT modules came. FPGA's loaded OK. Testing shows they are fine. Difficulties writing 24 bit words, but there are other ways to test if pattern finder works (input patterns on the front panel).
Monday, June 15.
- Clean theta scan with old electronics. Begin phi scan. Accelerator shutdown for 3 days.
- While accelerator is shut down. New cathode elec's calibration. The plan is to do dirty calibration and measure noise; attach comparator board tommorrow, on Tuesday, measure the noise; if acceptable, calibrate tediously with all electronics in place and keep it this way from there on.
Sunday, June 14.
- Eventually, clean HV scan with old electronics. Done.
- Missing bit in DAQ MB readout module found and fixed.
- First data with new cathode electronics is taken in local DAQ mode. Good looking event display pictures of signal traces and tracks in the chamber instrumented with new cathode elec's.
Saturday, June 13.
- Attempt to go HV scan on the guard strip. Bad data - our trigger messed up.
- Debugging software for DAQ MB readout.
- Hints of tracks in new electronics. Missing bit problem.
Friday, June 12.
- No beam most of the day
- 3-6pm Beam test workshop. The minutes are to be written and linked in here.
- New cathode electronics is mounted on the chamber.
Thursday, June 11.
- An attempt to improve the existing Gasplex trigger so it holds the signal levels at a moment that provides the best linearity (about half pulse height). This was supposed to be accomplished by generating our own T0 right in the beamline, so that delays are short. Too many junk triggers. The words "new improved" become the synonym of "not working".
- Data acquisition problems.
Tuesday, June 9.
- 1am. Beam is back, Done - HV scan with new anode electronics, new gas mix 40/50/10 at Theta=25 degrees. The knee for 6/6 effeciency is at about 3.8, 4.0 is as high as it gets' for the chamber with this mix. 3.8kV was chosen as an operation point for this mix.
- 7am. Begin Theta scan at 3.8kV. First few points were taken with 130 fC to get oscillation-free sample for trigger simulators. Then down to 90 fC, repeat Theta scan.
- 6pm. Theta scan with new anode electronics and new gas finished.
- 7pm. Moved back to old electronics. HV scan with new gas mix at Theta 25 degrees. The plan is to compare effeciencies on and off guard strip. Also we will take a few runs at different HV values with one HV segment switched off. ALso planned to have theta scans in this areas of the chamber for trigger simulation people to look at. Another interesting measurement requested by Oleg P. is to measure gas gain variation in the area of the chamber where it's the worst and compare to gain map from FNAL measurements.
Monday, June 8
- Comparator boards arrived. Being massaged in the prep room.
- Systemetic study of anode electronics - individual channel thresholds, test pulsing
Sunday, June 7
- Moved to an area of the chamber covered by new anode electronics.
- HV scan at theta=25 degrees, tuning thresholds. Some data lost due to central data recording not working.
- No beam for almost a day, so, good moment to switch to new economy gas mix - 40/50/10
Saturday, June 6
Friday, June 5
- Finished Hign voltage scan
Thursday, June 4.
- Calibration software written.
- Gasplex timing eventually fixed.
- 9pm First data - start of HV scan (old anode electronics + gasplex, standard gas mix), first night shift. Plan is to find operation point, do the Theta scan for timing measurement and study the effects of guard strips.
Wednesday, June 3.
- Calibration analysis
- 2:30 - 7pm Calibration Gasplex Board #5
- 48 channels of old anode electronics read out by 2 2277's
Tuesday, June 2.
- Setting the Gasplex delays for calibration.
- Taking test pulse data.
- Anode JTAG brought to life.
- Old anode electronics powered.
- Preparing for calibration: cabling, DAQ
- Second anode card mounted.
Sunday, May 31.
- 11am 5 GASPLEX controllers connected and read out. DAQ success.
- 3pm Fully functional event display. Pretty pictures of muon tracks in both dimensions.
- 11:45pm Strip resistances to ground and between strips are measured on the whole chamber.
Saturday, May 30.
- 3pm Nominal voltage 4.1kV set on all 6 planes.
- 6pm Anode cables (30m * 18 ribbons) and GASPLEX cables layed out. Anodes connected. DAQ running (TDC readout).
- 9pm Anode thresholds set at approx. 60 fC.
- 9:01pm Tracks on event display (aondes only).
Friday, May 29.
- 10:30am. P2 is out of the box, mounted on the support.
- 3pm filled up with the gas, passed "low high voltage" test.
- 6pm Anode electronics mounted: 1 card new (6*16 channels), 2 boxes old (6*8 channels); GASPLEX eletronics mounted.