Summary notes of the LCU meeting on 21/03/2011

Present: CA, RB, HB, RC, RDM, SF, MG, BH, JJ, TM, MS, RT, FZ

Report from meetings

• SLM and general information -> MG
  This meeting was exceptionally moved to Monday to avoid an overlap with the IEFC Workshop.
  Laurent Deniau, currently in TE/MSC will move to our group in May. He will be the new MAD-X custodian in succession of Frank Schmidt. Furthermore, he will be responsible for the tracking environment. There will be a transition period and FS remains to be in charge of the SIXTRACK support. For new  developments additional resources should be provided.
  The deadline for the submission of IPAC abstracts is the 13 of April. The CERN internal deadline is not yet known but can be expected to be several days earlier, so that it is a good idea to start to prepare abstracts now. From this section, JJ, RA, RB and FZ will attend IPAC'11. In addition, some students might attend if they get support by grants or from their home institute.
  The SLM continues to work on the medium term planning. As reported before, the operational budget is reduced this year and includes the budget for students. Request for new students should better wait for next year.
  Students from the EPFL may come for several month for an internship. MG encourages proposals. A  list of proposals for subjects for students will be compiled and MG will check at the next SLM whether a global list for the whole group could be created, maintained and stored in the ABP web pages.
  With the help of Thys, low-beta optics have been reviewed and files prepared which would allow to go below 1.5 meter beta* with well smoothed quadrupole strengths. The corresponding crossing angle settings were determined by OB.
  Thys also reviews the IR7 optics in the context of moving magnets in the dispersion suppressor for the LHC collimation upgrade with cryo-collimators.
  There will be another LEB meeting this week to discuss the plans for smaller experimental beam pipes which will have to be decided soon to be ready for the first longer shutdown.
  MG studied the aperture limitations for external crossing angle compensation of the internal crossing in ALICE: a zero net crossing angles seems excluded at 1.38 TeV for aperture reasons. 
• LMC -> FZ
  FZ reported from several recent LMCs. More details can be found in the minutes. One of the next LMCs will be mostly dedicated for the smaller experimental beam-pipes with input from this group on optics  and aperture. MG says that this requires information on tolerances which we have for ATLAS, but not yet from CMS.

LHC status -> BH (slides)
BH reported about the progress from the LHC. The commissioning went very well. First stable physics started as planned and the peak luminosity already exceeded 1.e32cm-2s-1 using 136 bunches per beam. He also reminded about the excellent results of the beta measurements and corrections and machine protection issues. Further information and updates can be see on latest-news.html.

MD proposals -> all
As reported before, we have all been asked to submit MD requests. They will be further discussed in the first LHC Studies Working Group meeting scheduled for tomorrow.
The proposals can be seen on the web site.
We are encouraged to look at these proposals and should try to combine similar requests. As many studies are indeed at the frontier between many sections, collaboration and information exchange is crucial. MG strongly encouraged everybody involved to organise discussions and inform the relevant colleagues in other sections.
All MDs should include at least one member from the OP-group.

AOB

None

Last update: 22-March-2011

MG & HB

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