Doubler Developments
Fermilab takes possession of the Collider Detector Pit! Rich Orr (left), John Peoples, and Tim Toohig (center) raise the flag in front of the giant sliding door that is an essential feature of the Pit
The recommissioning of the Main Ring and start-up of the Energy Saver/Doubler are proceeding exactly on schedule. On Saturday, April 16, 1983, Sectors E and F of the Saver (1/3 of the ring) were powered to 2200 amps, equivalent to 500 GeV. On the following day, beam in the Main Ring was accelerated to 150 GeV, the energy necessary for injection into the Saver.
On Friday, April 22, beam was injected from the Main Ring into the Energy Saver at the E0 straight section. After 19 hours of tuning, a low-intensity beam in the Saver was transported 1/3 of the way around the ring to a beam dump in A0. Although fine-tuning will continue in both rings every weekend, the next major milestone will be completion of the Saver installation so that complete revolutions with beam can be attempted.
The new beam position monitoring (BPM) and beam loss monitoring (BLM) systems were tested with beam for the first time and performed beautifully. Dramatic computer-generated color displays showed the location of the beam in the Energy Saver vacuum pipe to a precision of 1 mm over the 2 km distance. The digital information from the BLM's was used to automatically adjust the correction dipoles to smooth the orbit.