1. Replies to referees

2. Beam and rates:
Q: How long the spill, how much uniform, which intensity?
A: The spill was 4.8 s long, repeated twice during the supercycle. 50 Hz + harmonics were observed. SPS Specialists somewhat reduced these structures, incremental work will be required.
Q: Any radiation effects during the first run?
A: We have learned a lot during the run. Although things were generally in line with expectations, we experience one night with higher radiation than expected, probably due to some unexpected quadrupole setting. In the next slides you see the radiation level as a function of time and some details provided by Lau Gatignon

3. The high radiation night i.e. 7-8 December
Lau

4. RADIATION MONITOR NEAR LAV 6

5. RATES IN EXPERIMENTAL SCALERS
All rates drop except CHOD’OR (almost x2) and CHANTI (almost constant)

6. RATE IN IONISATION CHAMBER (BEAM RATE)
~8X DOWN

7. MAGNET CURRENTS IN K12
Perfectly stable

8. FINAL REMARKS (LAU GATIGNON)
The radiation levels went up x100, but the beam rate went down a lot.
This situation lasted for 10 hours without being addressed by the shift crew
The K12 magnets were all ok, but no monitoring data are available for the P42 magnets. My hypothesis is that a quadrupole or trim in P42 tripped.
The SPS was not in great shape but also not particularly unstable (the symmetry was bad, but stable around 40%, the intensity stable and normal).
In the future we should make sure that the shift crew will be in a position to check the beam line regularly and to intercept such situations.
This requires adequate training at the beginning of the 2015 run.
This year we were still in beam commissioning mode and not enough training was provided yet. Nevertheless in such bad obviously beam related conditions one should try to contact me.

9. Beam and Rates (continued):
Q: Were there problems in raising the number of pot? Which is the maximum number of pot/spill in 2014 you have reached?
A: We were limited by TDAQ rates so we did not insist on reaching nominal intensity. Nonetheless duruing a short beam test we reached 40% of the nominal number of protons per pulse. The transmission of protons from the T4 to T10 targets were eventually understood. The quality of the K12 beam line is such that a good secondary beam is derived even when the primary proton beam is not optimized.
Q: Any problem with the beam composition?
A: The beam composition is as expected, on Slide 16 of the presentation you can see the pi/K ratio as measured from the RICH (these are particles from the beam halo). The pi/K ratio is as expected.

10. VACUUM TANK
Q: I see you have reached the impressive value of 3x10-6 mbar of vacuum.Any leak? Any impact on the detectors attached to the vacuum tank? What is the status of the vacuum after the stop (== now) ?
A: Quite remarkable result indeed, I will let Ferdinand to comment.

11. TDAQ
Q: which trigger configurations were used during the run? A: The trigger configurations are shown on Page 19 of the presentations. All triggers for physics data taking were based on fast NIM logic signals distributed to the Torino Trigger Supervisor. It is worth to notice that the PNN trigger rate based just on these signals extrapolates to 600 kHz at nominal intensity, thus fulfilling the L0 input rate specification. Q: how about the TELL62, are all installed? Are they working properly? A: All were installed with one big exception: we still need 30 TEL62 for the L0 LKR, which was therefore only partially tested. Q: how about the generation of L0TP Trigger Primitives from the fully FPGA scheme of the Torino group? have these been tested? A: Extensive tests were performed, several bugs identified. Digital primitives were tested with both the Torino and Ferrara. Some data with the digital primitives were collected at the end of the run (no analysis yet) . Interplay of read out capability and the generation of trigger primitives within the TEL62 was extensively studied. A lot of primitives were recorded for offline study and monitoring. Q: How about teldes and intertel? Are they installed and tested? A: All the teldes are produced and tested. A subset (~1/6 of the total) was actually cabled to the CREAM output and used to test the L0 LKr

12. GTK
Q: Three stations were installed and partially read-out: can you give more details?
A: For each of the three stations a full chip (out of 10) was readout.
Q: How thick are these three stations? How long did they operate on the beam?
A: For two stations the TDCpix chip was 450 micron thick. For the station placed in between (GTK2) the thickness of TDCpix was 250 micron
Q: Is the cooling system working properly? At which temperature were they operated?
A: Yes, I leave to Ferdinand to give the details.
Q: Which is the rate these stations had to substain in this run?
A: The beam rate was typically 1/15 of nominal, the stations were read out in “zero bias “ mode
Q: Why were they read-out only partially? Which fraction of channels were read-out?
A: Typically we read one one chip per station. The bump bonding seems very good (very few pixels missing per chip). There were basically two reasons preventing us from reading out more chips:1. the quality of the carrier PCB whose thickness was out of specification (too thick) and complicated the wire bonding process and its yield;2) these difficulties lead to very little time for characterizing the assemblies in the laboratory. If a chip is not characterized there is no point reading it in the beam.
Q: Which are the steps towards the new run as far as the GTK stations are concerned?
A: There are many….we can provide the detailed WBP

13. STRAWS:
Q: Is the mass resolution in agreement with what expected (see plot of the missing mass in K+ -> pi+ pi0 events)?
A: The mass resolution is completely dominated by the fact that no GTK is used to make the plot. The drift time comparison time between Monte Carlo and Data shown on page 11 is very good so we expect the position resolution to be as expected.
Q: How about the SRB: are all installed? are they working properly? Any issue?
A: By the end of the run they were all installed and tested as shown on Page 11. They were read out in “zero bias” mode, requiring offline merging of the STRAW data with the other detectors. The trigger matching firmware was not tested.

14. LKR Q: Are the CREAM modules working properly? Any issue there?
A: It has been a remarkable success (see page 8 and 9). A lot of testing with the PC farm was performed. We achieved 20 kHz read out (20% of nominal).
Q: Did you test the L0 trigger primitives for the LKr?
A: Yes but only partially (1/6 of the system): a “preview” of the data can be provided in case of interest.

15. MUV:
Q: Nothing about MUV2 and MUV3 in Augusto's slides. Are they working as expected? Did you test the L0 primitives for these two detectors?
A: All OK, the MUV2 provided the trigger in analogue form, in the future it will be fully integrated in the LKR scheme (its R/O is based on CREAM modules).
Q:How about MUV1 construction? Is it proceeding? Which is the schedule for installation?
A: Ferdinand can comment 

16. MUV1: Construction First layer (Apr 2014) Last layer (Sep 2014)
Some delays because of very late scintillator delivery.
MUV1 detector now just being closed and finished.
Transport to CERN foreseen for early 2015.

17. MUV2 Cluster Energy CREAM readout
MUV2 already running in technical run 2012.
For 2014 new read-out implemented: CREAM boards as for LKr, with prior signal shaping ➜ Working perfectly.
Cluster Energy

18. MUV3 MUV3 already running in technical run 2012.
Now: all scintillator tiles equipped with PMTs.
Still old NA48-AKL CFD read- out ➜ Will be renewed for run.

19. LAV, CHANTI, SAC, IRC, CHOD
Q:They are all installed and (presumably) working but no plot or number has been shown in the slides about them. Some more details would be welcome (efficiency, time resolution, inclusion or not in the trigger, behaviour of the electronics, etc. etc.). A: A few slides are added.

20. CHANTI
The purpose of the CHANTI is to identify inelastic interactions occurring in the GTK3
Six stations made by triangular scintillating bars read out via WLS fiber and SiPM
300 channels
Installed and aligned to +/- 0.1 mm
Typical rates O( kHz)/ch
Very preliminary single hit time resolution (no single channel offset correction, no geometrical correction) = 1.4 ns
Muon halo in CHANTI

21. LARGE ANGLE VETOES (LAV)
All Installed and commissioned
In the picture A12 before leaving LNF
All 12 stations installed and commissioned
Frascati, Naples, Pisa, Rome I

22. LAV Time resolution studies
TLAV-TCEDAR (ns)
Channel
Second peak induced by different cable length. Disappears after T0 correction
TLAV-TCEDAR (ns)
Already achieved ~1ns time resolution per single block and a perfect time alignment with respect to the KTAG
TLAV-TCEDAR (ns)

23. Small Angle Vetos IRC IRC constructed at LNF SAC upgraded and tested
at LNF BTF
2014 run:
LAV FEE + TDC/TEL62 based readout
RAW data, no calibration or correction!