The CERN injectors, up to the PS, started operations mid-June. The long-running ISOLDE radioactive ion-beam facility on the PS Booster resumed operations by the end of July. Several experiments that use protons from the PS are already taking data, like nTOF, and R&D activities, including AIDA, which is a test bed for new particle-detector technologies. Meanwhile, two new irradiation facilities IRRAD and CHARM  are nearing completion and should be ready in September.  In addition, protons from the PS are being dumped into a metal target to create high-energy antiprotons, which are then slowed by the Antiproton Decelerator (AD). The AD is now in the process of being commissioned and should be fully operational by 26^th August, supplying antiprotons to five experiments. Finally, BASE, a new experiment, aims to measure the magnetic moment of the antiproton is scheduled to start collecting data in early September.

The PS/SPS physics coordinator, Henric Wilkens, has been working at ATLAS, mainly in electromagnetic and hadronic calorimetry, since he joined CERN in 2003. He became PS/SPS physics coordinator in April 2013; a quiet start since most of the work was put in the consolidation of the injectors. Since he has been coordinating the test-beam activities in the ATLAS community over the last years, it was a smooth transition for him. His role is to optimize the running of the fixed target physics programme in coordination with the other departments involved in the operation of the acceleration complex and experimental facilities, as well as with the management of the various experiments and the scientific committees.

“We restarted the physics at the PS in the East Area on 16^th July.” Henric says. “There was a high demand for the two beam lines, T9 and T10, as expected after the long shutdown. So far, we had a very smooth start up and the main users foreseen in the programme collaborated and allowed other users to set up and test their detector prototypes,” he continues. Thanks to the coordination between the various teams, there have been already ten users in T9 and five of them are still collecting data concurrently. In the T10 line, ALICE is also running various setups, as well as group working on RPCs for CMS. Then  nTOF restarted on July 25th, which was the date of the first beam for the EAR2 facility. 

The next big step is the restart of the SPS machine and the commissioning of experimental beam lines to the North Area, i.e. the beams for the COMPASS and NA62 experiment, and the testbeam lines H2, H4, H6 & H8. Since the restart of physics has been anticipated by one week and there was a lot of pressure to the Beams and Engineering Departments to complete the LS1 consolidation work and make beams available. 

We will also have argon ions in the SPS machine starting in March 2015 for the NA61 experiment. The argon beam will also be made available in two of the test-beam lines, for detector R&D. The groups interested in the detectors tests with ions, work on heavy-ion experiments or on satellite experiments studying the cosmic ray composition. In addition, there is interest from groups working on the collimation of ions with crystals.  The work on the commission in the Ar beam in the injectors already started and Linac 3 and LEIR already have beam.

In 2015, the plan is to restart the SPS for proton fixed target in May or June 2015. Moreover, from early 2015, the beam will be back at the LHC, and in spring 2015 the physics programme will restart at the LHC's four main experiments.

Finally, this year, part of the beam will be used for the Beam line for schools, a school contest at CERN’s 60^th anniversary. We received 297 proposals from teams of high school students, which were evaluated by scientists at CERN and went through a three stages selection process, ending with the SPSC approval. There were many interesting proposals, ranging from fundamental science to detector developments and material science. Since they were so many, we decided to select 2 winning teams, as discussed here.  “For us it has been a very busy summer and thanks to the hard work of my colleagues and the tight planning the fixed target physics is resuming at CERN after over a year of shutdown“. There are exciting times ahead as we prepare for new R&D and physics results.

Read more about the ATLAS tests of the micromegas detectors on T9 and find out about the ALICE tests on T10.