Dear All,

The paper is interesting - unfortunately I accepted a social engagement at 
8:00 PM Geneva time (2:00 PM EDT) so I will not be able to call in. 
My apologies. 

1. LHC 

The latest from the LHC - from CERN LHC web site but no real news about 
the schedule. ATLAS has decided to start 24 hr shifts in September rather 
than August. There will be a seminar 02-Jul-09 by Myers which should be 
interesting (and jam-packed). ATLAS has recommissioned the magnets and all 
is fine. We're running cosmics in 'combined' mode (nearly all subsystems 
operating - except TGC endcap trigger chambers don't have operating gas 
and CSCs where the ROD firmware is being upgraded).

>From Web:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sector 4-5 is being warmed to room temperature. The sector was previously 
warmed to 80 Kelvin in order to perform a test on the copper component of 
the busbars at non-superconducting temperatures (See previous update). 

One of the LHCs electrical interconnections being repaired.

During the test at 80 Kelvin one busbar with potentially high resistance 
was found. The sector is now being warmed to room temperature in order to 
perform a more accurate test on all the copper busbars. By comparing the 
results of the two tests (80 and 300 Kelvin), the accuracy of the 
80-Kelvin test can be verified to help interpret data taken from the other 
cold sectors. 

In Sector 1-2 the repairs have been completed to all the electrical 
interconnections and the last W bellow has been closed. After final 
electrical checks and insulation vacuum checks the sector will be ready to 
start the cool down process. 

The beam lines in Sector 6-7 have been closed. The sector has been tested 
with the RF ball, which showed no problems with the interconnections. 
(More details on RF ball testing available here). Repair work on the 
electrical interconnections is still ongoing. 

The LHCs anti-clockwise beam transfer system was tested on 6 and 7 June. 
Particle bunches were sent from the SPS through the transfer line toward 
the LHC where it intersects just before the LHCb cavern. 

The beam was sent down the 2.8km transfer line and stopped just before
reaching the LHC tunnel with a beam stopper (known as a TED) - 4m of
graphite that is physically placed in the path of the beam line to prevent
the beam from taking the last step into the LHC.

A seminar on the status of the LHC will be given by Steve Myers on 2 July. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Micromegas:

We're writing an R&D proposal for upgrades of muon system which has a
draft budget for micromegas at ~ $500k. Vinnie is planning to come to
Harvard next Tuesday 30-Jun-09 to talk to Huth, Oliver, et al. about
micromegas (mostly electronics). Vinnie agreed to come to MIT on Wednesday
morning 01-Jul-09 to discuss the R&D prospects with you if you would like
him to. At the moment the plan is very rough and various groups are
offering to get involved by focusing on specific things. For us, perhaps
it's the behavior in B-field, large scale construction and
pattern-recognition.

The electronics readout is a big issue with the large channel count. At 
the moment Vinnie is assembling a group from BNL, Arizona and perhaps 
Harvard to work on this. We could be involved in testing but I don't see 
us doing much on the front end ASIC design. For DMTPC you need to extract 
direction information from the readout.   

One of the longer term R&D projects being pushed by Michigan is to use
plasma screen technology to make the amplification gap in a micromega-like
chamber. The claim is a more simple readout and cheap anode fabrication 
but the development is quite primitive at the moment. 

Sorry for the long email - apologies for not being able to call in. 
 
Any news about a DoE visit?

Best regards,

        Frank

	Frank E. Taylor

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On Tue, 23 Jun 2009, Ray F. Cowan wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
> 
> This week we meet at **2 PM Eastern**, Thursday, June 25, for our weekly LQS 
> meeting.  Dial-in is 510-665-5437, passcode 7336.  The time change is for
> this week only to accomodate Peter's monthly Energy task force meeting.
> 
> We'll take round-table reports first.  Peter suggested this dark matter 
> paper for our discussion this week: http://arXiv.org/pdf/0803.4196
> 
> "The WIMPless Miracle: Dark Matter Particles without Weak-scale Masses 
> or Weak Interactions"
> 
> The meeting agenda and the paper can be found at
> http://dmtpc.mit.edu/MaKaC/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=178
> 
> Hope you can join in.
> 
> Thanks much,
> --Ray
> 
>