Pierre Auger Project
Progress Report
Summary (photo
album)
The fluorescence detectors are all performing well, although unusually poor weather has reduced time on the sky. We are closing in on the deployment and commissioning of the baseline surface array. Permission has been obtained to access almost all of the areas we need to complete that array. Deployment in some of these areas is now limited by the autumn rains and rising water tables. Nevertheless there are 1636 detector tanks in the field. Of these 1548 have electronics kits. In the next few weeks we will be able to outfit tank number1600 with electronics. Deployment has taken priority over maintenance. Once the deployment is complete the staff will spend more time visiting the detectors needing attention. An important part of the detector maintenance is the online monitoring system. Since installation last year, the monitoring system has undergone continuing improvements and refinements for keeping track of the performance of both the fluorescence detectors and the surface array.
Both HEAT and AMIGA are making good progress. The progress on HEAT, which is currently ahead of schedule, can be seen in a series of photos in the photo album.
The Auger South Inauguration Celebration dates have been set for 14-15 November in Malargüe. There will be an informal reception on the evening of 13 November, the inauguration activities on 14 November, and tours of the Observatory on 15 November.
WBS 2.1 SD (Ingo Allekote – CNEA)
Tank shipment from Rotoplastyc
in
Only one last shipment with 4 tanks is pending to complete the tank shipment
for the whole project. 38 surface detectors were assembled in the AB.
Deployment of detectors started in the Felix land, thus beginning to fill up the
last large hole in the array. Although the lower part of the Felix land is
swamped and inaccessible,
good progress has been made in the higher part. 35 SDs were positioned and 37
were filled with water in this period. 51 E-kits were installed.
In this period, the 1600th tank filling was accomplished! As of 31 March 2008,
1607 detectors had water.
This includes the detector Vegetta (now "Vegetta Jr") which had to be
emptied and replaced as the liner had been ripped next to the fill port while
filling.
Shortage of gasoline in Malargue slowed down the site activities. Assembly of
detectors occurred at a lower pace than expected due to the absence (illness
and holidays) of technical personnel. Diego Bello quit the Auger project. His
many years of contribution and
efforts in the assembly and deployment tasks are very much acknowledged.
As of March 31st, 2008, there were:
- 54 tanks in the AB yard
- 3 assembled detectors in the yard
- 1631 detectors in the field
- 1607 of them with water.
- 1529 with e-kit and completely installed.
WBS 2.2 Surface Detector Electronics
(Tiina Suomijarvi – IPN Orsay)
For more details
see SDE-Notes of March 11, 2008.
Deployment:
There are currently 1631 tanks in the field, 1526 of them have Ekits. The plan is to deploy total 1660 tanks (including infill, twins,). This number should be fine for Ekits, we would still have enough spares.
PMTs:
There are currently about 200 open PMT (+base cable?) problems in the field. There has not been any PMT maintenance for about one year due to the priority placed on the deployment of new tanks. After the tank deployment is completed (April?), the priority will be to replace these PMTs.
Estimates on the failure rates (including infant problems) and spares needed are given below.
•Estimated PMT+base failure rate: <2.8%/year (includes infant problems)
•Estimated PMT failure rate: <1.7%/year (include infant problems)
•Estimates for spares of PMTs and bases:
–About 50 bases/year x10 = 500
–About 50 PMTs/year x 10 = 500
Current number of PMTs that has been ordered is 5420. It is estimated that additional 200 PMTs and 300 bases need to be ordered to have enough spares for the long-term maintenance. Part of the PMTs that have failed are good but have a problem on the base. To recover these PMTs a procedure to replace the base in Malargue will be developed.
There are currently more than 600 “raining PMTs in
the field”. A procedure to reinforce the grounding of the An and Dy cables in the field was developed last December. In some
cases, the soldering did not seem to be good due to soldering iron, which was
not powerful enough. A new procedure is
currently being developed. A better grounding of the cables has also been done
for all PMTs before deployment (total 156 in 7 weeks). The training for this
was done by the
Maintenance
The maintenance rate is estimated to be
- 2-3 tanks/week
- 2-3 PMTs/week
After the deployment is completed, a very intensive maintenance should be started. A document concerning this maintenance is currently being prepared (W. Fulgione). It is estimated that about 2 years is needed to repair the raining PMTs and the current open PMT problems. SDE-Fabrica will be kept at least 2 more years to be able to move to long-term maintenance.
WBS 3.0 Comms (Jorge Abraham
– UTN)
My information to March 31Th.
2008
Antenna Kits mounted: 1607.
Antenna Kits made: 1660. We finish this part of Task !!!!! Reported in my two last
Bi monthly reports.
About bad links, we will Change Antenna Kits for High-Gain Antenna to solve the
problems. Will be during the first six-nine month from 2008.
WBS 4.0 Online Monitoring (Cyril Lachaud – APC)
During these two months several major improvements have been performed :
+ moni computer in Malargue has been set up with all the required hardware configuration
+ CDAS alarms have been integrated in the monitoring system
+ SD alarms respect the hierarchy developed by the SD experts (see the wiki)
+ Concerning the web pages :
- the authentification procedure has changed (the same login for moni and apcpaox), default collaboration user on apcpaox is available
- SD : new map (zoom in the denser part of the array, see the image), new page (Black Tank), a map is displayed for the alarms...
- FD : new calibration routines to check for bad pixels, improvements to the summary tables in the Eye main page...
WBS 5.0 DPA/Offline- (Tom Paul, Bruce Dawson, Markus Roth)
A new version of the Off Line system (v2.4) has been released which includes a very large number new features and bug fixes.An updated external packages kit has also been released. The work on the SdCalibrator has been completed and the results were extensively studied. Angular resolution is comparable to the Herald. A new Geant4-based telescope simulator has been provided by the Lisbon group, and will be available in an upcoming patch release. The configurations used for Observer production runs have been added as a standard part of the Off Line package and will also become available in the upcoming patch.
The hybrid simulation machinery has been updated to fully support upward and skimming shower geometries. Tank saturation recovery has been completed and enabled in the code. The buildfarm has been extensively updated to perform more tests and to run faster. The prototype CMake-based build system is almost complete. This should provide for a more maintainable and sophisticated configuration and build procedure in the future. Several new database mirrors have been added to the database distribution system.
WBS 9.0
Observatory Operations – (Julio Rodriquez Martino - INFN)
During the first months of 2008
we suffered from very bad weather. The amount of rain is already larger than
the mean value expected for the whole year. This brought many complications,
from power cuts due to lightning to the small amount of data taking time.
From the hardware and software point of view, the system remains in a stable
operation mode. The monitoring system is used and the feedback coming from the
shifters is very useful to improve and enhance its operation.
WBS 9.0
Observatory Operations cont. –
(Ricardo Sato – Southern Observatory)
In the CDAS,
there were particular problems with one of partition of Raid disc, which make
the acquisition stop few times. It looks to be fixed at the beginning of
February, 2008 by making a general check of the disc in this particular
partition. At least, we do not have this problem after this general check.
During the February, 2008 the weather condition was a little unstable, with
some few Storms. It seems to make the communication a little more unstable due
to the power cuts or some similar problems and, also some detectors loose
connection (radio connection) and we need to fix the
problem in the field. The situation looks a little different during March. The
weather start to be much more stable and the number of detectors which start to
have problems looks much smaller.
Radio
Detection R&D – (Ad Van de Berg – KVI)
During the collaboration meeting
maintenance has been performed on the systems near the BLS and near the CLF.
Near the BLS a HV PS and the cover of one of the scintillator
boxes has been replaced. The uptime of the system is strongly hampered by
failures on the mains power for extended times. The setup near the CLF is now
operational for all 3 stations and most of the self-triggered events are
recorded by all three stations simultaneously. The GPS problem has been solved
and the events are presently being analyzed. Noise measurements have been made
near the BLS, the CLF, and at the AMIGA site. The 4 stations for the MAXIMA
setup near the BLS are stalled in
HEAT enhancement -Hans Klages
(FZK)
In the last
days of February the HEAT site was cleared by the Camiletti building
company and our own installations commenced.
Until now everything went extremely smooth and we are clearly ahead of
schedule, as can be seen in the photos made by Kai in the first days of April.
Due to the precise planning of all technical details and the excellent
hard work of many people on site we hope to finish the building of the
enclosures in April.
Quite some number of technicians from
However, there remains one major problem - to be solved in
Our container with the hardware for Slow Control (and many other items) is
stuck in Bs As customs due to a general problem with diplomatic waivers.
If this situation continues we will get a severe delay and substantial extra
costs. Cross your fingers for us.
AMIGA - Alberto
Etchegoyen
AMIGA simulations are being successfully tested by
three different working groups. BATATA has ordered the PMTs and optical fiber
and soldering the electronics boards. The new AMIGA WiFi
comms system has been installed to the BATATA three tanks with a Coihueco
access point, it is working as a bidirectional system with the Central Station
(see figure), but it is not yet incorporated in CDAS. The front end prototype
board is finished and the digital board will be manufactured by the end of
March. The first buried working muon counter prototype is successfully being
operated at Tandar