Minutes of the Meeting March 25, 2003 - prepared by SE 

 present: 
 Dave Hutcheon, Art Olin, John D'Auria,  Jim King, Catherine Neish, 
 Aaron Bebington, Peter Machule, Dave Ottewell, Zhihong Li, Dario Gigliotti,   
 Sabine Engel, Cybele Jewett and Joel Rogers 

 Agenda: 
 1.       last week's minutes 

 2.       recent run 

 3.       hardware 

 4.       preliminary results of  16O(a,g)20Ne 

 5.       goal of 13C(p,g)14N 

 6.       new analysis software 

   
 1.       minutes: 
      nonexistent (no official meeting last week) 

 2.       recent run: 
 Last night the DTL broke down. The 16O tests were terminated. 

 3.       hardware 
 Over the week end the Cryo pumps caused problems, which might be related 
 to the site power failure. 

  FC1 did not become operational after installation. A test with a current 
 source confirms hardware problems. PM and DO will look into the problem. 

  The scaling program needs some corrections. 
   
 An automatic backing system will be installed by Mike Leross this 
 week. It will start pumping on the Turbo pump backing volume 
 (tank) automatically when the backing pressure reaches a limit. 

 During the IC tests one alpha source might have been lost. It is not 
 clear yet, whether this is the Gd or Am source. 

 The IC window might have been broken in the venting procedure yesterday. 

 The CCD camera should be detached from its operating cable when not used. 
 This will avoid water condensation on the lens. Shutting off the power 
 completely would require to reboot the system. 

 4.       preliminary results of  16O(a,g)20Ne: 
 JR did some preliminary analysis on three of the recent 16O runs. In total 
 he could identify 62 good recoil events, among them 28 in coincidence. 
 Those came in coincidence with a gamma event above 3 MeV and within a time 
 cut of 0.5 microseconds. Those runs seem to place the resonance slightly 
 downstream (run 8055) and upstream (runs 8047+48) of the target center. 
 The gamma efficiency was calculated to be 44 +/- 13 (stat) % for  the 
 former run and 46 +/- 11 (stat) %  for the remaining two. The files are 
 attached. 

 AO suggested to understand the background events before conclusions 
 should be drawn. 

 5.       goal of 13C(p,g)14N: 
 JDA/JK: The upcoming 13C(p,g)14N beam time will simulate the radioactive 
 13N(p,g)14O runs planned for the summer. It also has a broad resonance 
 (37 keV) and a significant direct capture contribution. The excited state 
 in 14N decays by 80% with an 8 MeV gamma to the ground state. This gamma 
 will provide a useful check on 13C contamination in the later radioactive 
 beam runs. The remaining 20% decay into an excited state at 2.3 MeV, 
 emitting a 5.7 MeV gamma. This is energetically close to the gamma expected 
 in the 13N(p,g)14O runs. The goal is to step through the excitation curve, 
 which will be mapped at low pressures of ~2 Torr. With 10 pnA beam, 
 45 counts/sec will be expected at the peak. For the moment, the focus 
 will be on the performance of the IC chamber and its ability to separate 
 14N recoils from 13C beam. 

 DH pointed out that the transmission of the recoils might be better for the 
 later 13N runs, since the cone angle will be narrower. 

 A complete run plan will be generated. 

 6.       new analysis software: 
 AO mentioned that TRIUMF is planning to establish a new data analysis 
 software replacing NOVA. 
       JR agreed to train everybody interested in the use of Paw++.