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Hall A CC Meeting Minutes - March 17 2000
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Present: Kees de Jager, Ron Ransome, Ed Brash
By Conference Phone: Christian Cavata, Franco Garibaldi
1. Status Report - Kees de Jager
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The decision was made March 16th to delay the installation of the
septum magnets until July/August, 2001. The reason was based on
delays that have been experienced by the company manufacturing the
magnets. Paul Brindza, who is the JLab contact person for the
magnets, felt that it was unlikely that the company would be able to
deliver the magnets in time for the originally scheduled
February/March, 2001 installation.
Thus, the schedule for 2001 has been adjusted as follows:
Jan 2001 - mid Feb - Run Gao/Holt gamma + n --> pi- p
mid Feb - March 5 - Run Markowitz/Baker/Garibaldi Kaon production
March 5 - April 5 - Install polarized 3He target
April 5 - mid May - Run Meziani high X proposal
mid May - end June - Run Everett/Korsch g2 higher twist proposal
July - August - install septum magnets
Fall 2001 - Run Hypernuclear experiments and Forward angle GDH
Notes:
1. There is a possibility that during the M/B/G Kaon production time that
the RICH detector could be installed. The time for this would come out
of the time scheduled for this experiment. Also, the kinematics during
this period are limited due to the strict requirements of Gen in Hall C.
2. The March 5 - April 5 period is set to coincide with the end of Gen in
Hall C, and thus is essentially a hard limit.
3. For 2002, two scenarios were offered:
(i) leave the septa installed, and run Happex II and Pb-parity
immediately.
(ii) remove the septa, installed the real photon calorimeter, and
run RCS and perhaps some other experiments, and then reinstall
the septa in summer 2002 to run Happex II and Pb-parity.
Kees noted that G0 in Hall C might be expected to run in Summer 2002, and
there may be concerns with accelerator being able to provide to two parity
experiments running simultaneously. This may be a factor which weighs
heavily in the decision on how to proceed in 2002 in Hall A.
The final design review for the septum magnets is expected during the
summer of 2000, and will only proceed once certain milestones are met,
specifically the manufacturing of the first magnet, and its fitting in
the yoke.
The present experiment is running smoothly, and there is a good
probability that they will finish the program of measurements by the
end of the scheduled beam time.
For summer 2000, there are three important things scheduled for the
shutdown in Hall A:
(i) swapping of detector stacks necessary for Gep-II
(ii) replacing an upstream girder which will be necessary for
septum magnets.
(iii) install a new heat exchanger in order to be able to run
the He target with high current.
2. Jeopardy Proposals
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The CC discussed the possibility of allowing jeopardy experiments to
submit essentially their original proposals with a short update for
collaboration approval, if the spokespeople wished to do this. The CC
unanimously agreed that this would not be acceptable, and strongly
recommends that all of the proposals which will be reviewed for the
upcoming PAC should be in their essentially final form at the time of
submission.
The CC agreed that due to the large expected number of proposals, and
hence the large number of reviewers that would be necessary, that
individual members of the collaboration may simply be "assigned"
proposals to review, rather than trying to solicit volunteers.
Kees informed the CC that at current count, including conditionally
approved experiments, that there may be as many as 16 proposals which
fall under jeopardy. Presumably, these would be spread evenly across
the next two PACs, meaning that as many as 8 jeopardy proposals could
be assigned to the summer 2000 PAC. The current estimate is that each
of the next two PACS will have approximately 120 days of beamtime to
assign. Kees reminds that if not all of this time is allotted at the
summer 2000 PAC, it will NOT be carried over to the winter 2001 PAC.
3. Next Collaboration Meeting
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The dates are set for May 18-20, with the possibility of extending to
the 21st if necessary. The CC felt that having scheduled meetings in
the evenings was not a good idea since it made for too long a day.
The upcoming meeting will focus largely on proposal reviews, the 12
GeV upgrade, and the working group meetings.
The CC discussed the perhaps unsuccessful attempt that was made at the
last collaboration meeting to focus on problems and future
developments, rather than past accomplishments in the presentations.
For the upcoming meeting, the session coordinators will be strongly
encouraged to allow for significantly more time for discussion
periods, as opposed to presentations. The CC would like to see the
meeting be more of a workshop on new ideas, that than a conference
presenting accomplishments.
For the 12 GeV upgrade portion of the workshop, as a suggested avenue
to pursue, Kees gave some details on a new spectrometer design, being
worked on currently by J.P. Chen, John Lerose, and Paul Brindza. This
spectrometer, known as the Medium Acceptance Device, or MAD, would be
a device capable of +/-15% deltap/p, with 30msr acceptance, 25 degree
bend angle, and capable of 6 GeV/c.
Given that the deadline of submission of new proposals for Hall A
review is April 22nd, about 4 weeks before the meeting, the decision
was made to wait until after the submission deadline to publish a firm
schedule for the meeting. That is, we will wait until we see exactly
how many proposals we are getting before fixing the schedule.
The CC notes that the annual Users' Group Meeting is set for June
21-23, 2000. We need to discuss and finalize what will be presented
from Hall A at this meeting during the collaboration meeting.
4. CC Elections
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The CC will hold elections as soon as possible for the two members
that will be replaced. The usual e-mail voting procedure will be
followed.
An open discussion on the expected participation of CC members was
held. In the end, it was felt that an elected CC member should
certainly be expected to attend both collaboration meetings, and the
associated CC meetings, each year. In addition, the member should be
expected to attend at least one of the other two CC meetings annually.
In soliciting nominations, the CC will attempt to make this policy
clear to the collaboration.
5. Technical Publications
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At the last CC meeting, it was encouraged that the collaboration
should endeavour to publish technical (NIM) articles on the Hall A
instrumentation. In a recent JLab Hall A staff meeting, it was agreed
that the staff would begin work on a general paper on the Hall A
instrumentation. The goal is to have an outline submitted by each
staff member by April 1, a draft paper by July 1, and to submit the
paper for publication by October 1. Kees notes that the author list
for this paper will be very open, including technicians and any others
who have made significant contributions to the Hall A instrumentation.
In addition, there will also be technical papers on individual
instrumentation systems (Compton, Moller, FPP, VDC, etc.). The CC
feels that these papers need not contain the entire collaboration as
authors, but rather should only list those who made a significant
contribution to those specific systems. Also, the CC feels that
commissioning data could and should certainly be included and that the
authors should acknowledge the collaboration in obtaining the data
used for commissioning.
6. Other Business
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J.P. Chen has requested the 97-110 (small angle GDH) be accepted as a
Hall A collaboration experiment. This was unanimously endorsed by the
CC.
The Glasgow group (G. Rosner + 5 other researchers) has requested
membership in the Hall A collaboration. Because of a funding proposal
by this group, in which they wish to mention the Hall A program and
their membership explicitly, the CC recommends that an e-mail vote be
carried out as soon as possible, rather than waiting for the next
collaboration meeting. Ransome will organize this in the next few
days.
Kevin Fissum has resigned as chair of the Many-Body Working Group.
Kees notes that there is already a correlations working group, and the
issue of whether to continue a separate many-body working group should
be decided at the next collaboration meeting.
The CC discussed briefly the notion of requiring certain numbers of
shifts per year from either individuals in the collaboration, or from
institutions in the collaboration, as is the practice in Hall B, for
example. At this time, it was felt that while some longer experiments
have difficulty in filling shifts, especially as the experiments draws
to a close, that this practice is not necessary in Hall A.
Kees informed that the DOE has instituted significant cuts to travel budgets,
both for staff members and for visiting users. As a result, JLab may not be
able to conform to some of its MOU commitments in this area. The effects
particularly the French and Italian groups. Kees also pointed out that
stipends (currently $74.50 per day for hotel and food) are not subject to the
DOE cuts, and may be an alternative.
Office space allocation is now being handled entirely through the user liaison
office. Kees notes that if any users feel that they have been treated
very unfairly and unjustly with respect to assignment of office space, that
they should be encouraged to contact him directly.
It is current practice at JLab that once experiments are finished the data
analysis of an experiment, that they should present a seminar on the results
of the analysis at JLab prior to the submission of a paper. It was noted
that this applies to the first publication of the experiment, and would not
apply to subsequent longer physics papers or technical publications.
The issue of graduate students from out of state being able to take courses
at local universities during extended stays is currently being discussed by
the Users' Group BOD and JLab management. There is no firm decision as
of yet.