Pierre Auger Project

Progress Report

March/April 2003

The telescope in bay 4 of Los Leones is fully operational.The bay 5 telescope requires only the completion of the shutter and a safety curtain.The telescope is bay 3 is the next to be completed.Bay 3 overlooks the surface detector stations being installed during the austral winter.The first production PMT/head electronics units are under test.

Detector tanks are now arriving regularly from both Alpina (Brazil) and Rotoplas (Argentina).Liners are now successfully being produced at UTN, Mendoza.The limitation on deployment has now shifted to assembly, water delivery and, of course, the winter weather. The surface detector crew has been increased to allow simultaneous station assembly and deployment.A total of 70 pre-production tanks have been deployed.A plan has been prepared for the deployment of the next 200 stations.

Surface detector PMT/base assemblies are in production.A successful Production Readiness Review has been carried out for these assemblies.Five production electronics packages have been deployed making these pre-production stations operational along with the Engineering Array.A run of defective printed circuit boards for the front-end electronics has slowed the assembly and installation of more electronics packages.We nevertheless expect to have a large part of the pre-production detectors instrumented in July.

The micro-wave link has been successfully established between Coihueco and the Auger Campus.The radio system has been expanded to accommodate the increasing size of the array.Construction of the Los Morados tower has been initiated.The timely completion is important since the eastern edge of the array now planned for deployment comes under the radio coverage of the Morados tower.

Life at the Observatory has become easier with the commissioning of a 1 Megabit/second internet link.

WBS 1.1 Fluorescence Detector – (Jonny Kleinfeller – Karlesruhe)

Los Leones

Telescopes are installed in bay 4 and bay 5. Both telescopes are equipped with the original prototype cameras and uv-filter, new aluminum mirrors, new electronics and mirror pc, new aperture box and new shutter. Both telescopes are in an enclosed in the new dust protection curtain.

Telescope 4 has a corrector ring installed, and is protected by the new type of emergency curtain. The shutter is fitted with a motor and motor electronic, curtain and shutter are integrated into SCS.

Telescope 5 has no corrector ring installed, instead a mask of 2.2m diameter is installed at the position of the corrector ring. There is currently no motor, no motor electronics and no curtain for telescope 5, i. e. telescope 5 is not protected through SCS, and can't be operated remote controlled.

SCS is pre-configured to operate curtain and shutter in bay 5 as soon as they are installed.

The new low and high voltage system is integrated into SCS, but operation of the prototype cameras requires the use of the old low voltage system to provide sufficient current, the latter is not controlled by SCS.

The parameters of the lv and hv system can be monitored by SCS, but can't be modified by SCS.

DAQ is currently for experts only, there are some problems with the initialization of crate parameters, and communication with the calibration pc.

There is currently only the calibration fibre in the centre of the mirror installed (script A). the fibres to the side of the camera (script B) and to the screen at the shutter (script C) are missing. The screens are mounted in bay 4, 5 and 3.

The shutter and aperture system of bay 1 at Coihueco has been installed at bay 3 at Los Leones, the aperture box is aligned, the shutter is sealed, the box not yet. the temporary window closure has been removed. A filter is ready to be mounted.

The mirrors of bay 6 will be moved to bay 3 at the beginning of June.

I plan to run a few nights with telescope 4 and 5 in the first week of June. Regular shifts could be scheduled for the end of June and the following dark periods, if we get motors and curtains in June.

There is a problem with the microwave link at Los Leones, it trips whenever the equipment is exposed to the sun (usually from 11 am to 6 pm on a sunny day). If the system deteriorates, we may not have a link at night.

Paul, Antoine, and Ruben are aware of the problem, but there is no spare.

WBS 1.2FD digital electronics and readout system – (M. Kleifges – FZK – HPE)

Installation work in Los Leones (LL) and Coihueco (Co)

N. Barenthien (IEKP- KA) installed during April 03 the Slow Control (SCS) components for telescopes # 4-6 in LL and # 1-3 in Co. He was actively supported by George and Primo (UTN San Rafael and UTN Mendoza): nearly all prototype SCS cabled had to be remove and replaced (LL), the complete cabling was missing in Co. Unfortunately, at the time of installation there were no shutter motors and safety curtain present for connections and tests. In a later stage, when the UPS and the shutter motors had been moved from bay 6 to bay 4 (LL) the movement of the first ‘new’ shutter under software control was verified.

Also in April N. Kunka (IPE) upgraded the LAN in LL for all 6 MirrorPC and the connection for the HV crate and the new GPS clock. As a result of a joint effort of him, Ruben and P. Clark now LAN and internet access is also possible to/from Co. S. Menshikov and myself installed the front-end crate for telescope # 4 (LL), tested the hardware and connected it to the camera. Before we left Malargue, the recently developed method of calibration with a LED was tested and we verified that the brightness is sufficient to illuminate all telescopes through fibres with one central source in the calibration room. We also opened the shutters and tried to record showers, but we failed due to a bug in the readout software. The commissioning continued with telescope # 5 by P. Privitera in the same week. The measured values of noise were comparable with the prototype or slightly better.

In the following week H. J. Mathes found several (minor) other bugs in the readout software, which were either related interface changes with the hardware or with software changes to allow readout of several mirrors. Most of the problems were found and solved. With some tricks even a dual mirror readout was possible. However, within the next month the software has to be made more robust and user-friendly.

Following the decision to continue the installation with telescope #3 in LL, Primo Vitale begun with the SCS installation of terminals in bay 3. Missing components will be sent with the next transport or can be taken from (not used) Coihueco bays.

Production and tests in Karlsruhe

At present, staff in Karlsruhe is testing 3 more front-end crates in the climate chamber. These crates will be sent with the next air freight to Malargue mid of June. The delivery will contain also GPS clocks, which are currently specified by the Besancon group (F. Meyer). We are preparing the installation of 2-3 systems (telescope #3 (LL) and # 20,#21 (=Co bay 2,3) ) around July/ August 03.

The production of 132 more FLT boards (around 6 crates) is in the pipeline of the IPE production centre.

SD LED controllers

120 (more) controllers are tested and currently coated by an external company. They will be sent to Jim Beatty in the first week of June.

WBS 2.1 SD (I. Allekote – Instituto Balseiro)

Site issues

Ground preparation of detector positions continued at the required rate.

Quotations were collected for the surveying of the next 400 detector positions, including the marking of the final detector positions and the survey of the corresponding access roads. Work for the first 200 positions beyond preproduction will start in May.

A new surveying Differential GPS equipment was purchased with fund provided by Chicago University. The equipment includes 6 handheld GPS units, 2 laptop computers and a variety of accessories for fied work.

Detector deployment

As of April 30, a total of 58 detectors were installed in the field, 57 of which were filled with water. Many tanks previously deployed without battery boxes and cabling were retrofitted. By the end of April, Antenna kits were installed on 10 detectors. Electronics was installed on 5 detectors, too.

More technicians have been hired for assembly and deployment. The local long-term A&D crew is now composed of Ulises Padroni, Fernando Olivera, Jesica Velazquez, Lucas Muñoz, Blas Ramirez and, mainly for water plant operation and water related issues, Pedro Barraza (3 days a week). Another technician, Miguel Salvadorez, will join the team in June. An industrial chemist, Roberto Argumedo, is assisting in water plant issues (efluents, upgrade, operation, documentation).

Tank production

While Forminplast has made considerable progress, they still have a series of problems to solve with their new large oven. A partial list includes:

Modifying the rock-axis hydraulic drive after its buckling failure; anchoring the doors at their open position; installing controls, including temperature sensor; installing air draft dampers and control knobs; mounting the tank spider on the axle.

It is expected that they will be able to produce the first prototype tanks sometime in June.

Rotoplas in Buenos Aires has produced a series oftanks which were shipped to Malargue, and assembled and deployed in the field. Some corrective actions still have to be implemented. Some problems in their tank manufacture are:

- the lifting lugs are not correctly filled, so a post-molding filling is done. A poor bonding causes a gap between the filling and the tank and some show lightleaks at this point.

- some hatches have a large conicity which makes it difficult to attach

the hatchcovers correctly.

- thicknesses are not homogeneous and in some cases below specification.

Rotoplas is working on a solution to these problems.

Two prototype tanks made with fiberglass reinforced resin technology were delivered to Malargue by Petroplast, for testing purposes.

Liners and PMT enclosures

The liner facility at National Technological University (UTN) is operational and has produced the first production liners without failures!

Liner production passed several milestones this reporting period.The UTN Mendoza liner assembly facility was completed, commissioned, and passed air quality test requirements.Assembly of liners began at the end of April, and looks on track to meet or exceed planned assembly rates and quality requirements.Training for the rest of the production steps will occur in June, at which point the facility will be completely operational.

Production of liners at CSU has stopped after producing 65 pre-production and 150 production liners and 1700 liner tops (all the tops for all pre- and production liners).~110 pre-production liners and 110 CSU production liners are in Malargue now.

A small-scale prototype of a new IR-light based leak detector has been tested at UTN, and it looks very promising.This leak detector could eliminate the necessity of light leak testing in the dark, greatly reducing costs and improving quality.

Sample replacement thermal insulation rings were made by a vendor from Buenos Aires, and will be tested in PMT units in June.

All PMT enclosure components (except for the PMT alignment collars) have been approved by the SD/SDE groups using them, and are currently being produced for all 1600 production tanks.The PMT collar mold may want one more mold modification to better fit the PMT neck now that the dimensional tolerances are closer to specification.This will be decided on after the PMT review in June.

Sensors

During the April Meeting it has been decided not to install water level sensors in the tanks.

Pure Water

The water plant was shut down during the summer holiday period. In February the plant was turned on again, without major difficulties. The EDI output is stable at 11-12 MOhm-cm, a value which is below specification. High quality water (resistivity above 15 MOhm-cm) is achieved with the mixed resin bed.

The UV lamps at the water plant were replaced, as their lifetime had expired.

TOC measurements were performed at different stages of water poduction and at the storage tank. The value obtained for water which remained stored in the 50.000 liter-storage tank during the 3 weeks of holidays in summerwas below 100 ppb (sensitivity limit of the measurement). At the output of EDI, of the mixed resin bed and of the UV lamps also yielded less than 100 ppb.

During April, bacteriological contamination was found in one of the transport tanks (Tk-12-Alpha). The bacteria level in four of the deployed tanks was higher than usual (the most contaminated one had around 5000 colonies/100 ml). These tanks are being monitored and up to now no bacterial growth has been detected.

Water delivery

A new water transport tank will be purchased with Chicago funds. It will be made of stainless steel, and will be mounted on a container frame to achieve more versatility (as it can be easily mounted on different trucks or trailers)

WBS 2.2. Surface Detector Electronics (T. Suomijarvi – IPN Orsay)

PMTs and bases

PMT/base sub-task is in production.PMT testing and potting house has been moved to the SDE-Fabrica. Federico Suarez (Mendoza UTN) is now responsible of the PMT activities is Malargue. The Praha group (Jan Ridky) has bought 140 PMTs and will buy some more this year. Next order (the remaining part above the current order which is 2500) for the PMTs needs to be prepared in September 2003. The PMT/base PRR willtake place May 22-23 in Brive la Gaillard (at Photonis).

Station electronics

Concerning the pre-production electronics, SDE task has now the first tanks with electronics running! No major problems have been detected for the moment. The installation of electronics for 5 tanks took only few hours which is very encouraging! The short term goal is to have 100 tanks in operation in July and total 250 units of electronics in August (2003).

SDE-Fabrica will be in operation in the end of June. The assembly of the electronics + various tests will be performed in the Fabrica. SDE task is currently discussing with the Mendoza group to have a person (Mariela) to superviseSDE operations in the Fabrica. Some help from Auger students is probably also needed later this year for SDE assembly and testing on site. In addition, the SDE task will probably hire a second technician when reaching the full operation mode on site. SDE task has bought a truck for the SDE installation and other transportation on site.

Wuppertal group (Karl Heinz Kampert and his colleagues) has joint the SDE task. They will be involved in fabrication of the FE boards and are currently applyingfunds for this sub-task.

Athens (Emmanuel Fokitis and his colleagues) is looking into having funds to fabricate the micro TPCB.

Water level sensor

The water level sensor will not be part of the baseline tank design. Currently 10 sensors exist (developed by Mike DuVernois) and will be installed in the tanks.

SDE commissioning

A list of monitoring and study items for the pre-production will be prepared and tasks will be appointed for SDE + analysis groups. Priority should be given for commissioning. A report on the baseline performances will be written and discussed in a “SDE commissioning meeting” (Sept-Oct). Only after the SDE commissioning is completed a “green light” will be given for Physics.

SDE long term strategy

SDE task will fabricate for the whole array (1600 tanks). All components that are at the risk of becoming obsolete are currently beingordered.

SDE installation

SDE supervisor physicist shifts are working. Please sign in ! SDE expert shifts will be organized for June – September to ensure the start up of the electronics installation.

WBS 3.0 Comms Task (P. Clark – Leeds)

SD Wireless LAN Radio Reliability

Radio Hardware. We have had 30 radios deployed in the field (EA) for 5 months without any failures. This represents 12.5 unit/years of operation. Extrapolating these agreeably ‘thin’ statistics currently yields an MTBF of > 110,000 hours against a design assumption of 80,000 hours (used to calculate the number of spares required). So far, so good!

Radio Link Quality. A brief analysis of a typical day showed an estimated bit-error-rate (BER) of 1.3x10-8 from a packet-error-rate (PER) of 2.7x10-5. This compares favourably with the design limit of 1x10-6 BER, 2x10-3 PER. However, note that we do not yet have any fully-loaded base-station sectors or long-range links. All this will change in the next few months!

Bugs. We think we still have a few ‘funnies’ in the system. We seem to be suffering 1 second long data loss events from the tanks a few times/day. We are working with the CDAS team to try to isolate and eliminate the problem.

Los Morados Tower

Our analysis of the link to Los Morados has been concluded and a specification for a 40m tower drawn up and issued for tender. Construction may commence as soon as funds are in place.

Los Leones Tower

The Los Leones Base-station system has been upgraded this trip. Los Leones will now support connections to over 240 tanks. A final upgrade later this year will increase this figure to the planned total of> 360 tanks.

Coihueco Tower

The microwave link to Coihueco was installed, commissioned and certified during this trip. The 38.7 km link shows excellent signal quality and should prove to be highly reliable.

Coihueco Tower (cont.)

The IP link over the microwave system has been installed and is undergoing commissioning and testing now.

The first wireless LAN sector has been connected and will be brought fully into service during the next trip (November).

Surface Detector System Range Test

A long-range data trial was conducted in the last week to confirm the operation of the surface detector system on long distance links. A Subscriber unit successfully connected to the Los Leones Base-stations from a ridge 2.6 km behind the Coihueco FD building. This set a new record range of 47.4 km and validated the system.

Surface Detector Antenna Alignment Utility

A software utility has been produced at Leeds that automates both the surface detector antenna alignment and base-station allocation procedures. This utility was written by Pete Walker and is installed on the comms monitoring PC in the CDAS room.

The deployment team radios in their GPS co-ordinates and the serial number of the SU radio to be connected.

The co-ordinates are entered into the utility, which then returns the tower to be used for that tank, together with the compass bearing from the tank’s position to that tower.

The utility also returns the correct base-station sector to be used for that tank. The tank can then be connected, simply by entering the serial number of the radio into the network list for the appropriate base-station on the network monitoring PC.

Once the antenna is fitted and aligned and the GPS timing is stable, the radio will connect the tank to CDAS automatically via the correct tower and base-station.

V4.1 Wireless LAN Radio Production

Subscriber unit production proceeds approximately as planned with some minor niggles (now solved) causing us a 2 month slip earlier this year.

320 radios are now available at the campus (as at 15^th May 2003). An additional 440 radios will be shipped during Aug/Sept.

SU production Schedule

	Batch	Total
On-site now	80	80
Just Arrived!	240	320
Aug / Sept 03	440	760
Dec 03 / Jan 04	440	1200
Apr / May 04	460	1660
August 04	Balance	1800+

IP Routers

Rene Bihaut will be installing the ‘big router’ at the campus in the next few months. This will complete the campus shelter IP installation and will terminate the ‘backbone network’.

Surface Detector Antenna Deployment

This task has been successfully handed over to the team led by Jorge Abraham of UTN Mendoza.

Jorge’s team are working on deployment documentation, which we will integrate into the EDMS system in due course.

UB-Comms Integration

The firstUB’s deployed on the pampa connected successfully to CDAS via the surface detector wireless LAN. This verifies the integration of the radio into the production electronics package.

WBS 8.0 Education and Outreach (G. Snow – University of Nebraska)

Short Course for Malargüe Science Teachers

A two-evening course was presented to a group of 25 Malargüe science teachers from all grade levels during the evenings of Tuesday and Wednesday, April 29-30, of the collaboration meeting. These sessions were run by Rebeca Lopez from the Escuela Preparatoria Emiliano Zapata, Benemérita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico. Rebeca led the group through a number of simple hands-on experiments and observations on optics and diffraction which can be reproduced as in-class experiments using readily available materials like mirrors and safety pins. For the second evening, participants were asked to share optics demonstrations they use in their classrooms with the rest of the group. The teachers received a certificate of participation prepared by the Tourist Office at the end of the course. Many teachers commented that (i) they learned much more in two evenings of hands-on work than they anticipated and (ii) they were glad to have to opportunity to work with and share experiments with the other science teachers from Malargüe. Photos from the course appear in this month’s Photo Gallery.

Visitor Center Virtual Web Site and Visitor Statistics

The week before the collaboration meeting, Beatriz García and Greg Snow met with the Mendoza-based team of professional web designers, Antonio Castineira and Alejandra Cicero, who demonstrated a nearly-final version of a web site designed to provide a virtual visitor experience to the Auger campus and the Observatory. The web site presents images of the campus and Los Leones, excellent animations of air shower development and detection, directions to Malargüe and the Auger Visitor Center, and highlights of other attractions in the region. A few remaining items will be implemented or refined before the site is made available for collaboration comments and its eventual link to the Auger home page.

Analía Cáceres continues to monitor the number of people who tour the Visitor Center. 2342 visitors were counted during the calendar year 2002. An additional 1910 visitors appeared during January – April, 2003, bring the total to 4252 since we started keeping track.

A quarter-sized FD mirror prototype produced in Karlsruhe has arrived in Malargüe and is ready to be installed in the front-right corner of the Visitor Center.

Planetarium Milestone

On Friday, May 2, a signing ceremony was held at the Thesaurus related to the planned planetarium in Malargüe. Architectural drawings of the building which will house the planetarium were unveiled, and Malargüe mayor Celso Jaque signed a commitment to partially fund the building. Also on hand at the ceremony were the former Mendoza Province governor Dr. Arturo Lafalla, national senators Maria Perceval and Ing. Guillermo Amstutz, other municipal officials, and Auger collaborators Cronin, Etchegoyen, Hojvat, Nitz, and Snow. An article covering the ceremony appeared in the Mendoza newspaper Los Andes the following day. Photos from the ceremony appear in this month’s Photo Gallery. The Auger collaboration continues to pursue funding for the planetarium equipment itself.

Eureka Science Museum in Mendoza

On Friday, March 21, a truck which arrived in Malargüe with 6 SD tanks from Rotoplas was loaded with two Mexican prototype tanks destined for the Eureka science museum in Mendoza. These were delivered and unloaded at Eureka late that night. The two tanks are now located outside the main exhibit hall and photos appear in this month’s Photo Gallery. UTN-Mendoza staff will be outfitting the Mexican tanks with solar panels and antennas. The week before the collaboration meeting, discussions continued with Eureka director Lilia Dubini about the opening of the Auger exhibit which is now scheduled for Saturday, November 22, just after the next collaboration meeting. Greg Snow advanced funds to Eureka to start production of 4 self-supporting stands which will enclose posters outside the main hall and 7 frames for posters inside the museum. The poster graphics will be done by Eureka staff with content input from Auger physicists.

Meeting at CNEA Headquarters

On Monday, May 5, Greg Snow met with the CNEA director of communications and public relations, Lic. Luis A. Jolivet, and other staff members at the CNEA headquarters in Buenos Aires. They shared ideas on public outreach activities in Mendoza Province and throughout Argentina related to the Auger Observatory and other CNEA initiatives, and they agreed to a continued collaboration.

Buenos Aires Television Program on the Observatory

Ing. Antonio Tersigni and a 2-person camera crew visited the Observatory on Thursday and Friday, May 1 and 2. Tersigni produces a weekly morning television program entitled “Mateando con la Ciencia”. Tersigni and crew took extensive video footage of the campus and Los Leones and interviewed several Auger collaborators including Arnulfo Zepeda, Rebeca Lopez, Alberto Etchegoyen, Jim Cronin, and Greg Snow.

Michigan Technical University Scholarship

The first Malargüe student, Angelo Chialva, enrolled at MTU under its Malargüe scholarship program is a continued success story. He has completed his first two years as a mechanical engineering major. He was a member of the MTU team participating in the nation-wide Ford Future Truck program which won 2^nd prize in the 2002 competition to redesign the Ford Explorer for improved fuel efficiency and performance. The second scholarship recipient will enroll at MTU in the autumn 2003. Two finalist candidates have been identified via their physics and math test results, and the selection of the scholarship recipient will be determined when their TOEFL exam results appear in June. David Nitz and Greg Snow met with the parents of the two finalists during the collaboration meeting to answer their questions about the MTU program.

Auger Poster Competition

A competition was announced within the collaboration in February to produce a single, striking poster about the Observatory, translated into many languages, for wide distribution – to funding agencies, science museums, etc. Six entries were submitted at the collaboration meeting and collaborators were invited to vote on the best poster. The entries can be viewed in this month’s Photo Gallery. The results of the competition will be announced to the collaboration shortly.