DRAGON meeting minutes   dec 16th 2003

Present: JR, MT, JDA, NC, BD, CR, DG, AO, LB, AH, MPP, PM, ML (Recorder)

JDA: New Turbo pump to be placed downstream of gas target to help out with pumping 
when the larger aperatures are in has arrived.

DO: will install the new pump and look into updating the vacuum system. i.e. epics 
controls.

DAH: Everything is now off, there was a problem with epics which turned off the 
EDs and didn't allow them to come back on. The EDs are on now and are conditioning.

LB: Since we wont beam until at the earliest mid febuary, now would be a good time 
to take out the quadrupole mass sensing device in ED1. This could be very useful 
for TUDA.

MT: What is the status of the increased hard drive for the data acquisition system? 
Peter Machule may already have the drive but needs to coordinate this with 
Konstaintin.

JR: Needs to use the data acquisition system over the next few days, thus it might 
be a good idea to wait until the new year to put the drive in.

JR: Joel is retiring on Jan 30th, his repacement is coming sometime in the new year 
and needs to be shown calibration techniques which only Joel knows.

AH: Gives a presentation on the work he and AO have been doing with the new silicon 
dE-E detector. Two alpha sources were used to test the detector. 148Gd and 241Am 
which have 3.183 and 5.486 (5.443) MeV alpha energies. See attachments. The E 
resolution for the Am is about 1% (fig:am_energy) and that of the dE is 20%. Small 
low energy bump in Am E spectrum may be the 5.443 MeV line. The long tail of fig 
"am_e-de_s2", which shows delta energy vs. energy, is a source effect i.e. 
straggling thru a thin window. The Gd gives ~ 2% E resolution(pg4-6). There is some 
strange "stuff" on the high energy side of the 3.183 alphas,the E-dE plot best 
illustartes this (fig: "gd_e-de_s2"). The company can build a detector with a total 
area of 16mmx16mm (current silicon detector is 50mmx50mm), thus size is a problem.

JDA: Would like to study the detector with a stable beam, in the end this setup 
could be used as a replacement for the MCP-PGAC-IC system.

AH: Of course results would be much better with higher Z particles.

NC progress report: NC looking at the 12C(12C,g)24Mg gamma data. She will write up a 
report which includes the astrophysical importance of this reaction along with some 
of her results from the data.

MT progress report: The initial GEANT simulation had a symmetric target which had 
to be changed. The final pumping tube was not even inculded in the simulation. Front 
end may have to be rewritten.

AO: An aperature may suffice.

CR: Right now the gamma distribution is a quadrupole (butterfly).

JR: Should really change this to look at the 90 degree gammas since theyre the ones 
which could give us an acceptance problem.

JDA: We need a separate meeting for the GEANT simulation studies where a more layout 
path is plotted.

JDA: shows a the 22Mg yield curve by done by DAH, see attachment "21Nayield"
(hollow circles). The plotted energy is that of the beam before the gas target. The 
point at 1131 KeV/u was a run at 8+ while all others were at 9+, thus an estimate of 
the charge state fraction of 22Mg must be made if this point is to be included. 
The second curve (x's) illustartes where the resonance energy occurs. An estimate is 
that This should be half way up the curve (~1156KeV/u) minus the gas target thickness 
to the elastic monitor (~5KeV/u). MT has been assigned to do a more through analysis 
which may be used to put in the next paper to be published soon.

AO: questions publishing due to a lack of data points further off the centroid of the 
resonance. 

LB: says we can use the TUDA data from PHD thesis by CR which includes the width of 
the resonance.

JDA: Initiates discussion of our plans and priorities for 2004. We need to ask for 
both stable and radioactive beam.

JR: New stable beam is better than old radioactive beam.

JDA: There is the possibility of 26Al , the 26Al is already made, in this case the 
target would need to be heated to extract the Al. The proton beam would not be needed 
resistive heating would do the trick.

JDA: Radioactive Ne beam could also be run with a Silicon-Carbide target. Also both 
12C reactions are still on the table (12C(a,g) and 12C(12C,g)). 

After much discussion 26Al will be the top priority pending the results of the 8Pi 
results.

JDA: What would we do if his proposal of using the old TISOL ECR and the TR-13 to 
produce 13N etc. was accepted.

If this proposal goes through then we will reconvine to discuss the plan.