Run 9 Even-Odd Stagger In The Scalers

In previous runs, distributions of ZDC / BBC ratios as a function of bunch crossing have shown an "even-odd" stagger; see Murad's or Tai's webpage for more: 

http://deltaq.lns.mit.edu/~sakuma/protected/star/scaler/2006/images/zdcbbc_1148145259.png

Compare this to a previous run:

http://online.star.bnl.gov/scaler2009/vert/run10139018_4_1242727637.sca.ZDCBBCexample.pdf

It seems some of the gross structure is no longer present, but it remained to be seen whether the new QT boards had removed this stagger.  To examine this, Carl has suggested forming the ZDC / BBC ratio (that is, ZDC (E && W) and BBC VT201/0 ), forming an average by integrating over even bunch crossings, and doing the same for odd (active) bunch crossings.  Then the difference is taken and plotted against fill.  Scatter about zero could be an indication that the stagger problem is gone.

Here is this plot from Day 120 to this morning (find raw data here: http://online.star.bnl.gov/scaler2009/vert/evenoddsummary.dat ):

The differences with board 4 deviate significantly from zero; however, this is before Hank performed some timing corrections, after which this deviation ceases.

Here is the plot with only board 6:

The two fills that are very different from the others are the two 84 x 84 fills from the last few days, 10764 and 10765.  For these, the odd averages (actually, the ZDC values) are very small, which drive up the even average giving a net positive difference.  The BXings that are zero during these fills are: 7, 15, 19, 59, 63, 71, 83, 91, 95, 103 and 107.  As we can see, fill 10773 (the rightmost point) is back down to about zero.  It's not exactly certain if there are other causes (hardware or software) for the large difference for the two 84 x 84 fills; there should probably be more investigation.

However, it seems this is a significant improvement over Runs 5 & 6.