Minutes of the Dec 5, 2008 Tevatron Dept Meeting http://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=2233 * Weekly Operations Summary (C-Y Tan): The Tevatron has delivered nearly 125 pb^-1 to CDF and D0 over the past 2 weeks. The new record for delivered luminosity in the official Monday-Monday reporting week is 63.6 pb^-1, and there was one floating 168-hour period in which we crossed 70 pb^-1. There have been 18 stores with initial luminosities between 267 and a new record 344 ub^-1/s. Only 1 store was lost unintentionally, although 3 others were terminated prematurely in a controlled fashion to address impending problems. The CDF IP was moved up ~1 mm during store 6590. The CDF/D0 luminosity ratio jumped up > 3% for store 6593 when we corrected coupling at CDF and they adjusted their luminosity counter acceptance; we are waiting for an opportunity to measure the low-beta lattice to try to disentangle the two effects. Loss spikes at D0 during the squeeze have been reduced by increasing the pbar jacking time at flattop by 15 secs and reducing the vertical chromaticity. An incorrect tune mult was used during tune-up for store 6609 - poorer beam lifetime on the helix @ 150 GeV was the result. The E48 pbar injection kicker is showing jitter on the negative pulse; it could be that the (original) spark gap is finally showing its age, but more investigation is desired before replacing the spark gap/pulser/thyratron assembly. * Recent TEL-2 Beam Studies (Seva Kamerdzhiev): Seva and Alex have used TEL-2 on proton bunches at the beginning and/or end of several stores. There is only ~0.001 free tune space for protons. We could probably lower the vertical tune a bit and then use TEL-2 to boost up the tune of end bunches of each train to improve proton lifetime a little overall. Beam-beam compensation may be helpful for luminosities > 350 ub^-1/s; the Gaussian gun can be reinstalled into TEL-2 if needed. * Plan for Next Week (All): - Deliver luminosity. - Low-beta lattice measurments (Alex, Yuri, Eliana - proton-only) - Abort gap cleaning with bumper (Bruce, Jim, Elmie - proton-only) - TEL-2 studies (Seva - beginning and end of HEP) - Crystal Collimator (Dean et al., end of stores) - Chromaticity Tracker (Tan, proton-only)