Pierre Auger Project

Progress Report

September, October & November 2004

We have reached the halfway point in the construction of the fluorescence detector system and are making rapid progress on the last half. We celebrated the inauguration of the Los Morados building at the November collaboration meeting. This event provided many Auger collaborators with perhaps their only opportunity to visit this building in its remote and breath-taking setting. The installation of telescopes at the Los Morados building is ahead of schedule and the commissioning should be complete by the end of March. (See images of the Los Morados shutter installation in photo album). If all goes well we will break ground for the last building at Loma Amarilla at the northern edge of the array in early 2005.

As of 17 December there are 562 surface detector stations (more than one third) taking data. A total of 616 stations are deployed in the field and awaiting water and/or electronics. Our surface array deployment rate is still limited by our ability to deliver water to the tanks in the field. Our goal is a water delivery rate of an average of 72 during the fair weather months. So far we have not approached that rate. This is due in part to an exceptionally rainy spring, the increasing distances that the transport tanks must go to access the tanks and on a number of mechanical failures. A strong effort is being make to speed water delivery.

The last communications tower at Loma Amarilla is complete and antenna rigging is underway.

Although we have received some encouraging news from several countries about new funding to complete the array, short term funding remains a serious problem. As of now we only have sufficient materials and components to complete 1100 stations. This will allow us to continue deployment until about July of 2005.

WBS 1.1 Fluorescence Detector (Jonny Kleinfeller – Karlesruhe)

Coihueco

Finally the three service cranes have been installed. Operation of the cranes requires minor modifications of the air conditioning ducts above the telescopes. The missing four corrector ring frames have been assembled and will be mounted, as soon as the cranes can be used.

Los Leones: no changes

Los Morados

Reference points, aperture boxes, mirror support structures and mirror mounts are installed and aligned for 6 telescopes. The shutter frames are installed, only the doors, seals and the drives to be done.

The air conditioning system has been delivered and is going to be installed this week.

A team from Catania is currently preparing the HV/LV cabling for the cameras.
At the Galpon Rodrigues are 6 cameras fully assembled, ready to go to Los Morados in February.

The filters will be assembled between Christmas and New Year.
Installation at Los Morados is slightly ahead of schedule.

The road to Los Morados is deteriorating fast.

The power line is due to be connected next week.

In November Karlsruhe made a first (successful) start of a Zeppelin with a uv-diode array attached to it. The image of the light source on a paper screen mounted in the focal plane of a telescope camera was recorded with a CCD camera. Due to some technical problems and bad weather pictures could only be taken for telescope three at Los Leones with the light source at a height of 600m at a distance of 1.5Km from Los Leones. A new Zeppelin mission is scheduled for March 2005.

WBS 1.2 FD digital electronics and readout systems (Matthias Kleifges - IPE)

Installation work in Los Leones and Coihueco: (by IPE team)

· During the collaboration meeting the new FLT/SLT firmware (version 8Nov04) and the SIB firmware V4.5 were installed on all telescopes in Los Leones and Coihueco. The firmware fixes a minor bug in the SLT timing and a difficult to find bug in the FireWire hardware interface.

· The new firmware of the GPS clock V4.0 makes the handling of triggers from external sources more flexible. Now it is possible to disable veto signals from the Lidar at times the shutters are closed. This allows intense Lidar operation at the beginning of the shift without disturbance to the relative calibrations process.

· Together with R. Moussa the interface between FD GPS clock and Lidar was implemented on Lidar site. During its operation the Lidar requests triggers from the GPS clock at well-defined times. Operation in the field of view of the telescopes (or close by) now vetoes the SLT/FLT operation via a hardware signal. At present, there is only a low repetition 20 Hz laser available in Los Leones, which will in the near future operate mainly outside the field of view to avoid veto dead times.

Progress in DAQ and related software: (by H.J. Mathes and Kopmann, FZ Karlsruhe)

· During the reporting period the DAQ was improved to version FD-das-2.7.1-39. The main changes streamlined the logging information, improved the error checks in the communication with the MirrorPC and Calibration PC and fixed some bugs in the Third Level Trigger (TLT).

· The latest version also writes now in the run trailer information of the veto time counters, the dead time counters and the life time counters, which can be used in future for efficiency calculations.

· Cases, where parameters from the GPS clock for time corrections, are missing are now handled using average parameters and flagged in the data.

· The DAQ code contains already sections for the planned (but not yet enabled) inter-camera trigger. The inter-camera trigger scheme will handle situations, where a long track ends in the outermost column and the adjacent telescopes are triggered by a hardware signal. The scheme can not improve the trigger efficiency, but avoids loosing the information from 1-3 pixel tracks in the adjacent telescope.

· In his endeavour to find the bug in the FireWire communication Andreas has reworked the hardware near library FdHwlib and the feshell program. Now, e.g. the re-use of sockets accelerates the restart of some programs and bugs in the readout functions for pixel multiplicity are fixed. The same code can now compiles at SuSe 7.3 and SuSe 9.x. In addition, feshell and the fdhwlib support the new features available with the new GPS clock version V4.0 (see above).

Progress in Slow Control hardware and software: (by N. Barenthien and K. Daumiller, IK)

· New light sensors with higher sensitivity and offset adjustment will replace the current type in all buildings.

· The SCS equipment for Los Morados is shipped for installation in January 2005. The SC terminals are pre-wired in Karlsruhe and need only be connected to the cables in the buildings.

· Frequent operation de-adjusts the FS curtain due to mechanical weakness. Until the mechanics is fixed the SCS software will keep the curtain lifted even in standby mode during the shift period.

· Software is installed on all SCS computers to forward event log-files and warning messages via emails to Karlsruhe.

· The SCS now allows a more detailed display of the HV system status. If the connection to the HV-system is lost, the shifter can cycle the HV-crate power or try to reset the crate.

· Ideas to further improve the system stability are in progress. It is planned to rewrite the software such that only a single task accesses the disk to write log messages. An acoustic alarm in CDAS should notify the shifters of automatic changes in the buildings.

WBS 2.1 SD Site (Ingo Allekote – Instituto Balseiro)

As of December 8th, 2004, 616 assembled Surface Detectors are deployed in the field. Of these, 592 are filled with water and 561 of them have electronics installed. Another 57 detectors are in the AB yard ready for deployment. 153 more tanks are available, sitting in
the AB yard and waiting to be assembled.

    A new SD baseline layout has been agreed on. With this new layout, positions of SD detectors cover all the area in the North up to Loma Amarilla. Some 70 "spare" positions have been included.

    Aldural (now called "Hydro") provided the 3000 kg of square tubing for brackets, which were used to assemble 250 new brackets at Aberlum. These have already been delivered to Malargue. 360 more brackets have been ordered from a new provider, Equipos y Proyectos.

    In October-November 2004, 207 liners were produced. On November 30, 2004, the liner factory at UTN in Mendoza has produced a total of 1154 liners. Two liner shipments were sent to Malargue in this period.

    On October 29, 2004, the Liner Production Plant was certified without Non Conformities nor Observations according to ISO 9001:2000 IRAM-IQNet !!!

    The fourth water transport tank, Tk-12-DELTA, is under construction at Asorey. It is expected to be finished before the end of the year. All the accessories for this tank (hoses, filters, pumps, etc.) have been ordered.

    Two fiberglass tanks were manufactured by Petroplast and delivered to Malargue. They will be tested in the near future.

    More contracts for land access and permission for SD deployment have been signed. In particular, the contract with Valles Mendocinos, who owns the area south of Coihueco, has been signed.

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

The electronics deployment is progressing smoothly. Currently about 550 tanks are running on the Pampa. The lack of funding after 1100 units (in particular FE boards and TPCBs) is a major problem.

We have currently received about 50% of the PMTs from Photonis. The delivery rate is still kept at 144 PMTs per month. The most failures in the PMT testing (PMT test facility in Malargue) were due to over linearity. This has now been corrected by introducing a new design yielding better linearity. The new design has been validated by the tests in Torino and cross checked by the tests in the PMT facility on site.

Figure 1. Statistics concerning PMT tests in Malargue (from F. Suarez)

Concerning the PMT (PMT+base+cables) field failures, as reported by W. Fulgione on November 1, there were 77 failures reported on 521 tanks (1563 PMTs). These failures were reported as the following (from W. Fulgione):

Unstable, temperature related problems	37
Poor d/a ratio	5
High power consumption	7
No calibration	22
Gain fluctuation	4
Unstable in time	2
Total	77

Table 1. PMT field failures (from W. Fulgione).

Some of the problems were analyzed as being due to the following failures (from W. Fulgione):

Unwelded FL	1	Poor d/a ratio	1
Broken glass (2 old bulb designs)	4	No calibration High consumption	2 2
PMT mechanically unstable	1	Unstable, temperature related	1
Base failure	2	Short circuit No calibration	1 1
Bad connector	16	Unstable Temperature related, no calibration	3 13
Total	24

Table 2. Analysis of the PMT field failures (from W. Fulgione).

Total 53 field failures were not yet understood, the major part of them (33) being related to unstable behavior as a function of temperature. During the Malargue meeting, it was decided to remove all the PMTs presenting failures from the field (they were left on the field for further monitoring). Some of them will be sent to Torino for further tests. Since the meeting, it has turned out that some of the failures related to temperature are simply very large signal variations as a function of temperature and cannot be really considered as failures (P. Allison). The failure rates are carefully monitored by the SD experts group.

Concerning the electronics kits, the failure rate in the SDE Fabrica tests is small, below 1%. The FE field failure rate is small, about 1%. The UB field failure rate is about 6%. The most failures concern the UB fuses (49%) or the software upgrade (30%). The UB fuse problem has been analyzed by the CdF team after the Malargue meeting. About half of the failures occur multiple times on the same tank which seems to indicate that the failure might be due to the regulators. Further analysis is currently in progress. As a possible corrective action fuses can be changed into bigger ones on the UB board in Malargue.

Figure 2. UB field failures (from M. Videla).

The performance of the array is monitored. Table below shows the number of PMTs failing the performance specifications.

During the period September-October the percentage of PMTs out of specification was below one percent (except the VEM area).

Table 3. PMT performance monitoring (from D. Barnhill et al.)

The figure below shows the Time-over-Threshold trigger rates. The trigger rate in recently deployed tanks seems to be higher that “old” tanks. It reflects the larger VEM area/peak values in new tanks (see figures below). This can be due to a stabilisation effect and needs to be carefully monitored.

Figure 3. Time-over-threshold trigger rates. The rate is clearly higher in recently deployed tanks (from P. Ghia).

Figure 4. Time-over-threshold rate as a function of the VEM area/peak (from P. Ghia).

The commissioning and performance studies of the surface array are still in progress.

WBS 5.0 DPA/Offline- (Stefano Argiro – INFN)

The Offline project proceeds at full throttle. Version 1.0.0 has been tagged in the CVS repository. The group is refining the installation procedure, then a public release will be prepared.

This version provides baseline chains for Fd/Sd simulation and reconstruction, plus hybrid reconstruction. We'd like to stress that the code does not yet represent the best

knowledge of the collaboration in the various fields of investigation. It provides some working yet basic algorithms, that we hope will serve as foundation to build the most effective simulation and reconstruction package.

The Offline project has undergone a Review, in which many achievements have been recognized.

The review panel expressed some concerns that will be addressed, but overall the project was rated very high.

Last, but not least, following the positive experience with the first "DPA - Offline school" in Torino, another school will be held in Salt Lake in the end of January. Further details will be provided soon.

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

Auger Observatory at CERN and Fermilab

The Auger Observatory was featured at CERN’s 50^th Anniversary Open Day held on October 16. The photo gallery of this report shows the Auger display that included tabletop sized SD and FD models, posters, two laptops showing Auger images, Argentine flags, Mendoza wines, and brochures in French, English, and Spanish. Over 30,000 people attended the Open Day, and several thousand saw the Auger exhibit. Hans Blümer and Greg Snow were present throughout the day to greet visitors and answer questions about the Observatory. Among the visitors to the display was CERN Director General Robert Aymar who knows the Observatory well.

An Auger Observatory poster is also featured in a permanent exhibit entitled “From Quarks to the Cosmos” that was mounted on the 15^th floor of Fermilab’s Wilson Hall in October.

Visitor Center statistics

The Auger Visitor Center continues to attract a steady stream of visitors. The photo gallery of this report shows students from Malargüe’s Escuela Gendarme Argentino who came to the Visitor Center on October 29. As of the end of October, the Visitor Center has hosted a total of 13,544 visitors since its opening in November 2001. About 13,000 visitors were from Argentina, the remainder coming from many different foreign countries. The breakdown by year is 336 in 2001, 2342 in 2002, 5318 in 2003, and 5548 through October 2004, making 2004 the highest attendance year to date. Many thanks are due to Analía Cáceres for managing the Visitor Center and maintaining the visitor statistics. The Visitor Center will soon have a few new displays. SD and FD detector models from the CERN display will be shipped to Malargüe. In addition, Analía, B. García, and M.Gatti are preparing a set of posters in Spanish and English that feature Nobel Prize winners in physics from the last 100 years. We also note that the English version of the Visitor Center web site was released at the end of June to compliment the Spanish version.

Events during the November 2004 collaboration meeting

On November 8 and 9, Rebeca López offered a hands-on physics teaching methods workshop to about 20 Malargüe teachers for grades 1 to 7. Using readily available materials, the teachers developed a number of simple experiments to illustrate a wide range of physics principles in response to questions posed by Rebeca. After the workshop, Rebeca documented the experiments in a detailed users manual so that the teachers can reproduce the experiments they developed in the classroom. The workshop was lively and interactive and was deemed by the participants to be very successful. The photo gallery of this report contains images from the workshop.

The Los Morados FD building was inaugurated in a ceremony on Saturday, November 13, attended by many collaboration members and visiting dignitaries including the governor of Mendoza Province, Ing. Julio Cobos. The Mendoza newspapers Los Andes and Diario Uno covered the inauguration on November 14, and the photo gallery contains the image of Governor Cobos and Alberto Etchegoyen that appeared in Los Andes.

During the collaboration meeting, first organizational steps were made for an Auger-sponsored science fair foreseen to take place during the November 2005 collaboration meeting in the Assembly Building. The science fair will be advertised as an activity tied to the World Year of Physics 2005. A local organizing committee was named that will handle the advertising and recruitment of student and teacher participants from Mendoza Province. The committee consists of five Malargüe teachers: F. Amaya (adult education), A. Piastrelli (primary schools), and S. Campi, M. Herrera, and R. Sanchez from the James Cronin School. Meetings were held with B. García, R. López, G. Snow, and A. Zepeda to establish the rules, schedule, and milestones for the fair preparations during the upcoming year. More details will become available in early 2005.

The Auger collaboration participated in the Malargüe Day Parade on Tuesday, November 16, for the third time. About 80 collaborators marched behind a large banner, and for the first time two Auger vehicles brought up the rear of the procession. Photos from the parade appear in the photo gallery of this report. The collaboration picnic took place the same afternoon at the Castillos de Pincheira. The collaboration was treated to traditional music from local musicians and to a tango demonstration by local dancers.

Randy Landsberg, Director of Outreach for the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, visited the meeting. Randy and colleagues have focused on creating visualizations about several astrophysics experiments including Auger. The group’s Auger projects can be seen on the web site: http://astro.uchicago.edu/cosmus/projects/auger

Other Mendoza activities

Beatriz García reported on several ongoing activities in Mendoza Province. The photo gallery of this report shows a group of future Mendoza science teachers with their scale models of the solar system prepared in an astronomy workshop led by Beatriz. The models were shown at a Week of Science and Technology organized by the UN Cuyo in October. The display stands and the large solar map were provided by the Auger Observatory. Continuing the series of astronomy viewings with the public, the total eclipse of the moon on October 27 was featured in meetings in both Mendoza city and Malargüe. Beatriz and Alejandra Cicero are involved in an initiative to produce an Argentine postage stamp featuring Auger. Designs are under consideration by the National commission on Communications. Beatriz and colleagues at UTN Mendoza and UN Cuyo are also working to produce Spanish Braille translations of two astronomy texts.

Northern site outreach

On September 1, Greg Snow and John Harton traveled to Lamar, Colorado, to attend a meeting of the Colorado Board of School Administrators. They discussed teacher and student projects related to the Auger Observatory that could be developed in the region of this possible northern Auger site. A follow-up meeting with regional teachers is planned for early 2005 hosted by Lamar Community College. Similar discussions will be scheduled in Utah, facilitated by the University of Utah Vice President for Research, Raymond Gesteland, who visited Malargüe in November.

WBS 9.0 Observatory Operations – (Julio Martino Rodriguez - INFN)

The work of the operators during the FD shifts is slowly becoming a routine. The communication between the operators and the experts in each part of the data taking system is helping to quickly solve problems. A special e-mail account is used to exchange information and requests of debugging tests from the experts.

The data taking time is optimized by using a program that calculates the position of the moon and allows to close each individual shutter whenever the moon is closer than 5 deg. to the field of view of the telescope. Many thanks to M. Prouza for developing this software.

The FD data stream was split into two streams at the beginning of October. The files mirrored in Lyon are sent to CDAS, while the ones kept in the calibration server are sent directly to this machine. Regretably, a bug in the scripts that copy the files from the EyePCs led to the loss
of the background measurements for October. This was solved and now the data
flow and mirroring is back to normal. The problem was only related to the background files (known as bgrecord files), the rest of the files were transferred and mirrored correctly.

Different measures were agreed with the responsibles of the atmospheric monitoring devices to minimize the interference with the FD data taking. We are getting to the point were the data is completely clean and all the events triggered by external devices are sent to special files. People
doing tests with the atmospheric devices are requested to agree in advance the time slot for these tests with the FD-SOC. This will prevent interference with the data taking.