There is evidence from both beam lifetime/emittance growth [with both protons and pbars] and from the vacuum readout that the vacuum is significantly worse in the Recycler Ring than before the shutdown. The worst area is the region near the newly installed Flying Wire vacuum cans. We will remove them. Additional problems are indicated by about 10 isolated new ion pumps which show high readings. Most have been confirmed to not be simply leakage. The bakeout of these pumps occured in batches of 10. There is speculation that 10 pumps were not baked with the best technique and they are the ones which read high. That is speculation at this time. The RGA picture from 600 region near the Flying Wire can location shows several undesirable gases to be present. The RGA readout in the MI30 region of the Recycler is now OK.
The ongoing changes to the Accumulator ARF4 system hardware demands ongoing software work in the RR LLRF. The RR ToDo list includes acquiring RGA readings from 6-8 RR locations, alignment checks on the magnets (and beam pipe) where the recent heater-tape removal work was done (although as-found measurements have been examined and no problems are apparent). Ming-Jen Yang has data for RR horizontal beta measurements which he will be analyzing. The transfers from Accumulator to Recycler have better efficiency if we only transfer 5 eV-sec since we have about 3.5 kV of 2.5 MHz RF in the MI (not an ideal match to the 2 kV in the RR. Bill Foster reminded us that many of these problems go away if we use the scheme which employs 1/2 of the Main Injector as a transfer line so that we do not require the RF in the Main Injector. Shekhar Mishra observes that we are creating DC beam in the RR and may loose about 10-15% of the beam since some of this beam is kicked out on subsequent injections. John Marriner reported that they are ready to do the RF Manipulations with less squeezing as is permitted since we do not preserve a 'hot beam' region for Recycled pbars from the Tevatron. He also noted that LLRF State 4 is 'overloaded' by being used for both RR transfer work and some acceleration studies. This will require extra care by all studiers until it is sorted out. The new plan for the MI dampers will replace the 'Green Bomb' with RR-style cavities for damping and other broadband RF needs.