FGT Commissioning Plan - RUN 12

Run plan:

• Collider Projections
• RHIC Machine/Detector Planning Meeting
• Schedule:
  • Cool down will start on ~ Tuesday, January 17, 2012
  • Overnight collisions (8h/night) starting ~ Tuesday, January 31, 2012 
    

Goal:

• Commissioning during 200GeV without full data taking (See tasks below).
• Setup FGT for full 500GeV running (~7 weeks) during a few days during 200GeV running.
• Full data taking at 500GeV.

Manpower at BNL:

• Anselm (?)
• Bernd (Permanent at BNL in Jan./Feb.)
• Gerard (~ 1 week during overnight collisions)
• Gerrit (Permanent at BNL)
• Ramiro (Permanent at BNL)
• Ross (~ 3-4 week starting with overnight collisions)
• Stephen  (TBC)

Commissioning tasks:

1) (Preparation) GV to install & test firmware including:

a.     ANL SDRAM FIFO for ARC

b.     IU "buffered APV readout" which will supersede the "length hack" (which may cause some offline troubles so would really be best to fix it before we start serious data taking).

     2) (Preparation) FGT SW team to implement online JPlots in coordination with JL, and test (live).     

     3) (Setup) GV to change firmware (trivial – 20 minutes work) for 5 timebin readout. (Or other # as may be decided at a later stage). 7 timebins is too much data volume. Hope to have 1 timebin pre-sample (pedestal), 1-3 samples on leading edge of pulse (depending on APV setup choices), and >1 sample after the peak of the pulse. This should allow a reasonably accurate pulse fit/analysis.

     4) (Preparation) Other leftover installation tasks to complete, not in particular readout-related but still important:

a.     GV to implement I²C read so we can readback/confirm APV configurations and so we can read FGT FEE temperatures. GV/TL to implement the latter for slow controls. PN's part of it is done (we think).

b.     PN to implement EPICS gas → HV interlock

     5) (Setup) GV & "2nd readout expert" (GvN & RC) to organize configuration control files and fill in appropriate values.      

     6) (Setup) GV & "2nd readout expert" (GvN & RC) to time in cable timing for ADC clocks for all FGT. Probably needs some quick/simple plot software development.

     7) (Preparation) BS to ensure w/ trigger board that we have an appropriate commissioning trigger definition ready to go (EEMC HT W Trigger - High threshold / 13GeV). And we need to have some rate estimate for this please. Note also the discussion w/ Gerrit that we should have some “uniform background trigger” (West BBC single?).

     8) (Setup) “2^nd readout expert” & FEE expert (BB) to tune APV parameters.

     9) (Setup) "2^nd readout expert" to set pedestals by VPSP for all FGT.

     10) (Preparation) FGT software team to provide study of pedestals especially a histogram of rms's and a list of apparently bad channels to ignore in setup analyses.

     11) (Setup) FGT/HV experts to setup gas and HV.

a.     Establish gas flow of about 1 bubble/5s and switch to ArCO2 prior to overnight collisions expected to be around January 31, 2011 (GvN)

b.     Once stable collisions with low background is established, ramp HV for each quarter section slowly in steps to nominally 3600V (BS & GvN)

c.     Need to set up three HV operation modes (PN):

                                               i.     HV OFF

                                             ii.     HV Standby

                                            iii.     HV Physics

     12) (Setup) Trig & EEMC people to setup w/ beam. (Estimate "a few shifts" - but maybe we can get a confirmation of this?).

     13) (Setup FGT coarse timing, 1 shift?) Find the collisions. I suggest we set a wide range of latencies on various APV chips in same run, then see which one seems to have the collisions. It should be evident if we have a decent sample from our trigger. (I hope we can have a priori confidence in that!) Then we set all APV latencies based on this, try some more runs.

     14) (Setup fine timing, 1 shift?) We need plots to show timing overall and use these plots if necessary to change cable timing (APV clock timing). It would be good to know in advance if this is really necessary. If we take 3-4 time bins data and analyze it with some kind of pulse shape fit then we can tolerate a looser timing setting. If we need to take 1-timebin data then we'll have to set it tightly. Either way though I think our analysis people have to get the machinery ready to extract pulse timing by a fit. We'll need it to set the timing -- or else we will be in the position of trying to maximize amplitude on a plot with very low statistics, it will be very hard to do it that way, I fear.

     15) (Setup HV, 1 shift?) Up to this point we should have run the test stand HV settings or a bit more, something that makes large pulses often. (And in the above we should simply cut saturated pulses from our plots accepting the lower efficiency.) Now we need to make HV scans and estimate "good" HV. I guess we will need to have some tracking cut so we can see the "real" signals. We'll also need plots which really integrate over a cluster at least in phi. We should also have some a priori idea where the mip peak should be on the ADC scale, given the rms noise which we really see on the pedestals.

     16) Studies of gas mixture choice.

Note:

A lot of the optimizations are coupled/nonlinear, we may need to iterate the whole thing once or twice over the course of 1^st few weeks of running.

Initially we will not do ZS, most likely our intention is to have ZS in place towards the end of 200 running. but, it’s a goal, we need to see how it goes. There is some firmware and control software work needed still for ZS.