Dear colleagues,

Since the approval of the CLEAR facility by the end of 2016 there has been a lot of activity to prepare for running in 2017.
We wanted to bring you up to date on some of main developments.

Proposed Organisation

• We propose an organisation at CERN similar to the one in the HiRadMat facility.
• The main elements are: a local facility responsible with a local operation team consisting of CERN staff/fellows complemented by external researchers staying at CERN to operate the facility - in some cases with subsistence support from CERN, a Scientific Board and a Technical Board.
• We will set up “External” Scientific Board (meet 2-4 times a year to review programme/proposals and progress).
  We aim to converge on names by Easter.
• A Technical board also meeting at the same frequency, setup to review the technical, safety and radio-protection issues on the recommended experiments by the Scientific Board. The Technical Board gives the final authorisation for the installation of the experiment, needed to get the beam permit within the agreed conditions.
• The researchers coming to CERN to carry out experiments/projects in CLEAR will need to register as users and we are discussing how to do this best. In practice many are already users but for some CLEAR will be their only and first connection to CERN.

Hardware preparation (see figure for details)

• RF: The Modulator/Klystron MKS30 is being transferred to AWAKE. The RF network of two Modulator/Klystrons (MKS11 and MKS15), will be reconfigured to feed the CLEAR linac. The network modifications have been defined and preparatory work has started. Two other Modulator/Klystrons (MKS31 and MKS21) are available for medical structure tests in the former CTF2 hall (RF network in place), and to feed the transverse RF deflector for bunch length measurements (RF network to be modified).
• Control, timing: Work is progressing to adapt old equipment for long term maintenance. No show stoppers so far.
• Beam Line: The main modification are identified (clear up part of drive beam line including dump, take out 2nd CLIC structure and install 3 CLIC BPMs in the module instead, lengthen and re-arrange the beam line from module to the new smaller dump to allow space for new experiments). The details are being working out now and the clearance work in CLEX is well advanced.

Experimental preparations for 2017

• Several experiments (CLIC structure wake-field measurements and wake-field monitors, CLIC BPMs, VESPER irradiation tests (ESA electronic components and medical applications), Cherenkov diffraction radiation studies…) are a continuation of last year activity, are well defined and require only minor hardware modifications.
• The first new experiment, a plasma lens experiment from the University of Oslo, DESY and Oxford, is in preparation and is on schedule for installation in summer.
• Other planned experiments (e.g., Impedance measurements of wire scanners, THz radiation emission, Electro-Optical BPMs) are being reviewed for detailed scheduling.

Personnel

• The planned personnel as presented in the proposal has been updated after consultations with the CERN groups and sections involved. This has been a rather lengthy process but the personnel estimates presented in the proposal have been confirmed with small changes. Additional non-staff contributions have been identified and we will request one or possibly two fellows for CLEAR in the coming intake.

Schedule

• A first CLEAR technical coordination meeting has been held on February 22nd with all services present (apart from vacuum). Availability of personnel, especially towards the end of the technical stop in April, was confirmed by all services present and the proposed schedule (beam start-up in May) has been confirmed for the moment.
  We aim to hold a first meeting of the Scientific Board in May.

WEB resources

• A new WEB page is under preparation: https://clear.web.cern.ch
• Proposals for experiments should use this form.
• We have a created a CLEAR-general mailing list (used to distribute this newsletter) including all names involved in the workshop in 2016.