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So, as my last entry notes, yesterday I flew to Oxford. Eight weeks from today, I have tickets to fly back to Chicago (though I will try to change them to a day or two earlier, to have another weekend to spend on my holiday vacation). So, with my mental and psychic batteries recharged from my October vacation, I now have fifty-six days in which to accomplish two very concrete and substantial goals:
#1) Cool the K-400 cryostat down to base temperature (5 mK).
#2) Produce something that we can put into the cryostat.
The first goal, as long-time readers of the journal know, has been sparring with me for quite some time. However, we have ruled out obvious problems and are now calling in the professionals from Oxford Instruments. I plan to begin another cool-down this week, which will not achieve base temperature... but should give us data that will be useful to the technicians. With a little luck, I shall emerge triumphant over this meddling dilution refrigerator soon!
The second goal is actually much more interesting than the first... but I can only talk cryptically about it here. I consider all information put out over LiveJournal to be in the public domain, and this work is most definitely not. Over more private lines of communication (e.g., e-mail, phone calls, or in person), I will be happy to chat about that particular work. It is by no means considered to be classified or confidential. Just not yet ready to go out to the whole wide world...
On a different work-related note, the technical paper that I wrote on the Central Laser Facility at the Pierre Auger Observatory was just accepted for publication by the Journal of Instrumentation. Go me -- rock on! (Plus, this was my final major obligation to my previous job... and it is nice to have successfully discharged it)
#1) Cool the K-400 cryostat down to base temperature (5 mK).
#2) Produce something that we can put into the cryostat.
The first goal, as long-time readers of the journal know, has been sparring with me for quite some time. However, we have ruled out obvious problems and are now calling in the professionals from Oxford Instruments. I plan to begin another cool-down this week, which will not achieve base temperature... but should give us data that will be useful to the technicians. With a little luck, I shall emerge triumphant over this meddling dilution refrigerator soon!
The second goal is actually much more interesting than the first... but I can only talk cryptically about it here. I consider all information put out over LiveJournal to be in the public domain, and this work is most definitely not. Over more private lines of communication (e.g., e-mail, phone calls, or in person), I will be happy to chat about that particular work. It is by no means considered to be classified or confidential. Just not yet ready to go out to the whole wide world...
On a different work-related note, the technical paper that I wrote on the Central Laser Facility at the Pierre Auger Observatory was just accepted for publication by the Journal of Instrumentation. Go me -- rock on! (Plus, this was my final major obligation to my previous job... and it is nice to have successfully discharged it)
Tags:
- auger,
- clf,
- cryogenics,
- cryptic,
- oxford