The burning question

30 November 2009

As Claudia Marcelloni tried to stage a group photo for the SCT and Pixel group, the first splash event appeared on the screen in front of them. Jostled by excited physicists, Claudia managed to keep her feet long enough to snap this now-famous shot.



Hanging around the Open EB meeting last week, e-News cornered a few of the many people who were at the centre of the ATLAS action during the first beams, splashes, and collisions, and asked them: What is the most striking thing that you’ll remember about the past week?

Jahred Adelman – TRT DQ
The past week was full of non-stop ‘Wow’" moments for the TRT. It was thrilling to see the entire detector completely lit up during beam splash events. Our software experts quickly used the events to fine-tune our timing. We've spotted some fun, interesting things in our monitoring, and used our detector to lend strong evidence for collisions. Most importantly, the collisions have injected some excitement into our group and the entire experiment - we know the real fun is just beginning!


Iwona Bold – trigger
Last Friday was very exciting when finally beams arrived and our experiment was proven to be fully functional, registering all splash events. From Friday onwards things have started progressing very quickly. The biggest surprise to me is how fast the machine schedule has evolved. On Friday we got first beams and basically three days later, on Monday, we were told that this might be a day of two simultaneous beams in the machine and therefore potential collisions. It was really unbelievable.


Sebatian Böser – event display
As expected, with the event displays being the first visual check in the control room for both the splash and the collision events, the past days have been anything but relaxed. It is a big relief to see that things mostly worked out fine, and a pleasure to see how many people are using our tools now to investigate the first events.


Anadi Canepa – DQ
Even if it was my second experience after the Tevatron Run II start-up, it was truly exciting to be in the ATLAS Control Room when the first collision was projected on the screen! It was a great satisfaction to see that our monitoring system worked promptly with the first LHC collisions.


Jim Degenhardt – shift leader, first collisions

I was at the Sunday night run meeting when I realised that I’d better make sure I dress well because my mother may see me. I could barely sleep that night I was so excited. On my shift, I went into "lock down" mode, trying to keep the safety of the detector and integrity of the data as my top priorities, which was a tough task when the collisions actually came. I just hope that no-one thought I was too rude since I kept bumping into them as I was running from desk to desk! In the midst of the excitement and the packed room I found myself always looking for Christophe Clement who unfortunately is as short as I am and blends in very well into a crowd, I felt like putting a Lo-Jack on him.


Daniel Dobos – luminosity monitors
[The plan was] thirteen days from beam to collisions. And then we did it in two and half. A big thanks to our LHC colleagues for the most intense and exciting weekend of this year. Seeing the first events displays popping up in the control Room was just incredible. And now we have big expectations…


Jose E. Garcia – SCT
I was impressed by the atmosphere at Point1 during the weekend. Everybody was around and, more importantly, working! Feedback was being provided immediately and things moved really fast.


Jessica Lévêque – LAr
On the [now famous] official picture [above – people reacting to the first splash event] you can see that everyone is happy, except the people looking at the monitoring; the people at the front desk, and me in the back. This is because for the first three splashes, the trigger signal was not in time, and so we saw empty plots! We got our joy explosion roughly five minutes after everyone else.


Peter Onyisi – DQ
I was amazed at how fast things progressed from the first beam reaching ATLAS on Friday to collisions on Monday – it was not a leisurely weekend! The data acquisition and event display experts performed impressive software feats to provide timely feedback in the control room.


Adam Roe – Pixel
I was struck by the shared feeling of excitement throughout the experiment and CERN. From staying up late for beam splashes to discussing analysis of the first data, we are all thrilled.


Wainer Vandelli – TDAQ
It should come as no surprise that running a Ferrari at snail-low speed can lead to peculiar effects, including the puzzled glances of pedestrians. We had to re-learn this lesson on Friday, when weird DAQ behaviours appeared just before the first splash events. Increasing stress and confusion in the Control Room and TDAQ SCR were finally smoothed out by the successful restart of the LHC. Next time, we had better take the bike...


Mimmo Del Volpe – muons
Just one word: Excitement. You feel like an athlete at the Olympic games. You prepare things for months carefully, tirelessly and then everything happens in a short time. If something goes wrong at the very last moment, you risk going out of a run and screwing up the work of months, years. We’re used to working under pressure and reacting quickly but the adrenaline goes up and up again waiting for beam... Then finally everything happens, the tension goes away and what remains is only joy and satisfaction for the success. But one moment after you are once again eager for more… waiting for more collisions!

 

 

 

Ceri Perkins

ATLAS e-News