J-PARC Project Newsletter No.88, October 2022 dispatch
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J-PARC Project Newsletter
No.88, October 2022
Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex under joint operation by the
High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and the Japan Atomic
Energy Agency (JAEA)
http://j-parc.jp/index-e.html
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HEADLINES AND CONTENTS
1. [Overview]
* Impact of the Electricity cost rise on operation period
* KEK Project Implementation Plan (PIP) 2022 released on June 24, 2022
* User's council held Aug. 1st
* Approval of radiation facility modification finally given by NRA on Aug. 24th,
187 days from the application's date.
* J-PARC facility open house held fully online on Aug. 27, 2022
* Prof. Ogitsu, director of Cryogenic science center/KEK, and Cryogenic section
in J-PARC awarded IEEE CSC "Award for continuing and significant contributions
in the Field of Applied Superconductivity"
2. [Accelerator Division]
OPERATION STATUS OF THE ACCELERATORS.
3. [Particle and Nuclear Physics Division]
PROGRAM ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING.
DETERMINATION OF THE PAULI REPULSION BETWEEN QUARKS
IN THE SIGMA+ P INTERACTION.
TOWARD HIGH-POWER HIGH-PRECISION EXPERIMENT.
STATUS OF THE COHERENT MUON TO ELECTRON TRANSITION (COMET).
STATUS OF THE MUON G-2/ ELECTRIC DIPOLE MOMENT (EDM) (E34).
4. [Materials and Life Science Division]
SHORTENED OPERATING SCHEDULE IN 2022B PERIOD.
BEAM OPERATION ENDED SUCCESSFULLY AND MAINTENANCE WORKS ARE
GOING ON.
PROPOSALS FOR 2022B ROUND WERE APPROVED.
OPERATION OF ALL FOUR MUON BEAMLINES SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED AND
CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE WORKS IN PROGRESS.
5. [Nuclear Transmutation Division
WORKSHOP ON J-PARC PROTON BEAM IRRADIATION FACILITY PLAN
AND ESTABLISHMENT OF ITS USER COMMUNITY.
6. [Safety Division]
THE APPLICATION FOR A LICENSE OF THE OPERATION WAS GRANTED.
7. [Information]
8. [Editorial Note]
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1. [Overview] by Takashi KOBAYASHI
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* Impacts of Electricity cost rise on operation period:
Recently electricity costs are skyrocketing and impacting the operation period
in FY2022. Already it was announced that the MLF operation will have to be
shortened in the latter half of FY2022 as described in the MLF section in this
report. MR user operation will also have to be shortened unless an additional
supplemental budget will come. We are carefully watching the electricity price
trend.
* KEK Project Implementation Plan (PIP) 2022 released on June 24, 2022
KEK Project Implementation Plan (PIP) is the plan to realize the research projects
which includes ones executed by KEK operating budget and the ones which
require new funding requests. Taking into account the recommendations from
the KEK scientific advisory committee, the KEK PIP 2022 was released on June 24,
2022
https://www.kek.jp/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/KEK-PIP2022.pdf
Among the projects requiring new funding requests, four projects are chosen as
high priority. The highest priority is given to the J-PARC Hadron hall extension.
The transmission muon microscope at J-PARC MLF is also chosen as one of the
four projects.
* User's council held Aug. 1st
On Aug. 1st, the first J-PARC user's council meeting was held in hybrid mode.
The committee consists of Japanese representatives from relevant user
communities of J-PARC and is chaired by Prof. Toshio Yamaguchi
(Fukuoka University). The council was asked to summarize the needs/requests
from the user communities and will submit its findings as a document to the
J-PARC director.
https://kds.kek.jp/event/43086/ (Slides in Japanese sorry.)
* Approval of radiation facility modifications by NRA was finally given on
Aug. 24th, 187days from the application's date.
We submitted an application for radiation facility modifications to National
Radiation Authority (NRA) on Feb. 16, 2022. The application includes MLF H-line,
HD C-line, HD power up, and NU power up. Approval is needed to execute the
experimental program as planned after the summer shutdown period. The
approval came on Aug. 27, 2022, after 187days from the application's date.
After receiving the NRA approval, we need to get approval from local
governments, namely Ibaraki prefecture and Tokai village. The prefecture
decided to review this modification by the committee for nuclear-power safety
measures. It will be held on Oct. 19. The period to get approval from NRA is
getting longer and longer and leads to a serious impact on the J-PARC science
program.
* J-PARC facility open house held fully online on Aug. 27, 2022
J-PARC facility open house was held online on Aug. 27. It is the 3rd time it was
held online due to the COVID pandemic. Tokai village Mayor Mr. Yamada kindly
visited J-PARC and appeared on the video; the J-PARC director Kobayashi
interviewed him. The videos were broadcasted through Youtube and niconico
douga (Japanese localized streaming video service). The # of viewers was ~1000
and ~9000, respectively. The recorded videos can be watched through
https://j-parc.jp/c/OPEN_HOUSE/2022/.
* Prof. Toru Ogitsu, Head and Professor of Cryogenics Science Center, Applied
Research Laboratory, KEK, and also a cryogenic section member of J-PARC is
awarded the IEEE "Award for Continuing and Significant Contributions in the
Field of Applied Superconductivity"
https://ieeecsc.org/awards/award-continuing-and-significant-contributions-
field-applied-superconductivity
for his long contributions to this field including a major contribution to the T2K
experiment. He introduced the idea of a super-conducting combined function
(SCCF) magnet for the primary proton transport line of the J-PARC neutrino
facility. He and his team succeeded to realize the SCCF beamline on schedule
which led to the success of the T2K experiments.
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2. [Accelerator Division] by Michikazu KINSHO
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OPERATION STATUS OF THE ACCELERATORS
The beam operation for the MLF users was completed on Jun 24 as scheduled
with high availability (~ 95%). Also, a successful beam circulation in the MR with
a new power supply was achieved.
The beam operation as an operation run of Run#89, which restarted in May, has
been continued until July 20th on schedule. The beam operation for the
Materials and Life Science experimental facility (MLF) users was completed on
Jun 24 as scheduled with high availability (~ 95%). The beam power for the MLF
user program was about 830 kW.
After the user operation was completed, a continuous beam test at 1 MW beam
power was performed for two days at the linac and RCS. Beam tests were also
conducted at MR until July 7. During the 1 MW beam test, continuous operation
for the scheduled time was not possible due to the outside temperature of 38
degrees Celsius and the failure of one of the RF cavities in the RCS. High-intensity
beam operation under such harsh conditions far exceeded the cooling capacity
of the cooling water facility of the RCS.
However, it was clear that even under these conditions, the beam could be
operated stably with a beam power of 600 kW.
The MR beam test was originally scheduled to start on June 1, but due to a delay
in the turning of the main magnet power supply, the beam test could not start
until June 27. Therefore, the scheduled beam acceleration test could not be
performed, but the beam study at the injection energy of 3 GeV was mostly
completed as per the scheduled program for fast extraction. The MR beam
acceleration test is rescheduled to be performed in the beam test starting in
November.
The J-PARC accelerator facilities are scheduled to start beam tuning at the linac
from the beginning of November. After the tuning of the linac and the RCS, the
beam operation for the MLF users will be started in the middle of November.
The MR beam study will start almost at the same time.
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3. [Particle and Nuclear Physics Division]
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PROGRAM ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING (by Takeshi KOMATSUBARA):
The 34th Program Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting was held as a hybrid
conference on August 3-5. In the committee, chaired by Dr. Rik Yoshida
(Argonne National Laboratory), Both new members whose terms began in April
2022 and old members whose terms were completed in March 2022 participated
jointly.
The status of the experiments was reported, and prospects for the operation
from November were discussed. This time three new proposals were submitted.
https://kds.kek.jp/indico/event/43028/
The PAC report will be available through the following web page.
http://j-parc.jp/researcher/Hadron/en/PAC_for_NuclPart_e.html
The next PAC meeting will be held in January 2023.
DETERMINATION OF THE PAULI REPULSION BETWEEN QUARKS IN THE
SIGMA+ P INTERACTION (by Koji Miwa and Takuya Nanamura)
Thanks to the mysterious balance of attraction and repulsion in the nuclear
force, nuclei can exist stably. Understanding the origin of a repulsive force has
been a longstanding challenge in the nuclear study. Oka and Yazaki theoretically
pointed out that spin-spin interactions and the Pauli repulsions between quarks
have important roles to generate the repulsive force. This Pauli repulsion effects
can be studied using hyperon proton scatterings. There is an exciting prediction
that the quark Pauli repulsion in the Sigma+ proton channel makes the
interaction considerably repulsive due to a distinct Pauli forbidden up-quark
pair with the same spin and color configuration.
The J-PARC E40 experiment was carried out at the K1.8 beam line of the Hadron
Experimental facility from 2018 to 2020 to measure differential cross sections
of elastic scatterings between Sigma+ and proton. The experiment successfully
measured the differential cross sections in the momentum range of
0.44-0.80 GeV/c for Sigma+ with excellent precision of 10% level with a fine
angular interval. As a result, the experiment quantitatively determined the size
of the quark Pauli repulsion effects for the first time and concluded it was
moderately repulsive.
Furthermore, the obtained results are consistent with theoretical calculations
by Lattice QCD. This result was published recently in Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys.
2022 093D01 and was selected as the editor's choice. https://doi.org/10.1093
/ptep/ptac101
TOWARD HIGH-POWER HIGH-PRECISION EXPERIMENT (by Yoshiaki FUJII)
Neutrino Experimental Facility, T2K, and SuperKamiokande continue to work
hard on improvement of the experimental precision and on higher beam power.
Assembly work of the new second electromagnetic horn has been completed,
and the excitation test at 320kA has been successfully done. The new target has
been made and the installation to the new first horn is in progress. After
installation, an excitation test of the first horn will also be carried out.
Two-million scintillator cubes for the new detector SuperFGD and its assembly
platform have arrived at J-PARC. The structural box of SuperFGD is under test at
CERN and will be shipped to J-PARC after the test. Many collaborators are to
come to J-PARC for SuperFGD assembly work. VISA applications are on schedule.
Disassembling work of the present POD detector will start from October.
At SuperKamiokande, additional Gadolinium loading to the water has been
completed. Now, the neutron capture efficiency with Gd was increased to 75%.
As a result, the neutron detection efficiency is improved by 1.5 times.
The T2K collaboration meeting will be held from 10/10 to 10/14, gathering at
J-PARC and CERN, with a remote connection between them. We truly hope that
all the collaborators can get together at J-PARC in 2023.
The JSNS2 experiment at MLF continued the data taking in 2022 and has
accumulated 2.56x10^{22} POT so far (26% of approved POT).
The data taking
will be restarted from the end of JFY2022. The Double-Chooz experiment
donated the 190 PMTs to the JSNS2-II experiment. The installation of PMTs for
the new far detector of JSNS2-II has been prepared well.
Publication
Search for Electron Antineutrino Appearance in a Long-Baseline Muon
Antineutrino Beam, T2K collaboration,
Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 161802 (2022), DIO: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.161802
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.161802
STATUS OF THE COHERENT MUON TO ELECTRON TRANSITION (COMET)
(by Satoshi MIHARA)
The COMET experiment aims to search for the lepton-flavor violating muon
reaction, mu-e conversion, with a sensitivity better than 10-14 in Phase I.
Facility and detector construction work continues; the primary proton beamline
apparatus including a target chamber has been installed. A mask system, a
movable pin-hole collimator, is installed at the entrance of the transport solenoid
for studying the beam transport performance of the curved solenoid magnet.
Excitation and quench protection system test of the transport solenoid was
successfully done in July.
The main detector of COMET for its physics measurement, the Cylindrical Drift
Chamber (CDC), has been tested on the Tsukuba campus. After completing the
final test of electronics cooling with water, the CDC was transported to J-PARC
successfully in September for further conditioning on site.
The COMET collaboration members came together in Tokai in July for the 1st
time after the last face-to-face meeting in 2019. Members who were not able
to join the meeting in person attended this meeting remotely to contribute to
the discussion toward the start of COMET Phase-alpha, the engineering run,
and Phase-I, the physics run.
STATUS OF THE MUON G-2/ ELECTRIC DIPOLE MOMENT (EDM) (E34)
(by Tsutomu MIBE)
The E34 collaboration aims for precision measurements of the muon anomalous
magnetic moment and electric dipole moment.
The commissioning of the surface muon beam at the H-line was concluded by
confirming the beam intensity, profile, and momentum distributions at the H1
area. For further extension of the beamline to the H2 area, the cabling for the
control system was completed. The construction of the radiation shields is
ongoing. Preparatory works, such as the re-location of the buried cables, and
water piping in the area of the H-line of the experimental building are in
progress. A task force, formed in 2019 under the J-PARC center, restarted with
renewed members to resolve issues associated with the construction of the
H-line experimental building. The collaboration continues to develop the
experimental apparatus.
Mr. Yuga Nakazawa won second prize in the student poster session on the
topic of "High-Power Test of an APF IH-DTL Prototype for the Muon Linac".
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4. [Materials and Life Science Division] by Toshiya OTOMO
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SHORTENED OPERATING SCHEDULE IN 2022B PERIOD:
In response to the soaring electricity prices that reflect the recent global
situation,
J-PARC has reviewed the number of operating days in the 2022B period and has
decided to shorten it from the originally planned 4.4 cycles (97.5 days) to 2.4
cycles (53.5 days).
(https://mlfinfo.jp/en/announce/220707.html)
User operation in the 2022B period will start on November 21st.
BEAM OPERATION ENDED SUCCESSFULLY AND MAINTENANCE WORKS ARE
GOING ON
1) Neutron Source
The beam operation of MLF ended on June 26th with a daily availability of
94.7 % on average since April 1st and the maintenance works during the long
outage started. On July 5th, the used mercury target vessel, which was in
operation from 2012 to 2014, was transported from MLF to the storage building,
which is called RAM building where a total of 5 used target vessels are stored
now. The used proton beam window which was replaced in 2020 was cut into
pieces for volume reduction by remote handling operation.
The remote handling test of the moderator & reflector assembly was carried
out using a spare assembly from August 25th to September 12th. Because the
operating lifetime of a moderator & reflector assembly is comparatively long,
6 years at 1MW, the last remote handling operation was done more than 10
years ago and the inheritance of technology is very important.
The remote
handling procedures were checked carefully to handle the actual radioactive
used assembly near future.
PROPOSALS FOR 2022B ROUND WERE APPROVED
2) Neutron Instruments and Science
For the proposal round of 2022B starting in November, 291 proposals have been
submitted for neutron general use proposals and 114 proposals have been
approved.
The Annual Meeting of industrial application for neutron was renewed by
adding the JRR-3 facility as well as J-PARC MLF and held as a hybrid meeting
on the 14th and 15th of July. The scope of this year is as follows, 1) presenting
the status of use of the facility, what the society needs, and required techniques
in the industrial field. 2) Showing the technologies (methodologies) that the MLF
can provide and their limits. 3) Introducing efforts and contributions to solving
the problems on the societal issues like carbon neutrality, digital transformation,
and so on.
The 11th international workshop on sample environment at scattering facilities
(ISSE-WS) was successfully held in person at Nasu Town, Tochigi Prefecture,
Japan organized by J-PARC, IMSS-KEK, JAEA, CROSS, The University of Tokyo,
Tohoku University, and JASRI from August 28th to September 1st. Over 30
participants from abroad could enter into Japan without any problems and
joined the workshop. We had around 90 registrants in total in addition to online
attendees.
(https://mlfinfo.jp/sp/isse2022/index.html)
From MLF's recent press release:
(1) "Revisiting the concept of peptide bond planarity in an iron-sulfur protein
by neutron structure analysis"
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn2276
(2) The research report on "Successful visualization of water molecules in fuel
cells on a vehicle using pulsed neutron"
https://www.kek.jp/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/pr20220712.pdf (in Japanese)
OPERATION OF ALL FOUR MUON BEAMLINES SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED AND
CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE WORKS ARE IN PROGRESS
3) Muon Science Facility (MUSE)
The H line, which is the last MUSE beamline, started commissioning this January
and led a celebratory finish when all four beamlines operated successfully at the
end of June. Several issues raised before the summer maintenance will be
repaired toward the beam resumption at the end of November.
Concerning the muon production target, in the last year's maintenance, the
rotating feeder unit was replaced according to the maker's recommendation
considering the wear and tear.
Since then, the turbulence in the motor torque was confirmed, and it was
presumed to be due to the misalignment of the joint attached to the feeder unit.
We judged that it was difficult to achieve the required high accuracy of the
alignment with the hands-on maintenance with wearing the radiation-hard
equipment and decided to use a flexible joint with a high tolerance. The new
joint was successfully installed at the beginning of August.
In the D line, the final focusing magnets of the quadrupole triplet (Q-triplet)
and their power suppliers for the D1 area will be replaced with new ones. The
existing Q-triplet was designed to focus up to the 30 MeV/c surface muon beam
and thus does not allow for a higher momentum beam. Although the surface
muon beam is the most widely utilized by users' experiments, the D line can
provide a much higher momentum beam more than 100 MeV/c. The existing
Q-triplet can only provide a high momentum beam less effectively. An
optimized beam will be delivered by the new Q-triplet and new demands
are expected to be stimulated.
The application for the extension of the H line to the H2 area was submitted
to the Nuclear Regulation Authority and accepted on August 24th. In the
next step, approval by the nuclear safety council of the surrounding
municipalities, is required for the construction to start. In the H2 area, the
muon accelerator to 4.3 MeV will be constructed to provide pre-acceleration
of ultra-slow muons for the g-2/EDM (the muon anomalous magnetic
moment (g-2) and the electric dipole moment) experiment and the transmission
muon microscopy.
Results in D1 and S1 were presented to the press: "Li transport observed by
negative and positive muons in an anode material for all-solid-state Li-ion
batteries".
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.2c02055
The Nishikawa Prize from the Foundation for High Energy Accelerator Science
was awarded to Drs. S. Nishimura and S. Kanda, and Prof. K. Shimomura et al.
for their "Rabi-oscillation Spectroscopy in Precise Measurement of Hyperfine
Structure of Muonium Atoms".
For the 2022B beam period, the total number of submitted proposals was 57
for the muon general proposals, of which 21 were approved.
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5. [Nuclear Transmutation Division] by Shin-ichiro MEIGO
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WORKSHOP ON J-PARC PROTON BEAM IRRADIATION FACILITY PLAN AND
ESTABLISHMENT OF ITS USER COMMUNITY
On July 28th, a workshop on "J-PARC Proton Beam Irradiation Facility Plan and
Establishment of Its User Community" was held as an in-person and online
hybrid scheme. There were 133 participants, with 14 in-person and 119 online.
After addressing the importance of nuclear transmutation and the current status
of the facility planning, the needs of the facility were presented from four
potential fields, i.e., material damage, semiconductor soft error testing,
radioisotope (RI) production for medical applications, and proton beam
applications. A user community of the facility was established. As part of its
initial activities, the facility requirements from the four fields will be summarized,
and a roadmap for the realization of the facility will be developed. A
questionnaire survey of participants' areas of interest revealed that they have
high expectations for the proton beams available in the facility at J-PARC in
many fields in addition to nuclear transmutation.
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6. [Safety Division] by Yoshihiro NAKANE and Kotaro BESSHO
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THE APPLICATION FOR A LICENSE OF THE OPERATION WAS GRANTED
The application for changes of the radiological license was granted by the
Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) on August 24. The approved changes in the
application were the extension muon beam line in the Materials and Life Science
Experimental Facility, the power upgrade and a new primary beam line (COMET)
in the Hadron Experimental Facility, and the power upgrade in the Neutrino
Experimental Facility.
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7. [Information]
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8. [Editorial Note]
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Past issues are available from the below link.
http://j-parc.jp/c/en/topics/project-newsletter/index.html
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┃ Editorial Board:
┃ Toshifumi TSUKAMOTO (Chair): toshifumi.tsukamoto@kek.jp
┃ Kaoru SHIBATA: shibata.kaoru@jaea.go.jp
┃ Takatoshi MORISHITA: morishita.takatoshi@jaea.go.jp
┃ Jean-Michel POUTISSOU (English Editor): jmp@triumf.ca
┃ Chiaki SHIRAISHI (Secretary): shiraishi.chiaki@jaea.go.jp
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