Jlab R&D Status Report


Solenoidal Magnet

Negotiations for the transfer of the MEGA/LASS solenoidal magnet to Jlab for use in the Hall D project began immediately after Larry Cardman sent a letter to John McClelland officially requesting the magnet. Paul Brindza drafted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Los Alamos National Lab and Jefferson Lab.

Doug Tilles has been identified as the Jlab on-site coordinator for dissassembly and preparation for magnet move. Paul Brindza, Doug Tilles and Eric Scott (IU) visited Los Alamos in April to receive training, resolve remaining issues for the MOU, and prepare a preliminary work plan. A detailed list of activities to prepare for the magnet move was compiled and issues that needed further coordination were identified. Since then the draft MOU has been updated to reflect all stated concerns and received several rounds of updates from all parties. Paul prepared an Hazard Control Plan (HCP) for the work, which received a positive review from the Los Alamos safety officer.

Los Alamos has completed some preliminary tasks in anticipation of the arrival of the Jlab work crew, including disconnecting the magnet power and removal of the Helium refrigerator. The work plan calls for two trips by Jlab teams to complete the preparations for the magnet move. Doug and Paul are traveling to Los Alamos Sep 9-12 to finalize any MOU details and schedule the first trip by Jlab technicians to clear the magnet area. We expect that the MOU can be signed shortly so that work teams can be scheduled for dissassembly.

There have been discussions with IUCF to refurbish the magnet for use in Hall D. A decision and agreement to have IUCF perform this work clearly needs to made before arrangements can be made to move the magnet.

Civil Construction

All the latest revisions to the civil drawings have been updated and are consistent with the Design Report. Copies of the drawings can be found in the repository.

High Resolution Pipeline TDC development

A prototype pipeline TDC board based on the COMPAS F1 chip is under design. Schematics are well advanced. This prototype, version 1, should be available for testing by the end of the year. Prototype 1 will be a working module which can be used in existing experiments, and provide experience with the F1 chip based on a design which can be adapted to future demands of Hall D. The plans for the prototype were summarized in June in a series of view graphs. Here is an outline of the project to date:

April
Draft JLAB F1 TDC Specification -- Ed Jastrzembski
July - Aug [Barbosa, Jastrzembski]
Significant design progress for prototype, version 1:
Sept - Oct Plans [Barbosa, Jastrzembski, Proffitt]
Nov - Dec Projection

DAQ Issues

Computers have been ordered for testing grid software in collaboration with FSU and the JLab Computing dept. They should arrive soon.

Evio ("CODA") format has been tentatively chosen as the binary raw data format, and possibly for all binary formats if collaborators agree. XML has been chosen for ASCII files. The CODA evio package has been expanded and improved to meet Hall D needs. Converters between evio and xml have been written and tested on Hall C evio data, and are proving useful for Hall C already.

Improvements to the slow controls package CDEV have been explored. A test publish/subscribe service has been implemented by Elliott Wolin as a protoytpe for Hall D use. Results were presented at the CHEP01 conference.