The 2010 test of secondary light ion beams

This document presents results of the 14-day long test of secondary light ion beams performed in the H2 beam line of the CERN SPS in November/December 2010. The test opened a new fixed target ion program at CERN. The previous one ended in 2002/2003 by runs of NA49 and NA60 with Pb and In beams, respectively. During the test a fragment separator scheme was successfully used to produce secondary light ion beams, so far with highest momentum per nucleon of 80 GeV/c. For the first time a primary Pb beam of momentum as low as 13.9 GeV/c per nucleon was accelerated in the SPS and extracted onto the T2 target in the North Area. The test results indicate that the properties of the secondary beam are sufficient to reach the basic physics goals of NA61. Furthermore, the test allowed to identify improvements of the primary beam and fragment separator parameters as well as of the H2 beam line and NA61 instrumentation which are necessary to reach the required performance. The expected physics performance of NA61 with 7Be and 11C beams is compared, and it is concluded that the beryllium beam may be preferred for the 2011 physics run.