Beams are back in the LHC. On Friday, the accelerator resumed the intensity ramp-up, reaching 1752 bunches per beam last week-end. The intensity ramp-up was interrupted on 20 May because of a problem with the PS’s main power supply (see box).

A steady increase in the total number of bunches per beam is required to check out all aspects of beam operation and make sure the LHC is fully safe before the nominal number of bunches per beam can be brought into collision.

At present, four intensity steps have been completed: 313, 601, 889, and 1177 bunches per beam. The qualification of the next step with 1752 bunches is in progress. At every step, more than 20 hours in stable beams must be accumulated, as required for machine protection qualification. The last step-ups already showed signs of possible electron cloud effects, with the typical signature of blown-up bunches at the end of the trains of 72 bunches. The beam and luminosity lifetimes are, however, very good: the last LHC fill before the extended stop due to the PS powering system problem was with 1177 bunches per beam and stayed in Stable Beams for 35.5 hours. The peak luminosity at the beginning of Stable Beams was 3.6 x 10³³ cm^-2s^-1. The integrated luminosity, 272 inverse picobarn, is around a quarter of the total luminosity delivered by the LHC up to now in 2016.

Monday, 17 and Tuesday, 18 May were dedicated to measuring the absolute scale of the luminosity at 13 TeV. The luminosity of a collider is a very important parameter because the precision obtained in measuring a given physics process’s production cross-section depends critically on the accuracy with which the luminosity is known. The luminosity is also the figure of merit used to benchmark the efficiency of the collider’s operation day by day.

Special beam optics and beam parameters are necessary to perform this task; both are tailored to get the smallest possible uncertainty in the measurement. The method is pretty simple and very old. Using a technique pioneered by Simon van der Meer in 1968 at CERN’s Intersecting Storage Rings, the inelastic proton-proton collision rate is monitored by dedicated luminosity detectors at the experiments as the beams are moved across each other, first in the horizontal and then in the vertical direction. This "VdM scan" provides a measurement of the beam-overlap area, which is proportional to the transverse beam size, the first ingredient needed to solve the luminosity equation. The second main ingredient is the simultaneous precision measurement of the bunch currents in the LHC, which is performed using different devices from the machine and the experiments. This information, combined with the total number of bunches per beam, provides a direct calibration of the experiment’s luminosity detectors at a single point in time.  

The first “VdM scan” fill, which lasted just over 9 hours, was devoted to the luminosity calibration of ALICE and then LHCb. The second fill, which lasted 7 hours, allowed the luminosity calibration of ATLAS. The luminosity calibration of CMS was completed last Friday.

With beam back from the PS last Thursday, the first step for the LHC was a couple re-qualification fills with low intensity. Following these fills, CMS’s luminosity calibration was swiftly completed, and the intensity ramp-up re-joined. At present, the LHC is working with 1752 bunches per beam which gave a storm interrupted weekend peak luminosity of 5.3 x 10³³ cm^-2s^-1. The integrated luminosity for the year has now passed a hard-won inverse femtobarn.

The PS, POPS and the rotating machine

CERN’s PS has a big challenge powering the main magnets. The power applied to the magnets is ±40 MW, with a repetition rate of 2.4 seconds. The minus sign is important here. As these magnets are ramped down from top energy, the stored magnetic energy has to be handled somehow. The solution until 2011 was the famous rotating machine – a motor-generator set that stored the energy in a flywheel during the ramp-down and made it available again via the generator on the ramp-up. The modern solution is POPS– here large capacitor banks housed in dedicated containers provide the energy storage mechanism. It should be borne in mind that the PS executes around 15 million cycles per year!

On 27 April, POPS suffered a short circuit in one of its six capacitor containers. To bridge the repair, the PS switched swiftly to the back-up rotating machine and operated normally until 20 May when, unfortunately, a malfunctioning isolator switch rendered it inoperable for a couple of weeks. The power converter team, who were in the process of understanding, repairing and mitigating the POPS problem, have had to execute a crash programme of measures to get POPS safely back into operation as soon as possible. This was achieved on Thursday 26 May.

On Wednesday 1 June the SMB Department announced the opening of a new pedestrian and bike automated gate on the Prevessin site, near the "Déchetterie" of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, on the road “Chemin du Moulin des Ponts”. (Find it here on the GIS website). The gate is open to all CERN personnel 24h/24h with their access card.

This gate was generously financed with the help of the EN, BE and TE Departments, and the planning and construction were completed in record time by the team taking care of CERN site access.

The timing is perfect for the start of the Bike2Work initiative, which started on 1 June. A record number of 136 teams signed up. If you want to participate, it is not too late, you can sign up here.

We remind that safe commuting is imperative. It is now possible to cycle from the CERN hostel in Saint-Genis-Pouilly to the CERN Prevessin site using quiet back roads to get to the new entrance on “Chemin du Moulin des Ponts. So from now on you can all avoid to cycle on the route nationale (D35). 

Microcosm is continuously evolving and new content is installed regularly. One of the most recent exhibits is called HEAL - an interactive game with the aim of informing visitors about the hadron therapy to treat cancer. It has been developed by Jenny Rompa, a PhD student at CERN, within the activities of MediaLab.  The application is controlled through body movements and the player is asked to set the right energy and the right angle of the hadron beam to make the (brain) cancer disappear.

As part of her doctoral thesis, Jenny also built a questionnaire to hand out to visitors in order to examine their user experience. The goal of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of using interactive games and applications in learning processes and exhibitions.

We would like to encourage all CERN people and their visitors to drop in to Microcosm to see the newest exhibits installed, play with HEAL and give their feedback by completing the survey. 

This baby falcon was found on Tuesday, 7 June near a car parked in the Building 40 carpark. Connie Potter, who first saw the bird, contacted CRR (Centre de Readapation des Rapaces) at Bardonnex. Following their advice Connie and Chris Thomas managed to pick it up and get it into a box, and waited with the bird at the main gate for the CRR to collect it.

The chick will be fed and trained to fly at the Centre in a tunnel, and ultimately released into the wild, probably near CERN. The bird, who has been tagged with ID number 2054, weighed 119 grams.

The CERN site covers 625 hectares, of which around 200 are fenced sites used for CERN’s research activities. The rest of the land consists of fields rented out to farmers and about 90 hectares of forests, mainly in France and managed by the French forestry commission, the Office National des Forêts (ONF), under an agreement with CERN signed in 2010.

The upkeep of CERN’s forests requires regular maintenance work, which includes thinning out seedlings, selecting the strongest saplings and harvesting mature trees.

This June, the ONF has decided to involve horses in the removal of felled trees from CERN’s woods in Prévessin.  As Florent Daloz, the logger entrusted with this activity by the ONF, explains, the use of horses to haul timber completely died out in the 1960s but resumed in the 1980s and 1990s, both in forests and in vineyards. Today, about fifteen horse breeders in the Rhône-Alpes region offer such services.

Horse logging is more environmentally friendly and more conducive to sustainable development than mechanised logging and can also be used alongside it. “This method allows us to cut down on the number of tracks needed for the machines, as the logs are hauled from the undergrowth to the forest tracks by the horses”, explains Erwan Le Marrec, the ONF forester responsible for CERN’s forests. “This reduces the impact on the forest floor and makes logging more acceptable to the public.”

Django and Blues, two draft horses of the Trait du Nord and Ardennes breeds, have been brought in to help out in the logging activities in Prévessin. They are guided by their owner, who prepares them for manoeuvres using voice commands that are then confirmed with a pull on the ropes.

The harvesting operations on the 11 hectares concerned will produce 74 m³ of oak logs of a quality suitable for carpentry and joinery and 150 m³ of oak firewood, which will be sold to professionals.

“What’s more, this ‘green’ approach to forest management adopted by CERN and the ONF is appreciated by the many people who go walking in CERN’s woods or use them for sporting activities”, says Mathieu Fontaine, head of CERN’s Green Spaces service.

 
 

As some of you might have noticed, the Computer Security Team had to block the news site “20min.ch” a while ago, as it was found to be distributing malware. This block comes after similar incidents at other Swiss organizations. Our blocking is protective in order to safeguard your computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have seen these so-called drive-by/waterhole attacks: once you have visited an affected website, embedded third-party malicious code is downloaded to your computer and subsequently infects it (if running Windows or Android as well as, less likely, Mac operating systems). Hence the name “drive-by”. As “20min.ch” is a very frequented website among CERN staff members and users, it makes it a perfect source for attacks against CERN (or other Geneva-based organisations): instead of attacking those organisations directly, which might be difficult as they are likely to be security aware, why not first target an external site with a lower security level, but with high visibility? Like a lion waiting to ambush gazelles at a waterhole, hence the name “waterhole attack”. In the past, other prominent websites in the Geneva area were also susceptible to such attacks. “20min.ch” has already shown up on our radar a few times in the past.

Protection is difficult as the hosted malware is usually based on “zero-day” exploits, i.e. malware that is exploiting vulnerabilities not publicly known at that moment. We usually recommend having your system completely up-to-date – using Windows Update, Mac Update, Yum auto-update, or any other permanent update mechanism for your preferred operating system and applications. We also recommend running an antivirus solution: check here for CERN’s free offerings. However, these won’t help with fighting zero-day exploits, as neither the patching nor the antivirus software could know about them. Still, don’t be negligent. If you want to be careful, browse the web from a Linux PC (like LXPLUS) as they are currently less susceptible to that kind of attack. Or just refrain from visiting this type of website. Remember? When in doubt about the link/URL you are about to open: “Stop, think, don’t click!”

For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. 

Access the entire collection of Computer Security articles here.

The newly created IT Consultancy Team provides advice on IT matters to communities at CERN starting new projects or reviewing the computing activities of existing ones.

The consultants share their knowledge and experience to improve awareness of the IT landscape at CERN and to advise on system architecture and design to ensure best usage of existing IT services and solutions that favour, and are compatible with, the infrastructure already in place.

They also help to formalise requirements and assess impact on security, software licenses and cost, especially where contacts among different services are needed and questions go beyond the current computing service offerings.

For instance, the IT consultants may help answering questions like the ones below:

We are starting with project X – how could we make its computing aspects compatible with the CERN IT infrastructure? E.g. if you need a web content management system favour Drupal instead of WordPress or Joomla as Drupal is currently used in the CERN Web infrastructure. We plan to buy software X to solve problem Y – does it make sense at CERN?

     The IT Consultancy team can also help check whether software to solve the problem is already available at CERN.

We are planning a project to solve computing problem Z – does anyone else have it at CERN?

     If we take load balancing as an example, the IT department offers load balancers covering many cases.

There is a very useful online service – can I get the same service internally at CERN?

     For instance, it is possible to use CERNBox instead of Dropbox, with the benefit that the data stays at CERN.

An external consulting company proposes a solution using virtual machines in an external cloud provider, such as Amazon EC2 – what to do?

     Outsourcing into an external cloud might collide with CERN’s data protection policy (in draft). The IT Consultancy team would explain to you how to run virtual machines in the CERN private cloud to avoid losing control of your data.

I'm from a new experiment at CERN, what services and advice can the IT department provide for data taking?

     The team would help you go through the whole range of services, e.g. facilities for physics data storage such as EOS and CASTOR.

The team consists of one expert per group from the IT department as well as from BE-CO, the objective in the future being to have experts from all CERN computing groups.

The current IT Consultancy Team members are Xavier Espinal IT-ST, Luigi Gallerani BE-CO, Arash Khodabandeh IT-DB, Sebastian Lopienski IT-DI, Jose Carlos Luna IT-CS, David Martin Clavo IT-CF, Ignacio Reguero IT-CM (Coordinator) and Bruno Silva de Sousa IT-CDA .

Do not hesitate to contact the team by submitting a request to Service Element ‘IT Consulting Service’ in the CERN Service Portal or by sending an e-mail to It-consulting@cern.ch. 

It’s been a record-breaking period for the LHC. On the evening of Wednesday, 1 June, the maximum number of bunches achievable with the current configuration, based on the injection of 72 bunches trains with a spacing of 25 ns, was reached. 2040 bunches were circulating in the machine. The rest of the week continued in a similar vein: the luminosity record at 6.5 TeV was broken with a peak luminosity of just over 8 x 10³³ cm^-2s^-1, reaching 80% of the design luminosity. This was followed by a new record for integrated luminosity in a single fill, with 370 pb^-1delivered in 18 hours of colliding beams. Finally, a third record was broken later in the week: with an availability for collisions of around 75% (the annual average is normally around 35%) and 6 long fills of particles brought into collision one after the other, around 2 fb^-1 of luminosity were delivered during the week, breaking the previous record of 1.4 fb^-1 in a single week established in June 2012.

These records follow the decision taken at the end of May to focus on delivering the highest possible integrated luminosity by the summer conferences, given the delays caused by the recent technical problems.

As a consequence of this decision, the first machine development period, in which machine experts carry out machine studies, has been postponed to allow luminosity production to be given priority until the first technical stop (TS1). Given the long stop caused by the problem with the PS main power supply, which had ended just the week before the decision was taken, it was also decided to reduce the length of the LHC technical stop from five days to two and a half days.

With 2040 bunches circulating in the machine, the heat load deposited on the LHC beam screens in the arcs reached 150 W per half cell (one quadrupole and 3 dipoles) in sector 12 (between ATLAS and ALICE), just below the maximum of 160 W that can be tolerated by the cryogenics system. Electron clouds induced in the vacuum chamber by the closely spaced LHC bunches are responsible for this heat load. With a new cryogenic feed-forward system in place to tune the beam screen cooling parameters according to the intensity stored in the machine and the beam energy, operation is now significantly smoother than in 2015. The waiting periods needed to allow the cryogenics system to stabilise before starting the energy ramp-up or the ramp-down after a dump have virtually disappeared as a result, significantly speeding up the machine cycle.

The technical stop finished on schedule around midday on Thursday, 9 June. It was followed by a number of fills with a low number of bunches to validate the machine set-up. The aperture and optics were measured and a full set of loss maps was performed. These confirmed that the machine is in good shape and ready for a sustained period of operation at high luminosity.

CERN has awarded funding to six new projects with the aim to bridge the gap between technology and society. Over 600,000 CHF (€542, 766) of capital was granted through its competitive Knowledge Transfer Fund (KT Fund). The fund is issued as part of CERN’s goal to maximize its overall impact on society.

The selected projects cover new applications for CERN technology in a broad range of fields beyond high-energy physics, ranging from cancer diagnostics and aerospace applications, to next-generation cloud computing, radiation safety, and digital preservation. The technologies were developed at CERN as part of the variety of high-energy physics needs, and arise from several research departments: Engineering, Information Technology, Beams and Experimental Physics.

Since the fund’s creation in 2011, 38 projects have been funded, each project receiving grants between 15-240 kCHF in value over one or several years.

One of the funded projects can be used for non-invasive Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans, which can help for early diagnostics of cancer in patients. “The technology readiness level is often in the early stages compared to industry standards,” said Manuela Cirilli, section leader of Medical Applications at CERN. Cirilli started working at CERN as a physicist and then became passionate about how CERN detector and accelerator technology could be used to solve societal challenges through medical applications. “The KT Fund ensures increased marketability of CERN technology so it has a better chance to be useful to society as soon as possible,” Cirilli adds.

In addition to increased marketability, the KT Fund aims to grow its public-private cooperation as a tested way to accelerate the innovation process. Relevant industrial companies, hospitals, external universities, startups and sometimes spin-offs are involved in the technological development financed by the KT Fund. The partnerships are set up internationally and are a true testimony to CERN’s international nature. 

The development of human capital is also central to the KT Fund activities. The grants contribute to material and equipment costs, but also mean CERN teams can hire associate members, technical students or PhD students to contribute to R&D activities. These new contributors gain knowledge related to product industrialization and project management, and leave CERN with direct links with industry. This helps them develop their careers, and contributes to the dissemination of CERN’s knowledge towards industry.

CERN’s Knowledge Transfer process focuses on maximizing impact rather than profit, so part of the revenue generated by other Knowledge Transfer activities is directly re-invested into the KT Fund.

CERN members working on new technology or knowledge that is potentially transferable can contact the Knowledge Transfer Group. The KT Fund encourages CERN researchers, engineers or technicians interested in applying for the next KT Fund call to contact their INET coordinator or the Knowledge Transfer group as early as possible to discuss opportunities.

This year, the event, which is held over four stages in the Geneva area, took place on Wednesday evenings from 25 May to 15 June.

CERN shone in the “Entreprise” categories, taking first place in both the female and male group rankings. There were also some excellent individual results, with particularly impressive times in the “Vétérans 2” category (Camille Ruiz Llamas and Graham Dore were placed third and sixth respectively).

See the full results on the Tour website and on the CERN Running Club website.

 
 

Incidents involving so-called “drive-by” infections and “ransomware” are on the rise. Whilst an up-to-date and fully patched operating system is essential; whilst running anti-virus software with current virus signature files is a must; whilst “stop --- think --- don’t click” surely helps, we can still go one step further in better protecting your computers: DNS to the rescue.

The DNS, short for Domain Name System, translates the web address you want to visit (like “http://cern.ch”) to a machine-readable format (the IP address, here: “188.184.9.234”). For years, we have automatically monitored the DNS translation requests made by your favourite web browser (actually by your operating system, but that doesn’t matter here), and we have automatically informed you if your computer tried to access a website known to host malicious content that could infect and compromise your computer, your password, your data, and your life. In parallel, we have used and will continue to use the DNS to block certain web addresses that are known to be malicious and that are used for wrongdoing against the Organization. Similarly, we also block some domains resembling the domain name “cern.ch” that - on a closer look -  are different, like “cem.ch” or “cern.cn” (did you spot the difference?) in order to protect CERN against typo-squatting.

But the DNS can do more. Thanks to the IT networking team, the DNS infrastructure has been reinforced: the new set-up is more resilient to denial-of-service (“DoS”) attacks. It also has another benefit: the DNS firewall. Our internet service provider “SWITCH” collects and provides lists of well-known and guaranteed malicious domains. The new DNS set-up allows us to incorporate their DNS firewall configuration such that all those domains are automatically blocked, too. Next time you hit on one of our landing pages for phishing (i.e. webpages trying to harvest your password) or malware, you should be grateful. Your computer might just have been one click away from getting infected*.

* Careful here! We can only protect your computers while they are connected to CERN’s networks. From home, the malware might succeed!

For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. 

Access the entire collection of Computer Security articles here.

The CERN Accelerator School (CAS) and DESY held a jointly-organised specialised course on Free-Electron Lasers and Energy Recovery Linacs (FELs and ERLs) in Hamburg, Germany, from 31 May to 10 June 2016. 

The course was held in the Hotel Scandic Emporio in Hamburg and was attended by 68 participants of 13 nationalities, coming from countries as far away as China, Iran and Japan.

The intensive programme comprised 44 lectures and one seminar. Following introductory lectures on electromagnetism, relativity and synchrotron radiation issues, the basic requirements of linacs and ERLs were discussed. Detailed lectures on the theory of FEL science followed. Undulators and the process of lasing and seeding were covered in some detail along with lectures on various beam dynamics and beam control issues. Case studies, for which seven hours were allocated, completed the academic programme. For these, the students were divided into small groups and tasked with completing the basic design of an FEL or an ERL, before presenting their results on the final afternoon. An all-day visit to DESY with talks in the morning and visits to the facilities in the afternoon was also included in the programme.

In addition, the students had the opportunity to take part in a boat trip in Hamburg harbor and attend a dinner with an exclusive visit to the Miniatur Wunderland.

Next year, CAS will be holding a specialised course on Beam Injection, Extraction and Transfer from 10 to 19 March 2017 in Erice, Italy; a specialised course in collaboration with Max IV Laboratory on Vacuum for Particle Accelerators from 6 to 16 June 2017 in Lund, Sweden; an Advanced Accelerator Physics course in the UK in late summer; and a Joint School on RF Technology at Hayama, Shonan Village Center, Japan, in late autumn.

Further information on forthcoming CAS courses can be found on the CAS website.

Les 23 et 24 mai derniers, le Service de Secours et du Feu (SSF) du CERN a accueilli cinq instructeurs de l’association Life Support France– dont la mission est de proposer des formations dans le domaine des urgences pré-hospitalières – pour une formation sur la prise en charge des patients traumatisés (PHTLS – Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support).

Quinze « élèves » – sept pompiers du CERN et huit professionnels du secours et de la santé externes à l’Organisation (des infirmières, des ambulanciers et des pompiers) – ont participé à la formation, à l’issue de laquelle ils se sont vus remettre un certificat PHTLS officiel, valable quatre ans. Bien sûr, tout le programme PHTLS ne peut pas être couvert en deux jours, et plusieurs mois de travail personnel sont nécessaires en amont de la formation, notamment pour acquérir toutes les bases théoriques.

Les sept pompiers du CERN désormais certifiés PHTLS sont, pour la plupart, membres de l’équipe des ambulanciers du SSF, aujourd’hui composée de 12 personnes. Les cinq autres membres de l’équipe suivront la formation en 2017. « Cette formation est complémentaire à celles mises en place à travers notre collaboration avec les Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève (HUG), précise Eric Herbé, chef du pôle ALS (Advanced Life Support) au sein du Service de Secours et du Feu. Tous les ambulanciers des HUG sont en effet déjà titulaires du certificat PHTLS, celui-ci étant complémentaire à l’obtention du ‘brevet fédéral de technicien ambulancier’. »

Lors de ces deux jours de formation, les participants ont réalisé divers exercices de mise en situation, notamment de chutes ou d’accidents de la route, deux grandes causes de traumatismes sévères. Ils ont en particulier appris quand et comment mettre en place une extraction d’urgence d’un véhicule, car la situation ne laisse pas toujours le temps aux secouristes de pratiquer une désincarcération. L'un des objectifs de la formation est en effet d’apprendre à gérer les priorités suivant le principe « traiter en premier ce qui tue en premier ».

« Au SSF, nous sommes dans une dynamique de spécialisation, ajoute Eric Herbé. Tous nos pompiers, et en particulier ceux de l’équipe des ambulanciers, suivent des formations, ce qui permet d’élever le niveau de compétences de toute la brigade. »

At the end of July, I will be leaving CERN on a special leave of absence to take up a new position at the European Central Bank. This is a new chapter in my career, in a new context with its own challenges, and as I prepare for it, I would like to take a little time to look back over my years at CERN and share with you the enriching journey it has been, both for myself and for HR.

It has always been my strong belief that any organisation’s greatest asset is its people. When an HR professional believes that, it’s only a short step to the conclusion that the best way to nurture those people is by adopting a professional approach to HR. In this respect, I arrived at a very fortuitous time. Enrico Chiaveri was head of HR and, although his background is in physics, we shared that same conviction. Enrico was the icebreaker in driving change, and as a result, much of what we have achieved during my term as head of the HR department was set in motion by him. I also had the privilege to find constant, unfailing support from Rolf Heuer and Sigurd Lettow, who both wanted to reach the same level of excellence in HR management as that prevailing in other areas of the Organization.

So what have we achieved? First and foremost, we have built an HR strategy where originally there was none. We have improved dialogue with staff, at first through a staff survey and then through regular meetings to present our activities, their purpose and meaning for CERN in a timely manner. We have introduced multiple communication channels to gather staff feedback, ranging from focus groups to discussions with the HR Frontline and live chats. We have developed a Code of Conduct, which has been widely adopted in many areas, including, for example, guidelines for CERN people active on social media. We have put in place policies around diversity, going beyond gender, and recruitment, striving to attract and retain the best candidates both at the initial recruitment stage and on indefinite contracts. And we have worked to ensure that our learning and development offer matches the Organization’s needs, is fully integrated into HR processes such as the MARS exercise, and provides opportunities for each and every one of us to constantly grow and thrive in our respective roles.

My time at CERN has seen an entire Five-Yearly Review cycle unfold. Through this process, we have integrated several important measures around diversity, and developed a new career structure in close collaboration with the Department Heads and in full concertation with the Staff Association. I would like to thank them all wholeheartedly for their constructive approach to our deliberations. The new career structure is in the final stages of development, with the finishing touches being made as I write, with a view to its implementation on 1 September.

Going forward, there is still work to be done in completing the HR strategy, notably with two remaining pillars to be put in place. These are capacity planning and talent management, and both have been endorsed by the Directorate. James Purvis will be taking over from me as Head of Department, and I have every confidence that he will thrive in this new role. James has been a member of the HR Department’s Management Board throughout the strategic development process and I am therefore leaving CERN safe in the knowledge that the HR Department is in good hands.

A common thread underlines all the work done by the HR Department over recent years: we endeavour to put in place tools and policies that help all of us to lead our working lives around shared values and standards of behaviour, and we have nurtured a sustainable approach to the management of our people: our greatest asset. On this note, I would like to say thank you to Fabiola Gianotti and Martin Steinacher for their support and understanding, as well as to all the people both inside and outside the Department with whom I have relentlessly worked side by side to achieve the progress we have made to date. I am ending this journey with a deep sense of gratitude for the trust the Organization has placed in me over the past years and for the numerous opportunities I have been given. I will be taking fond memories away with me, and I look forward to seeing this great organisation continue to go from strength to strength. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing many of you at my last HR public meeting at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 28 June in the Council Chamber.

Anne-Sylvie Catherin

The next HR public meeting will provide an opportunity to take stock of the HR department’s journey over the past ten years and to learn more about the new career structure and benchmark jobs. It will start at 3 p.m. on 28 June in the Council Chamber and will be followed by a drink. 

On 21 June, the King and the Prime Minister of Sweden officially opened MAX IV, a brand-new synchrotron in Lund, Sweden. The summer solstice, the longest day of the year, was deliberately chosen for the ceremony: MAX IV, a cutting-edge synchrotron, will deliver the brightest X-rays ever produced to more than 2000 users.

Some 1500 kilometres away, a team at CERN followed the opening ceremony with a touch of pride. The Vacuum, Surfaces and Coatings group in the Technology department (TE-VSC) participated in the construction of this new synchrotron. Its contribution lies at the very heart of the accelerator, in its vacuum chambers. The group developed the coating for most of the vacuum chambers in the larger of the two rings, which has a circumference of 528 metres and operates at an energy of 3 GeV.

The CERN group was brought in to develop the coating for the vacuum chambers using NEG (Non-Evaporable Getter) material. A thin, micrometric layer of NEG ensures a high-grade vacuum: it traps residual gas molecules and limits the release of molecules generated by the bombardment of photons. The technology was developed at CERN in the late 1990s for the LHC: six kilometres of vacuum chambers in the LHC, i.e. those at ambient temperature, are coated with NEG material. CERN’s expertise in the field is therefore unique and recognised worldwide.

“The MAX IV design was very demanding, as the cross-section of the vacuum chambers is very small, just 2.4 centimetres compared to 8 cm at the LHC,” explains Paolo Chiggiato, TE-VSC group leader. “In addition, some parts were geometrically complex.” Synchrotron light is extracted to experimental areas every 26 metres. At the extraction point, the chamber comprises two tubes that gradually diverge.

The CERN group began its involvement in the project in 2014 and developed the chemical surface treatment method used for almost all the vacuum chambers in the large ring of MAX IV. Treatment of the cylindrically symmetrical vacuum chambers was carried out by a European firm and a European institute, to which CERN had already transferred the technology in the past. The most complex chambers, around 120 in total, were treated at CERN. Two benches for sputtering, the coating technique used, were developed at CERN. “These benches are equipped with a wire whose material is deposited onto the surface of the chamber. For the MAX IV chambers, the wire had a diameter of 0.5 millimetres and its alignment was critical,” explains Mauro Taborelli, leader of the Surfaces, Chemistry and Coatings section in the TE-VSC group.“The procedure was all the more complicated because the extraction chambers, in which the photons are extracted, have a tiny vertical aperture, of around 1 millimetre,” confirms Pedro Costa Pinto, leader of the team responsible for the vacuum deposition process.

The vacuum chambers were delivered in 2014 and 2015. “It’s essential for us to participate in these types of project, which require lots of ingenuity, to be able to maintain and build on our know-how,” says Paolo Chiggiato. “By developing our expertise in this way, we will be ready for new projects at CERN.”

In the two weeks that followed the first technical stop (7-9 June), the LHC has demonstrated once again an outstanding performance. Thanks to the excellent availability of all systems, peaking at 93% in week 24, it was possible to chain physics fill after physics fill, with 60% of the time spent in collisions.

We have now surpassed the total integrated luminosity delivered in 2015 (4.2 fb^-1). The integrated luminosity for 2016 now exceeds 6 fb^-1 for each of the two high-luminosity experiments, ATLAS and CMS. Long fills, exceeding 20 hours, are now part of regular operation, with some producing more than 0.5 fb-1. With the summer conferences approaching, this certainly provides a good dataset for the LHC experiments to analyse and present.

Several records were broken again, namely the highest instantaneous luminosity – over 9 x 10³³ cm^-2 s^-1 on 14 June – and the largest integrated luminosity in one fill of around 550 pb^-1 delivered in 29 hours between the 20 and 21 June.  The LHC is now very close to the design luminosity value of 10³⁴ cm^-2 s^-1.

This luminosity production period was briefly interrupted for the commissioning of the high beta-star beam cycle. Contrary to what is done in the normal physics cycle, in the high beta-star cycle, the beam size at the interaction points are increased before being put into collision. For this high beta-star cycle, for example, the beta functions at the interaction points 1 (IP1) and 5 (IP5) were increased to 2.5 km, while for the normal cycle these are normally squeezed to 40 cm. This results in beams with “large" transverse size - about 1 mm - and very small angular divergence - about 0.4 microradian - at the interaction point. This allows precise small angle scattering studies by the forward physics experiments AFP, ALFA and TOTEM. By comparison, the transverse beam sizes in IP1 and IP5 during normal physics cycles are of the order of 13 micrometres and the divergence, around 33 microradians. The commissioning of this high beta-star cycle has been successful and was completed in two fills, spanning a period of around 18 hours.  Furthermore, the optic parameters have been measured and corrected with a remaining error of only few percent. Some validation steps are still required prior to the dedicated physics run scheduled for September.

Unfortunately, the heavy rain of the last weeks has taken a toll not only on our spirits, but also on the LHC. On Tuesday, 14 June in the morning, dedicated sensors alerted the Technical Infrastructure (TI) operators to the presence of water in the LHC at point 3. Here, the LHC tunnel crosses an underground stream descending the Jura, and in periods of heavy rain, water infiltrations inside the LHC can occur. Interventions by several teams were necessary in order to repair the damage caused by the water, the most severe being water infiltration inside electric and electronic equipment of the collimation system, grounding the LHC for almost 48 hours.

It’s a big shining box, 4 metres high, 20 metres long: this magnificent detector arrived at CERN 16 months ago and since then it is undergoing a complete refurbishing. ICARUS, a 760-ton detector filled with liquid argon (LAr) whose technology was first proposed by Carlo Rubbia in 1977, was used between 2010 and 2014 at the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy to study neutrino oscillations using a beam of neutrinos produced at CERN. After its overhaul at CERN, which should last until the end of 2016, it will be shipped to Chicago to start a second life. It will be part of the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) programme at Fermilab, dedicated to the study of sterile neutrinos (see Box). The refurbishment is part of the CERN Neutrino Platform (CENF) project, started in 2014, to follow the recommendations of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, and it is done in collaboration with the INFN and Fermilab. “The Neutrino Platform pulls together a community that is scattered across the world,” says Marzio Nessi, CERN Neutrino Programme project leader. “CERN has committed significant resources to support R&D in all aspects of neutrino research, and ICARUS’s refurbishment is the first beneficiary of this programme.”

The ICARUS detector is made up of two modules; each module is filled with high-purity liquid argon, it has a cathode plane in the middle and a wire chamber at each side forming a Time Projection Chamber (TPC). When an energetic particle passes inside the volume, it creates ionizing radiation along its track. The electrons thus created drift towards the sides of the detectors, where three layers of parallel wire planes register the arrival time and the position of the drifted electrons. By combining these position data with the drift time – established also thanks to photomultipliers placed after the wire planes – one can reconstruct a three-dimensional image of the event.

A thorough refurbishment​ of the ICARUS detector

The renovation campaign concerns many parts of the experiment. New-generation, more efficient photomultipliers have been installed. They are critical components as the Fermilab neutrino beam – which will be sending neutrinos to the chain of detectors of the SBN – will be pulsed at the microsecond level, but the electron drift time in the chamber is of the order of milliseconds. During this time, other particles, such as cosmic rays particles, can cross the detector and accumulate in the read-out system. The photomultipliers will be able to discard the unwanted, out-of-beam time events.

Moreover, as the quantity of electrons released by the ionizing particle is extremely small, high-quality electronics are essential to distinguish them from background noise. The electronics have been completely redesigned in the INFN laboratories, with new signal amplifiers and a better signal-to-noise ratio.

Furthermore, the metallic cathode plane in the middle of the detector has been smoothed at the millimetre level to ensure a perfectly uniform electrical field. This is important to perform momentum measurements via multiple scattering of the very energetic particles escaping the detector.  

Finally, the argon recirculating and purifying system has also been improved. To prevent ionization electrons recombining with circulating impurities (mostly oxygen, carbon dioxide and water molecules), a high degree of purity is required, at a level better then 0.1 part per billion. ICARUS has a double recycling system that has been revamped by the cryogenic group at CERN. “Improving the performances of a detector already successfully operating in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory has been extremely challenging in many respects” says Claudio Montanari, ICARUS Technical Coordinator. “Indeed, in order to make it fully functional to operate on the surface, many different aspects including data acquisition, background rejection, timing and event reconstruction needed to be rethought.”

A real challenge: high-quality aluminium welding of the cryostat 

A second, fundamental part of the renovation project is the engineering of the cryostat. It was decided that it would be built in aluminium, mainly for logistics reasons, but this decision brought many challenges. Aluminium welding is generally more difficult than a stainless steal one, as it must be done in a flat position to maximise its effectiveness. Secondly, the welding must be of a very high-quality, to avoid introducing additional, unwanted, impurities. Finally, the cryostat module is just barely bigger than the detector: over a length of 20 meters, the tolerance is of the order of a few millimetres. The Mechanical & Materials Engineering  group at CERN, led by Francesco Bertinelli, is pre-assembling the 4x4 meter extruded panels, juxtaposing and tack welding them with a few supporting ribs.  To have clean, high-quality welding, the team is going to rotate the entire pre-assembled cryostat like a giant roaster, in order to weld always in a flat position. This process will last several months, at the end of which the cryostat is ready to host the detector.  “The cryostat’s assembly engineering is an excellent example of how team work is conducted at CERN,” says Bertinelli.  “We have a group made up of people with various backgrounds and skills, different nationalities, cultures and languages, but we are closely working together towards our common goal.”

When the cryostat will be ready it has to be moved out of its current building, brought in front of the clean room where the detector is, and the two parts will be assembled. At the beginning of 2017, an exceptional load transport will carry it all the way to Fermilab to start its new adventure. 

The Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) programme

The SBN programme has been approved after, in the past decades, the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments obtained, some unexpected results, showing tensions with the standard model of particle physics in which there are only three types (‘flavours’) of neutrinos. Indeed, LSND reported hints of the existence of a fourth type of neutrino; MiniBooNE, which used the same beam line at Fermilab that will be used for the SBN programme, found an excess of low-energy particles events. Some theories ascribe this apparently strange neutrino behaviour to the presence of a fourth, sterile, neutrino flavour. The suite of experiments of the SBN programme are meant to cast light on this mystery.

 
 

Welcome to CERN. For the next couple of weeks, you will be able to breathe in the free academic world of CERN. You will have the chance to learn thanks to in-depth lectures, enjoy the freedom of exploring your preferred or assigned research topic, and form your own network of peers during your evening hours. However, “academic freedom” does not imply that there are no boundaries. At CERN, academic freedom also comes with responsibility. Below are some hints on how best to assume that responsibility securely.

You are the primary person responsible for the security of your laptop, smartphone and computer; for your account and your password; for your data; and for the programs, computing systems and services you are developing, so stop and think before acting. If you are working on a project developing code, get the appropriate training first so that your software is “free” of bugs and vulnerabilities that may spoil the functionality of your code and your program. If you have been asked to set up a database or a webserver, consider the offerings of CERN’s IT department first*: they provide a database-on-demand service as well as different web services for free. No need to mess around with hardware, operating systems, web servers and the like -– simply create your webpages! Also note that employing external services (i.e. web services outside CERN) is not recommended from a computer security perspective. If you are in doubt or need help designing and structuring the computing part of your project, get in touch with us at Computer.Security@cern.ch. For those of you who are engaged in mathematical simulations, engineering tasks or designing control systems: CERN provides a portfolio of engineering applications for free. There is no need to download additional software from the Internet. If you do need to, contact Software.Licences@cern.ch first as that software might come with license costs or may violate copyrights of third parties.

Talking about rules and copyright violation… although listening to music or watching videos is subject to the agreement between you and your supervisor, note that sharing videos, music or software packages via torrents or other means usually violates copyrights of third parties and hence is not permitted. CERN regularly gets complaints from those companies and if you are not ready to pay their infringement fees, you’d better make sure now that you legitimately own that video/music/software, and that any sharing applications (e.g. Bittorrent) are disabled. You must also comply with CERN’s Code of Conduct and the CERN Computing Rules. The latter stipulates that the personal use of CERN’s computing infrastructure is tolerated as long as impact is kept minimal and all activity is legal, not offensive and not of commercial nature. And gentlemen, ladies: the browsing of porn sites is considered inappropriate. If you want to spare yourself an embarrassing conversation with us, just don’t do it.

Finally, think of your laptop and PC here at CERN and at home: make sure that it is happy and healthy. Allow it to update itself by enabling “Windows Update”, Mac “Software Update” or Linux’s “yum auto-update”, and get decent free anti-virus software for your Windows computer or Mac !. Take care when browsing the web – not everything is as it seems, and a bad infection of your computer might require a full reinstallation. So, if in doubt, STOP --- THINK --- DON’T CLICK. Good luck, and have a fun summer!!!

For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. 

Access the entire collection of Computer Security articles here.