J-PARC Project Newsletter No.96, October 2024 dispatch
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J-PARC Project Newsletter
No.96, October 2024
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]
USERS COUNCIL
OBSERVATION OF A SCORCHED COMPONENT IN THE J-PARC LINAC BUILDING.
2. [Accelerator Division]
STATUS OF THE ACCELERATORS;
AWARD OF THE PARTICLE ACCELERATOR SOCIETY OF JAPAN,
SUSPENSION OF THE USER OPERATION AND OBSERVATION OF A SCORCHED
COMPONENT IN THE LINAC.
3. [Particle and Nuclear Physics Division]
PROGRAM ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING.
SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF THE FIRST HALF OF 2024 OPERATION OF THE
NEUTRINO EXPERIMENTAL FACILITY AND PROGRESS IN THE SUMMER MAINTENANCE.
STATUS OF THE JSNS2 / JSNS2-II (SEARCH FOR STERILE NEUTRINOS AT J-PARC MLF,
E56 / E82).
SUMMER WORKSHOPS ON THE RESEARCH AT THE HADRON EXPERIMENTAL FACILITY.
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.
STATUS OF THE MUON g-2/ ELECTRIC DIPOLE MOMENT (EDM) (E34).
4. [Materials and Life Science Division]
ONGOING MAINTENANCE WORKS DURING THE LONG OUTAGE AND THE
INTERNATIONAL REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETING FOR TWO-YEAR OPERATION.
OVER 15 SWEDISH STUDENTS ENJOYED MLF.
PRESENTATION OF THE RESEARCH RESULTS FROM MUON HELD IN NASU,TOCHIGI.
5. [Nuclear Transmutation Division]
WORKSHOP ON J-PARC PROTON BEAM IRRADIATION FACILITY.
6. [Information]
UPDATE! SUMMARY OF J-PARC HELLO SCIENCE
7. [Editorial Note]
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1. [Overview] by KOBAYASHI Takashi
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USERS' COUNCIL
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On Sept. 6th, the users' council meeting was held. After reports from J-PARC management, requests to J-PARC from all user communities were presented. The Users' council will summarize the requests in a report document, and it will be submitted to J-PARC's management. J-PARC will work on the requests.
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OBSERVATION OF A SCORCHED COMPONENT IN THE J-PARC LINAC BUILDING
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We deeply apologize for the concern and inconvenience caused to you by the observation of a scorch mark on an electrical component in the J-PARC Linac Building on July 5th, 2024. The investigation of the cause and the planning of the counter measures are finished. We are working to restart the beam operation as scheduled in November.
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2. [Accelerator Division] by YAMAMOTO Kazami
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STATUS OF THE ACCELERATORS; AWARD OF THE PARTICLE ACCELERATOR SOCIETY OF JAPAN, SUSPENSION OF THE USER OPERATION AND OBSERVATION OF A SCORCHED COMPONENT IN THE LINAC
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We are pleased to announce that Dr. Pranab Kumar SAHA, the leader of the commissioning group of the J-PARC 3 GeV Rapid Cycling Synchrotron (RCS), received the 20th Particle Accelerator Society of Japan (PASJ) Award for Technological Contribution and Dr. KOJIMA Kunihiro, a postdoctoral researcher of the RCS, also received an Award for his presentation at the 21st annual meeting of PASJ. ( https://j-parc.jp/c/en/topics/2024/09/20001393.html ).
There were two major troubles in the Main Ring (MR) and Material and Life science experimental Facility (MLF) just before the summer shutdown. In the MR, the cooling water temperature of the Machine building #2 had increased due to insufficient performance of the cooling system and it reached the upper limit of the RF cavity. Since the heat load in the cavity depends on the beam power, we reduced the MR output beam power to 600 kW on June 24th. Finally, when the cooling water temperature exceeded the limit value even in a no beam condition, we stopped the accelerator operation of MR on June 28th. Concerning the MLF, the amount of moisture inside the Helium vessel had increase. A water leak was suspected and user operation of MLF was suspended on June 24th. After these incidents, we started the summer maintenance work.
During the summer maintenance work, we found a scorched component at a terminal block of the chiller in the Linac building on July 5th. A JAEA staff called the fire department by phone, and the fire department judged this as a fire incident.
( https://j-parc.jp/c/en/information/2024/07/05001371.html )
The cause of the fire incident was investigated, and measures were taken to prevent recurrence based on the investigation before restart of the J-PARC operation.
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3. [Particle and Nuclear Physics Division]
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PROGRAM ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING (by NAKADAIRA Takeshi)
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The 38th Program Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting was held at the J-PARC research building on July 30 - August 1. The status of the experiments was reported, and prospects for the program from the autumn onwards were discussed. This time, a new proposal for an experiment with antiproton beams at the Hadron Experimental Facility has been submitted.
https://kds.kek.jp/event/51584/
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 2025.
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Successful completion of the first half of 2024 operation of the Neutrino Experimental Facility and progress with summer maintenance (by ISHIDA Taku)
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Beam operation continued until June 28th, reaching a maximum beam intensity of 800 kW, an integrated proton on the target (POT) of 5.2 x 10^20 in this RUN since the end of 2023, and a POT of 4.3 x 10^21 since the start of the experiment. The electromagnetic horn current had been increased from 250 kA to 320 kA, and the upgrade of the near-detector has been completed, integrating a new Super-FGD, a High-AngleTPC and Time-Of-Flight detectors. It is expected to open up a new dimension in the observation of neutrino interaction events immediately after their production. Summer maintenance is underway on the proton beam profile monitor located directly upstream of the target station: it is a Segmented Secondary Emission Monitor (SSEM) with a structure of 5µm pure titanium foil strips. The SSEM has been operated without signal degradation since the beginning of the experiment and is highly activated; it is being removed remotely from the monitor stack and carefully replaced in the hot cell. Following completion of the maintenance work, beam operation is scheduled to resume in mid-November.
In early October, the 13th International Workshop on Neutrino Beams and Instrumentation (NBI2024) will be held at J-PARC as a satellite of the J-PARC Symposium.
https://conference-indico.kek.jp/event/270/
A beamline subcommittee of the Programme Advisory Committee on Hyper-Kamiokande will then take place. Important discussions are expected with experts from all over the world towards the realisation of 1.3 MW operation.
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STATUS OF THE JSNS2 / JSNS2-II (SEARCH FOR STERILE NEUTRINOS AT J-PARC MLF, E56 / E82) (by MARUYAMA Takasumi)
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The JSNS2 (E56) / JSNS2-II (E82) collaboration searches for neutrino oscillation with a short distance by sterile neutrinos at J-PARC MLF.
For JSNS2, the fifth long physics run from November-2024 using a single near detector located on the third floor of MLF is being prepared. Meanwhile, one physics paper on the interaction between mono-energetic neutrinos and carbons in the liquid scintillator was published to arXiv (arXiv:2409.01383) and submitted to Physical Review Letters. This result complements similar measurements from neutrino oscillation searches, impacts the modeling of the quasi-elastic scattering. For JSNS2-II, the new far detector located outside of the MLF building is under the final construction phase. The detector was filled with 190 m3 of liquid scintillator t from July 24 to August 9 in 2024. Currently, the cabling between photo-sensors and electronics is being performed. JSNS2-II aims to start the data taking soon in conjunction with the near detector during the next physics run.
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SUMMER WORKSHOPS ON THE RESEARCH AT THE HADRON EXPERIMENTAL FACILITY (by TAKAHASHI Toshiyuki, NOMURA Tadashi, DOTE Akinobu)
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The following school and workshops for activities at the Hadron Experimental Facility were held:
- J-PARC Hadron 2024 (July 23-25, 2024, at Aya's Quantum Beam Research Center) https://kds.kek.jp/event/49981/
- The international workshop "J-PARC Hadron 2024" was held this July, and it focused on strangeness nuclear physics and hadron physics with strangeness. Many theorists and experimentalists from Asian region, US, and Europe had lively and constructive discussions on the further development of J-PARC.
- KAONS@J-PARC 2024 (July 27-29, 2024, at KEK Tokai)
https://conference-indico.kek.jp/event/273/
Kaon physics has been taking important roles in particle physics. At present, two kaon experiments dedicated to the rare decay studies, NA62 at CERN and KOTO at J-PARC, are in full swing, and will reach their goals in several years. This workshop provided an opportunity to discuss future roles of kaon physics from theoretical and experimental viewpoints and a possible world-wide collaboration toward a next-generation experiment at the J-PARC extended hadron experimental facility. There were about 50 onsite participants (more than 100 including remote), many from abroad.
- SNP CNS summer school 2024 (August 3 to 8, 2024, Hongo and Wako)
https://sites.google.com/nex.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/snpcnsss2024
This school was a joint school of the 13th international school for strangeness nuclear physics (SNP School) which has been supported by J-PARC and the 23rd CNS summer school which has been hosted by Center of Nuclear Study (CNS), University of Tokyo. A total 168 persons participated both face-to-face and online. 6 leading scientists gave lectures on topics of hadrons, nuclei, and quantum computing. 65 young researchers presented their research works orally and/or with posters. Among them, 11 good presenters were awarded. Participants also visited the RI beam factory at RIKEN.
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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(by MIHARA Satoshi).
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COMET facility construction is in progress. Construction of the capture solenoid magnet used to collect pions and transport them to the beam transport magnet was completed this summer. The magnet is to be delivered to J-PARC in early autumn2024.
The COMET group had a hybrid collaboration meeting in July at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. More than 50 members including 28 on-site participants joined the meeting to discuss the status of facility and detector construction, analysis tool development as well as simulation study, and schedule toward the start of physics data acquisition. At the Japanese Physics Society meeting held in Hokkaido University in September, 11 presentations related to COMET activities were given to report the progress and status mainly by graduate students. Active discussion took place there, inspiring the presenters with many new ideas.
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STATUS OF THE MUON g-2/ ELECTRIC DIPOLE MOMENT (EDM) (E34) (by MIBE Tsutomu)
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The E34 collaboration aims for precision measurements of the muon anomalous magnetic moment and its electric dipole moment. The extension of the surface muon beam line to H2 area is in progress. The 26th collaboration meeting was organized at J-PARC from June 26 to 28. The analysis of the acceleration of positive muon to 100 keV is advanced. The international school on muon dipole moments and hadronic effects was organized on September 2-6 at KMI, Nagoya university. The seventh muon g-2 theory initiative workshop was organized in a hybrid style on September 9-13 in KEK Tsukuba campus with about 180 participants.
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4. [Materials and Life Science Division]
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NEUTRON SOURCE ; ONGOING MAINTENANCE WORKS DURING THE LONG OUTAGE AND THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETING FOR TWO-YEAR OPERATION (by HARADA Masahide )
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The beam operation of MLF ended on June 24th due to some water detection trouble in the Helium Vessel and the maintenance works during the long outage started. On July 18th, the used mercury target vessel, which was in operation from 2018 to 2019, was transported from MLF to the storage building (the so-called RAM building), where a total of 7 used target vessels are now stored. Investigation of the water detection trouble is continuing.
On September 9th, specimens were cut out successfully from the fore front wall of the used target vessel which was operated for the long-term user program with the highest beam intensity recorded of 950 kW. The maximum damage depth on the specimens will be measured soon and the beam power for the next two-year operation of the target vessel will be decided. On September 24th, the used mercury target vessel will be replaced with a new one which has the improved structure of the mercury flow channel with the split bubbler generator similar to the previous target vessel used during 2023 and 2024. For the first time since the operation started, the mercury circulation pump will be replaced in November.
Finally, the international review committee for two-year operation of the neutron target of MLF was held online on August 30th. The next committee will be held in December when the results of damage examinations of the fore front wall of the target vessel will be presented.
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NEUTRON INSTRUMENT AND SCIENCE ; OVER 15 SWEDISH STUDENTS ENJOYED MLF ( by NAKAMURA Mitsutaka )
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The 2024A operation, scheduled until the end of June, has been terminated on June 24th (a week earlier than initially planned ) due to the issue with the neutron target. However, we continue to have the problem of raising electrical cost, that possibly menaces the operational schedule. MLF kept discussing the next operation schedule internally prior to announcement to the users. 113 general proposals out of the 367 submitted have been approved by the MLF Advisory Board on August 27th.
The Annual Meeting on Industrial Application for Neutron was held on the 21st and 22nd of July as a hybrid meeting for an effective use of a large facility by enterprises and industries. Many of the participants joined and enjoyed the discussions, 247 in-person and 135 online. MLF is always making an effort to communicate with these parties/organizations for promoting the mutual benefit of utilizing so-called quantum beam.
The secondment arrangement between European Spallation Source (ESS) and J-PARC has led to great personal exchanges. SwedNess is a graduate school for neutron scattering operated by six Swedish universities. Over 15 students from SwedNess joined lectures by MLF instrument scientists, round table discussions on each MLF instrument, as well as MLF tour from August 26th to 30th. Also, the Neutron Science Section plans to accept three of the researchers from ESS in the period from September to November.
Recent press releases from Neutron Science at MLF:
BL11 PLANET on Jun. 27th
"Hydrogen bond symmetrisation in D2O ice observed by neutron diffraction."
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48932-8
BL08 SuperHRPD on Aug. 8th
"Ferroelectricity Induced by a Combination of Crystallographic Chirality and Axial Vector"
https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c06283
BL09 SPICA on Sep. 6th
"Experimental Visualization of F-Ion Diffusion Pathways and Geometric Frustration-Induced Positional Disorder in CaF2-BaF2 Solid Electrolytes"
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsaem.4c01278
Group photo of the SwedNess members and MLF staff
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MUON SCIENCE FACILITY (MUSE) ; THE PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH RESULTS FROM MUON WAS HELD IN NASU,TOCHIGI ( by KAWAMURA Naritoshi )
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The proposals for the next beam cycle, 2024B, were reviewed by the Muon Science Proposal Review Committee (MSPRC). 50 proposals were reviewed, resulting in 25 being accepted, 23 reserved, and 2 not approved. The operational dates would be shorter than usual due to a problem with the neutron target, and only 25 proposals would be approved. However, another 12 proposals from the reserved list could also be scheduled because the neutron target team estimated that the problem could be fixed earlier. So far, 37 proposals will be conducted in the 2024B term.
The research results presentation meeting was held on 21-23/Jul in Nasu, Tochigi, attended by about 130. This is the first time the venue is neither at the Tsukuba nor Tokai KEK campuses. The users and staff were housed in a hotel to focus on the discussion, and a deep understanding of muon science could be achieved. In addition, this style helps to understand users and staff mutually. Subsequently, a workshop to discuss the future of muon science was held for 2 days in the same venue, for which presentations were given by young scientists mainly.
https://www2.kek.jp/imss/msl/result/User-report/User-report_24.html
The group photo of the result report meeting taken in front of the hotel.
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5. [Nuclear Transmutation Division] by MEIGO Shin-ichiro
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WORKSHOP ON THE J-PARC PROTON BEAM IRRADIATION FACILITY
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At the J-PARC Center, the Proton Beam Irradiation Facility is planned to be built to respond to a variety of needs requiring the high-intensity proton beam of the Linac accelerator. On July 17, a workshop on "J-PARC Proton Beam Irradiation Facility" was held as an in-person and online hybrid mode. There were 131 participants, with 42 in-person and 89 online. Based on their research, leading researchers presented expectations and needs for the facility in four major potential research fields as follows: 1) Material irradiation damage test for high-intensity accelerators, including Accelerator Driven Systems and fusion and fission reactors, 2) Semiconductor soft error testing with high-intense neutrons mimicking the circumstance on the earth, 3) RI production for medical applications such as Actinoide-225 for the targeted alpha therapy, 4) Proton beam irradiation for test of space devices. Also, the current facility design status was presented. Further needs for the facility to satisfy user community's participation and requirements were discussed in this workshop.
A Group photo of WORKSHOP ON J-PARC PROTON BEAM IRRADIATION FACILITY.
https://kds.kek.jp/event/50966/ (In Japanese)
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6. [Information]
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UPDATE! SUMMARY OF J-PARC HELLO SCIENCE
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Experience an hour of Hello Science, a science talk hosted by J-PARC, condensed into just three minutes!
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoJacoLqZ0cVX848gIYxcJyUbUSKihu3F&si=enDI-nea08r6DgxE
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7. [Editorial Note]
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Past issues are available from the link below.
http://j-parc.jp/c/en/topics/project-newsletter/index.html
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┃ Editorial Board:
┃ OGURI Hidetomo (Chair) : oguri.hidetomo[at]jaea.go.jp
┃ SHINTO Katsuhiro: shinto.katsuhiro[at]jaea.go.jp
┃ OZAWA Kyoichiro: ozawa[at]post.kek.jp
┃ AIZAWA Kyoko: akyouko[at]post.j-parc.jp
┃ TAKEI Hayanori: takei.hayanori[at]jaea.go.jp
┃ Jean-Michel POUTISSOU (English Editor) : jmp[at]triumf.ca
┃SEKI Eiko (Secretary) : seki.eiko[at]jaea.go.jp
┃ * Please replace "(at)" with "@" when you enter an email address.
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