An analysis of the orbit period

Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 12:04:41
From: Darin Acosta

Dear colleagues,

We have performed an analysis of the orbit period during last week's structured beam test using the CSC Track-Finder at the H2 beam line. We had installed special firmware developed by our engineer Lev Uvarov in the Track-Finder to log any occurence of an orbit period that did not equal 924 BX. The bottom line is that when we use the "WE" signal for the start of our experiment and analysis (the signal that comes after the RF re-synch according to information provided to beam test users), we observe NO cases of an anomalous orbit length. It is always 924 BX until the end of spill signal.

Last June at X5A we did observe anomalous orbit lengths; however, it is now suspected that we inadvertantly used the "WWE" signal to start the experiment each spill, and this signal comes before the RF re-synch. To see if we again observe anomalous orbit lengths using this start signal, we repeated our measurements at H2 starting from the WWE signal. Indeed we do find occurences of orbits not equal to 924 BX.

Attached is Fig. 1 with 2 plots on the orbit analysis when triggered from WWE. The top plot shows the orbit # since the WWE signal when a case of orbit length = 925 BX occurs. You can see several spills. The bottom plot re-plots this data in terms of a normalized orbit frequency (relative to the correct one) vs. time in sec from the WWE signal. You can see that after approximately 700 ms since the WWE signal, no anomalous orbits are observed.

Finally, the last two plots show the BX structure for the triggers identified by the CSC Track-Finder (the first plot is on a linear scale, Fig. 2a , the second, Fig. 2b is on log). You see a nice 48 BX wide region, with some tails earlier and later. You also see a very tiny fraction of random triggers consistent with the measured cosmic rate of our trigger. The integrated time was 80 spills for these BX plots.