Mucap beamtimes in 2003

[Claude Petitjean <claude.petitjean@psi.ch>]

Dear friends,

now, after the user meetings are over and the protocols being
written, I like to inform you about available beamtime in 2003
for the mucap experiment:

We got the requests (1 month in May for tpc commissioning and
2 months first full production in summer/fall in principle
approved.

However, any beamtime in area muE4 beyond September 17 is open,
since our technical division wants by then to start tearing
the area down to prepare the full replacement of the present
muE4 beam by the new high flux - low energy muon facility LEM.

A decision about a possible continuation beyond September-17
will be done by Ralph Eichler in early July based on the
state of preparations of the LEM project and of our setup.
I believe that - if we can demonstrate reasonable progress and
a good chance of using Sept-Oct for a real production - Ralph
will grant us an additional 4 weeks.

As it stands now, we have 4 weeks scheduled in May 2003 for a
commissioning run of the tpc embedded in the e-detector and
4 weeks from mid August to 17th September, 2003.

In reality, the muE4 area is available to us anytime until Sept
17, so, if there are more (or other) requirements for tests, we
can change and enlarge our beamschedule according to our real needs.

For the tpc, I can say that we are presently running it in
stable condition on our East site with 5 bar Nitrogen at 6.25 kV
and see the betas from the Sr90 source very nicely through the
beam window.

In the next weeks we will crank the tpc further up to ca. 6.5 kV,
then bake it out at 120 C and finally run it in 10 bar protium.
By mid March we plan to move the tpc into the muE4 area to do
a cosmics run together with the eSC detector (which is already
in continuous operation).

I hope this info helps you to plan your scheduling for 2003.

With best regards

Claude