Injector
The proton beam characterization with the 6 mm Plasma Electrode is on-going. The effect of Kr gas injection for controlling the space charge force and reducing the emittance is under investigation. The total extracted beam current achieved so far of 10 to 40 mA can be used for injection in the RFQ. The fractions of proton in the extracted beam are 50% @ 10 mA and 75% @ 30 mA.
Radio Frequency (RF) System and RFQ cavity
The start-up of the RF system continued. The damaged MicroBox PC used in the RF Water Cooling System (WCS) was repaired: monitoring of the WCS status is essential to hand over to NAT operator the conditioning during the night at low DC. The scheduled tests of the new predrivers continued and now 3 out of 10 have been successfully tested (each test lasts ~8hours). During injection trials into the RFQ cavity the RFPS experienced interlocks and several measures have been already taken: the Protection System (PSYS) of the RF chain 4B has been replaced with a spare, the formerly exchanged PSYS of chains 1B and 3B have been restored, and current instabilities in the circulator temperature compensation coil control (VAT10) are investigated.
Two flowmeters in the RFQ skid showed instabilities and triggered frequent interlocks: short term counter measures have been taken and an intervention on the RFQ skid is being carefully planned (most likely not necessary before next scheduled maintenance).
Thanks to all the efforts of the RF team, the RFPS system is now stable enough and it is planned to handle over soon the system to the NAT operator and start conditioning during the night (at DC<5%).
Beam Dump
The water circulation tests into the oxygen control loop and into the water conductivity control loop are on-going in manual operation mode. This week was fully packed of remote sessions with CIEMAT support to update and debug the BD skid LCS and be able to switch soon the skid to automatic mode.
Disclaimer: the information reported is not meant to be technically complete and doesn’t cover all the activities currently carried out on LIPAc.