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Program Advisory Committee (PAC)

Program Advisory Committee Meeting - PAC38

March 1, 2011

PAC38 will be held during the week of August 22, 2011 and will continue the call for 12 GeV science proposals. As in the recent past, the criterion for approval of new proposals will be that the proposal represents "high quality physics that, based on what we know today, is highly likely to be of sufficient scientific merit that it will be included in the top half of the priority list to be established for the first 5 years of 12 GeV operations." The deadline for submission of proposals and updates is Friday, July 1, 2011.

In addition to considering new proposals (in all categories), PAC38 will complete the process of assigning scientific priority and beam time to previously-approved and conditionally approved proposals by considering proposals in Category 4: "The 3D structure of the hadrons". Updates to PAC38 for previously approved and conditionally approved proposals in Category 4 must be submitted no later than Friday, July 1, 2011. Note that at this PAC and all future PACs, the assignment of scientific priority and beamtime for new proposals will be made at the first PAC at which the proposal is accepted.

Proposals and updates for PAC38 should be submitted electronically using the instructions at http://www.jlab.org/exp_prog/PACpage/instructions.html

Detailed information on the process for proposal submission is available at http://www.jlab.org/exp_prog/PACpage/guidelines.html. Some details of the submission process have changed recently so please read the guidelines with care. Note that we no longer require identification of a contribution to construction of the base equipment in the 12 GeV upgrade. However you are encouraged to provide such identification as appropriate and this information may be useful to the PAC. Note also that experiments may be proposed that use either significant new ancillary equipment or major new apparatus. The proposal submission guidelines provide more details about the additional information required of such proposals.

New proposals will be granted a 30 minute presentation in a public session at the PAC meeting. Following the public presentation session the PAC will continue its discussions in closed session, and at least one spokesperson should be available either in person or by phone for 24 hours after the public session to answer questions as the PAC's discussion progresses. Proposals will, if approved, be given a scientific rating and a beamtime allocation.

Conditionally Approved Proposals

The PAC may conditionally approve proposals when additional requirements must be fulfilled before full approval is granted. There are two categories of conditional approval:

The rule for newly conditionally approved 12 GeV proposals is that they must return for approval at one of the next 2 consecutive PAC meetings following the PAC at which they received the conditional approval status.

Proposals that received C2 status as a previous PAC may return to PAC38 to be considered for approval. Conditionally approved (C2) proposals in Category 4 MUST return for review at this PAC or be considered as withdrawn.

Proposals with previous conditional approval (C2) that wish to be considered for approval at PAC38 should submit an updated proposal and will be granted a 30-minute presentation at the PAC meeting. Following the public presentation session the PAC will continue its discussions in closed session, and at least one spokesperson should be available either in person or by phone for 24 hours after the public session to answer questions as the PAC's discussion progresses. If approved, the proposals will be considered for rating along with the other approved proposals in the grading session.

Conditionally approved proposals in Category 6 MUST return for review at this PAC or be considered as withdrawn. There will be a 30-minute presentation for the updated proposal in the first portion of the PAC meeting. Following the public presentation session the PAC will continue its discussions in closed session, and at least one spokesperson should be available either in person or by phone for 24 hours after the public session to answer questions as the PAC's discussion progresses. If approved, the proposal will be considered for rating along with the other approved proposals in the grading session.

Grading and Prioritization

For previously approved proposals in Category 4, there will be an open grading session to facilitate scientific ratings and beamtime allocations. The session will begin with an overview/summary talk by a rapporteur. This will be a 45 minute talk summarizing the physics of the category, discussing each of the approved and conditionally approved proposals in the context of this category, and addressing how the proposals complement/supplement/overlap each other. The rapporteur's summary will be followed by short presentations (three slides only, see below) by the spokespersons for each previously approved experiment in Category 4. Spokespersons of each experiment undergoing the prioritization review are asked to suggest knowledgeable scientists who they would recommend as rapporteurs for the category of their proposal by Friday, March 4, 2011. The rapporteur would, ideally, have no conflict of interest as a member of one or a few of the proposals in the category, or, alternately could be involved in all of them. We will identify the rapporteur well before the PAC meeting and ask them to provide all spokespersons with copies of their intended viewgraphs prior to the presentation so that spokespersons will have the opportunity for constructive criticism. The talk will, however, in the end, represent the rapporteur's judgment and thoughts. Following this public session the PAC will continue its discussions in closed session. At least one spokesperson should be available either in person or by phone for 24 hours after the public session to answer questions as the PAC's discussion progresses.

(Note that experiments in Category 4 that were conditionally approved at previous PACs will not be included in the public presentation session with the rapporteur as they will have had the opportunity to make a full "standard" presentation to this PAC as part of the review of their conditional approval status.)

For the grading session, the documents to be provided for previously-approved proposals in Category 4 include:

  1. A brief written update (a few pages to 10 pages maximum) summarizing:

    • the scientific case for the proposal (emphasizing developments since the written proposal that are relevant) and
    • technical progress toward realizing the experiment. If there have been any significant changes in the plans for the technical realization of the measurement in the proposal, these must be presented in sufficient detail that the JLab Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) can consider the changes with care. The 10 page limit will be relaxed in this case, and the proponents given sufficient space to provide technical details at the level of their initial proposal submission.

    The updates are due on July 1, 2011 and should be submitted electronically (as for new proposals but clearly labeled "UPDATE E12-XX-XXX" in the proposal title). The PAC members assigned as primary readers will contact the spokesperson with any questions (or a statement that there are no questions) at least 1 week before the PAC meeting.

  2. A set of three slides (no animation or overlays please) to be shown in the "open" portion of the grading session, with content as follows:
    • The first slide should summarize the scientific case for the experiment.
    • The second should summarize the anticipated data and its projected accuracy (e.g. range of relevant variables covered and the statistical and systematic errors anticipated at the nominal beam request).
    • The third slide can be anything else the collaboration would like to add that they feel is relevant.

    The slides will be due on or before Wednesday, August 17, 2011 (the middle of the week before the PAC meeting).

Prioritization of Run Groups

There are a large number of experiments (currently only in Hall B) that have been organized into "run groups". Run groups include multiple experiments that can take data simultaneously on different and/or related physics using the same detector, target, and beam conditions. In addition to the individual experiment ratings reviews discussed above for the experiments within the run groups, we will carry out a review of the run groups themselves to establish their overall scientific priority. This will be done in a PAC session roughly one year before CLAS12 starts taking data. If similar situations evolve in the other halls we will do a similar "overall scientific priority" assignment to the run groups that evolve there.

PAC Results

The results of the PAC's deliberations will become public as follows: the list of scientific ratings and beam time allocations will be provided to the Hall Leaders at the PAC closeout and then posted on the PAC38 website within 24 hours. The final written PAC report will be posted on the PAC38 website and the user community notified by email as usual.

Appendix: The Scientific Categories for 12 GeV Proposals

  1. The Hadron spectra as probes of QCD (rated)
    (GlueX and heavy baryon and meson spectroscopy)
  2. The transverse structure of the hadrons (rated)
    (Elastic and transition Form Factors)
  3. The longitudinal structure of the hadrons (rated)
    (Unpolarized and polarized parton distribution functions)
  4. The 3D structure of the hadrons (to be rated at PAC38)
    (Generalized Parton Distributions and Transverse Momentum Distributions)
  5. Hadrons and cold nuclear matter (rated)
    (Medium modification of the nucleons, quark hadronization, N-N correlations, hypernuclear spectroscopy, few-body experiments)
  6. Low-energy tests of the Standard Model and Fundamental Symmetries (rated)
    (MOLLER, PVDIS, PRIMEX, ...)