Pierre Auger Project
Progress Report
Summary (photo
album)
The last of the four fluorescence buildings at Loma Amarilla is now complete
and in the hands of the FD group. The installation of the shutters and mirror supports
is proceeding faster than expected. Governor Cobos will lead the inauguration
on the evening of 15 November. (The Loma Amarilla building was funded by the
The agreements with the landowners for the area where we expect to deploy the next 370 surface detector stations are closer but still not signed. The best estimate for signing is now November.
The number of completed surface detector stations in the field has now
exceeded 1000. There are 1190 tanks deployed of which 1168 have water. The
deployment rate remains low pending the availability of more positions and
better conditions in the field. Surface detector tanks are coming in regularly
from the vendors in
The first tests of radio detection of showers are underway near the Balloon Launch Facility. A second group will be testing their equipment near the Central Laser Facility.
A four week Auger North workshop at the
WBS 1.1 Fluorescence Detector (Jonny Kleinfeller – Karlesruhe)
Near the end of the last shift we replaced the transformers in the power line to the electronics crates and MirrorPCs by UPS units. One 3KVA UPS unit serves 2 telescopes. The idea for this modification is a smoother operation of shifts with frequent short power cuts. Power cuts lasting less than a few minutes should now not interrupt the operation of the telescopes.
The batteries of the UPS units which serve slow control and the shutter drives at Los Leones have been replaced. This maintenance is due every 4 years. Los Leones is longest in operation; Coihueco will be next in 2007.
We have started to work at Loma Amarilla. The building is not yet ready. The contractor will leave next week, but some work still needs to be done.
The doors to the building have the wrong design, the contractor will install temporary doors, and replacement will take some time (4 weeks?).
Currently we run on a hired power generator, our generator is due at the end of October.
WBS 1.1.3.3 Fluorescence Detector Atmospheric Monitoring (Stefan
Westerhoff –
Balloon Launching Station (reported by B. Keilhauer)
A new ground-based weather station has been installed at the balloon launching station. The weather station is very similar to the system which is used in Los Leones and at the CLF. Additionally, it provides first test measurements of the electric field of the atmosphere near ground.
The regular launching of radiosondes is working very well. Three Argentine technicians, Diego, Leo, and Oscar, are sharing the duty. In average, 5 launches are performed every month. Since our start of these measurements in August 2002, there are now (until end of August 2006) 178 radio soundings available.
Loma Amarilla Lidar (reported by R. Mussa
and J. Rodriguez)
We have completed the installation of the Lidar mount and cover in Loma Amarilla. We had to overcome a number of extra problems, as there is no power there yet, and the power generator we rented was good for soldering, but not for any high tech electric work (such as: running a circular saw). Nonetheless, especially thanks to the help of Riki, Xavier, Roberto, and Mario, who provided us with a rapid backup for electric power and did a great job in loading and unloading in record time, we finally made it. A photo is attached.
A great, great thanks to Mathias and Yann who helped us on a day when wind gusts up to 50 km/h made the lifting of the 20 cover wedges on the Lidar roof particularly thrilling.
Next step will be the cabling, wiring and testing of the steering mechanism, which will happen in November, when regular electric power will be available in the Lidar container.
October 2006 Report of the Raman band
A.F.Grillo, M.Iarlori, C.Macolino, S.Petrera, V.Rizi, J.R.Rodriguez, F.Salamida
During
the last August we performed a major mechanical, optical and electronics tuning
of the Raman system in Los Leones. In particular we replaced the mounting of
the laser-head and steering mirror which was previously responsible for
misalignments with the telescope. The new mount is depicted in figure 1. Also
the optics were cleaned (unfortunately this has to be performed
periodically) and the electronic channels tuned up. The result is now a much more stable operation and that all the channels (elastic, nitrogen and oxygen) are now usable, although the O2 channel has still too few counts to be really useful (this will be hopefully cured before the November meeting). Operation is now very easy and reasonably stable with the only remaining problem that from time to time the Remote Power Control (RPC), which was built at LNGS/INFN, based on a commercial Ethernet board, is not reachable and it is necessary to go to Los Leones for a manual reset.
Starting from the August FD shift we asked to lidar shifters to make a 40 min Raman run at the evening, before FD starts, and a (shorter) 20 min run just after the end of the FD shift, in the morning. This with the idea to monitor the variations of the aerosol content during the night. From the end of the September FD shift, preliminary Vertical Aerosol Optical Depth (VAOD) values based on N2 Raman lidar returns are computed on-line and stored in the lidar web site. Moreover the off-line analysis, performed at LNGS/INFN, is done automatically.
As
for the analysis, we are presently following two directions. One is the (by
now) traditional VAOD computation from the Nitrogen channel. A few VAOD curves
are enclosed (see Figures 2), and the Table 1 lists all VAOD values available
for the two last FD runs. Our VAOD values are somewhat larger than typical CLF
ones. We however have no values from CLF for these runs so no conclusion can be
made. If this difference persists it is probably due to the different
systematics of the two measurements, and a comparison will be very useful in
view of the use of these values to evaluate the aerosol transmission.
The second direction uses the so-called BackScatter Ratio (BSR), namely the ratio of the (elastic)/(nitrogen Raman) returns, corrected for (small) atmospheric effects.
In this quantity instrumental effects such as an incomplete overlap, misalignment, telescope defocusing etc. largely cancel. The BSR properly normalized is proportional to the aerosol content in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL): comparing data taken in different moments it is easy to follow the evolution of the PBL, as reported in Figure 3.
A complete comparison of the elastic and inelastic nitrogen channels is reported (as an example for the evening of September 20, 2006), Figure 4. The analysis can be easily implemented as a routinely feature. The vertical profile of the aerosol extinction coefficient (x red curve) is retrieved directly from the Nitrogen Raman lidar return: and the vertical profile of the aerosol backsatter coefficient (b, black curve) is calculated from the combination (i.e. the ratio) of the elastic and Nitrogen Raman returns. From these data we can obtain:
§
Total
vertical aerosol optical depth, about 0.11:
§ The integrated backscattering coefficient, about 0.001sr-1
§ Comparing B and a, it is possible to speculate about the typical dimension of the sampled aerosols, lower a/B ration means larger aerosols:
§ Looking at the structure of the B and a vertical profiles one can have an idea of the vertical extend of the PBL, for this case it lasts up to about 1.5km above the lidar site (the shaded areas indicate a range of altitudes inaccessible to the lidar sounding: not full optical overlap between laser and receiver telescope.
WBS 1.2 Fluorescence Detector Electronics digital electronics and readout
systems (Matthias Kleifges – FZK-IPE)
During the last two month the activity of our group was slowed down due to summer holiday and the preparation of the Chicago Auger North workshop and analysis meeting. However, we had some progress in following fields:
Performance Monitoring
- On the Gina computer a test
data base server is running for the FD monitoring. Several data bases are
already filled (e.g. relative calibration) as reported in
- The final monitoring server is configured by Ruben. It will takeover the database functions from Gina shortly.
- Unfortunately, Simon Robbins
has left the monitoring team from
Hardware improvements
- The balloon launching station is now equipped with a weather station and can communicate with the Campus for regular data transfer.
- We installed UPS systems to improve the reliability of the supply for every telescope. Momentary power cuts lasting only a few minutes will be bridged by the UPS, thus allowing continuous measurements. Together with additional installations of surge protection switches this will increase very much the operational availability and avoid damage to components as we had it in the past.
- It’s now possible to restart the MPCs without cycling the power via slow control. This will slow down deterioration of the MPCs, thus extending their lifetime.
Software progress
- There is a new release of the FD-DAQ (FD-das-production-3.1.2-3) ready for installation after the FDEventLib-v3r2-pre4 is tested completely. The anticipated roadmap assumes an upgrade of CDAS in November 06 and an upgrade of FD-DAS in February 07.
- The dialog in eyerc for setting parameters of the GPS clock is updated to function with the latest version of the GPS server/ GPS clock firmware. The possibility to parameterize the clock with values from ini-files is foreseen, which eases the operation for programming the gate generators inside the clock. A status display with the GPS clock parameter settings is now available.
- The interface to the new gpsserver-1.6-18 was adopted in eyerc, thereby also fixing two minor other bugs (bugzilla #670 and #678). Unfortunately, there were some problems found with the behaviour of the new version after power-up (following a power cut) which are currently under investigation.
R&D for Auger North and the HEAT proposal
- We have continued our development of the new hardware for Auger North and Heat. Three backplanes of the new design – the heart of the system – are produced and will be tested in the following weeks.
- We have decided to use the PrPMC modules Mercury PCR-100 for the new SLT. Pieces are ordered, but have a long delivery time of 10 weeks.
WBS 2.1 SD (Ingo Allekote – Instituto Balseiro)
The problem of tank transportation from Rotoplastyc in
Deliveries from Rotoplas in
Development work at Rotoplastyc for the manufacture of tanks with foamed polyethylene interior layers as insulation for possible use for Auger North has not gone well. The latest small test tanks using the recent production runs of the foaming resin have not reproduced the early successes. An example of the early test tank (gray foam) and a recent one of particularly bad result (white foam) indicate a new instability in the molding process that we suspect is caused by a change in the resin formulation. (The resin company is not aware of any changes) These instabilities appear to result from the highly exothermic reaction that produces the gas forming the bubbles in the melted resin. The heating of the tank shell and the shear forces generated by expansion of the foam appears to generate the wave-like structure. Work continues to solve these problems.
The numbers corresponding to this period are:
-Tanks received and inspected in Malargue: 48
-
Detectors assembled: 78
-
Detectors positioned: 4
-
Detectors filled with water: 7
As of September 30th, 2006: -Total SD in the field: 1190 -Total SD with water: 1168
Negotiations with the three major landowners in the Northeast of the array are still ongoing, so no deployment activity was performed, except for the installation of some single tanks in difficult areas.
However, detector assembly continued in the Central Station. Due to the PMT instabilities, detectors were assembled without PMTs and stored in the AB yard, such that as soon as PMTs become available their installation can happen at a higher pace.
Electronics kits and batteries were installed in the twin and triplet tanks, many of which are already operational.
Also, the infill tanks required for R&D on radio detection, one near the Balloon Launching Station and one next to the Central Laser Facility, were installed and put to work. These tanks operate at a 3 times higher T3-trigger rate, as lower energy showers are recorded.
During winter a large bush fire affected a great portion of the northern part of the array. As can be seen in the pictures, the surface detectors took no greater damage.
WBS 2.2 Surface Detector Electronics (Tiina Suomijarvi – IPN Orsay)
There are currently (October 3) 1190 tanks in the field, 1168 out of them have water. 994 tanks have Ekits and there are currently 69 more tanks ready for Ekit installation. The delay of the Ekit installation is mostly due to the fact that the batteries were not installed. The battery deployment has now resumed and the Ekit deployment can go on.
In the SDE-fabrica, there are 171 Ekits available for deployment. There are
currently 120 TPCBs available for Ekit assembly. Recently 198 new Cyclone FE
boards arrived from
A supplementary batch of 240 PMTs were ordered from Photonis.
The field failure tracking is going on with an increased presence of experts in Malargue. A batch of 72 PMTs was recently potted (potting was stopped last March due to the PMT instability problems). Unfortunately, the potting quality is still not quite satisfactory. Efforts are still being done to increase the quality of the potting and to better track down the PMT instabilities.
WBS 4.0 Online Monitoring (Cyril Lachaud – APC)
The dedicated MySQL server is now working and the replication process with Los Leones is under test. Some data coming from Los Leones and CLF are actually stored in the database. The software to be used to transfer the data available at CDAS to the SQL server is almost ready and should be installed before the next meeting.
I remind the wiki address: http://wiki.auger.org.ar to get information on the Online Monitoring project and to find place where to help.
All experts are kindly asked to start to fill the wiki concerning the alarms they would like to be set: http://wiki.auger.org.ar/doku.php?id=monitoring:alarms.
The web is developing slowly, but the development should accelerate with the help of the SQL server.
Example of a nice web development: the camera plot done by Marcos Santander.
WBS 5.0 DPA/Offline- (Bruce Dawson, Markus Roth and Tom Paul)
Most of the work on the core Offline framework code during the last two months has focused on speed improvements as well as refinements to assist in easier maintenance and memory management. Feasibility studies have been conducted with the goals of improving the event IO and centrally managing random number engines. The framework has also bee updated to work with both the latest and next-to-latest releases of Geant4 and CLHEP. The buildfarm is used to guarantee this level of support.
The master database server has recently been moved to Fermilab, and a mirroring scheme has been implemented in which regional mirrors keep themselves synchronized to the master. This will allow us to maintain the central database at a site with full time computing support, while sparing collaborators some of the headache associated with accessing machines at large computing centers. The FD calibration database access code has been significantly rewritten, resulting in a large performance improvement for codes reading the FD calibrations. A new database for the Lidar cloud measurements has been implemented and integrated into the framework.
The buildfarm is expanding; currently there are eight builders testing various applications in various environments. New builders are currently being prepared at other sites.
As always, work on the physics modules is ongoing. The Event Generator module has been significantly revised to support easier configuration. Trace cleaning has been implemented in the SD reconstruction sequence. Finally, module contributors are beginning to migrate to a system whereby they will take responsibility for developing and maintaining their code directly in the Modules area of the Offline SVN repository.
The Auger Observer from the
Malargue´s Planetarium (Andres Risi
– Malargue)
The
The Planetarium will have 65 seats, and the system will be from SkySkan
Company from the
The place will have three buildings. The planetarium building itself, entrance building with an entrance hall, bar and offices, and another one for exhibitions. The entrance building and the exhibition building will be finished in December. The planetarium will be working in April 2007.
Radio Detection R&D – (Ad Van de
Berg – KVI)
Since September the first measurements are being made with the equipment
developed by the radio R&D group. Preparations on site have been made with
the installation of in total 6 poles near the Balloon Launching Station (BLS)
and with field preparations near the Central Laser Facility (CLF). Near the
BLS, the poles are used for the antennas which will be tested together with
their associated electronics by the groups from Germany (RWTH/Aachen, FZK-IPE,
University of Wuppertal), the Netherlands (IMAPP/Nijmegen, NIKHEF/Nijmegen,
KVI/Groningen), and USA (OSU). Near the CLF, the antennas and electronics from