Minutes WP meeting #87, 15 July 2009
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Present:
At DESY: Patrick Conley, Takeshi Matsuda, Sasha Kaukher, Hiritoshi Kuroiwa, Leif Jonsson, Jan Timmermans
Via EVO: Ron Settles, Jochen Kaminski, Frederik Kloeckner, Martin Killenberg, Dean Karlen, Uwe Renz, David Attie, Akira Sugiyama

Apologies: Dan Peterson

Anybody forgotten?

1) General News: 
- Yulan Li had reminded us in an e-mail of the next preparatory meeting for the Linear Collider Testbeam Workshop that will take place in November '09 at LAL Orsay. Our future testbeam needs will be discussed in detail in the LCTPC collaboration meeting in September.
- The next LCTPC collaboration meeting will take place 21-22 September at DESY, with possibility of EVO connection. A 0th draft of the program is attached to the indico agenda of this WP meeting.

2) PCMAG news and LPTPC status:
- The support for the Si detectors has been installed; not yet the detectors. No news available at the meeting when this will happen (during the August “stop”?)
- TPC re-installed in magnet ; TDC readout electronics installed  on central GEM module.
- Magnet ramped up, resulting in power trip on the TDC VME crate (see details below)
- Since Monday 13/7 the Lund group re-installed Altro electronics on the central GEM module (see details below)
- On Friday 17/7 motors (to be used for the lifting stage) will be tested close to the magnet; news from after meeting: the motors work, but not their controlbox.

3) Status TDC readout:
- lower noise level observed than in April. However, during ramp-up of magnet, the powerline to the TDC VME crate (and the trigger counters crate) tripped (80A fuse). The fuse of the VME powersupply  survived but the VME crate no longer working; still need to check whether the TDC’s survived. Sasha proposes next test to do without magnetic field and using a Micromegas module
(with non-resistive anode).

4) Status next test with one JGEM + Altro electronics:
- The Lund people saw the first clean tracks already this morning, without magnetic field. They want to take data testing different parameter settings. If all combinations would be tried that would involve ~700 different runs, which takes too much time. 
- they also want to test with the TPC rotated (in phi) by 90 degrees w.r.t. the beam, in order to have many, short (but wide) pads hit on the tracks, to make a dE/dx comparison with simulations done in Lund
- they may need to reduce the GEM gain, when running at highest amplifier gain
- they expect to start with data taking with magnetic field on Friday 17/7
- there may be need for helping out with running some shifts.

5)  Akira reported that Japanese data analysers are busy figuring out the distortions before combining the track results from the three modules: it is complicated.

6) Jochen reported that there was not much news from their testbeam data analysis. A precise measurement of the positions of the 8 chips was made and included in the tracking software.  Analysis of the first data from the 5T magnet campaign has started; but needs a closer look.

7)  The Saclay group requested two new Micromegas modules; they will be available end September. The two anodes will have the same resistivity, but two different  routings (a “CERN” one and a “Saclay” one). They will first make a prototype with a new PCB.
- the group will be present at DESY end of August for data taking with the laser setup.

8) News from Victoria laser system: 
Patrick is still struggling with LCIO and Marlin TPC, for the analysis of the laser data

9) AOB
- The abstract for a poster at Lepton-Photon 2009 was accepted for poster presentation.
(post-meeting news: I have asked Patrick, who accepted, to present this poster at the conference)

- a first discussion was held on the 0th draft of the agenda for the collaboration meeting on 21-22 September at DESY: http://ilcagenda.linearcollider.org/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=3742
The above agenda page will be updated in the coming weeks. There is a need to nominate reviewer(s ) and/or discussion leader(s) for the various sessions. Jan and Takeshi will contact some people to take care of that. The last point on the agenda on the 22nd deals with organizational issues; this is meant to be the ‘open’ part of the collaboration board meeting. This will then be followed by a (hopefully short) ‘closed’ part a few days later by EVO.
- please send comments already to this 0th draft and to later updates 
 

Jan Timmermans