Users Group: Board of Directors Minutes
Minutes of the meeting on Tuesday, June 11, 2002
BOD Members Present:
Haiyan Gao (Outgoing Member)
Douglas Higinbotham
Sebastian Kuhn
David Lawrence (New Member)
Dave Mack (Outgoing Member)
Pete Markowitz (New Member)
Curtis Meyer
Alan Nathan (Chair)
Paul Stoler (Chair Elect)
Maurizio Ungaro (New Member)
Sabine Jeschonnek ( New Member)
Clara Perdue
Jefferson Lab Representatives Present:
Christoph Leemann
Larry Cardman
Swapan Chattopadhyay
Dennis Skopik
Rolf Ent
Kees de Jager
Andrew Hutton
Bernhard Mecking
1. Introduction of New Members
The Jefferson Lab Users Group Board of Directors meeting began by introducing the new members (David Lawrence, Pete Markowitz, Mark Pitt, Sabine Jeschonnek, Maurizio Ungaro, Paul Stoler)
2. Reports from JLab Management
- 2.1 Operations Review
Christoph Leemann reported on the FY 2003 President's budget request. It is up $5.3M from the 2002 request (making it a "good" request for the lab) but there are many steps until the budget is final. Users need to lobby their congressional representatives, especially in the March and April timeframes. There is a backlog of Lab maintenance but the increase would still let accelerator operations increase from 28 weeks to 30 weeks a year.
There will be a meeting on June 20th with the new Director of the Office of Science, Ray Orbach. The idea is to impress upon him the quality of the science which will be done with the upgrade and get his attention.
2.2 Chief Scientist Search
The Lab has candidates identified for the position and is discussing commitments with several of them.
2.3 Science Policy Committee
In response to a variety of suggestions, the Lab will form a Scientific Policy Committee. This is separate from the PAC which is charged with evaluating proposed experiments. The new committee would be charged with looking at a broader picture and helping guide the laboratory's future efforts.
2.4 Accelerator Operations
Andrew Hutton reported on accelerator operations for this past year. G0 beam quality has made several advances. The laser has produced the bunch structure and current, although the losses are too big and the leakage of charge into adjacent buckets was unacceptable. The suspicion is that the space charge is blowing the beam apart. A new laser has been ordered from the same firm as the laser for the FEL to replace the noisy Ti:Sapphire laser. Weekly tests have been ongoing.
"Banking" of maintenance days has not really been happening. Instead losts of maintenance has been done just after holidays before turning the accelerator back on. Self-checks (hot checkouts without beam) have given improvements in the time to come back up.
The Accelerator Division is administratively reorganizing the engineers to bring them in the division.
The SNS cavity on loan which the accelerator has been using downstairs in the tunnel is being returned this summer. After the January 2003 shutdown there will be a replacement cavity installed making a 6 GeV running possible.
2.5 12 GeV Upgrade and Plans for CDR Preparation
Larry Cardman reported on needing a revised CDR in January. A special review by a body such as the PAC will be needed then to review the quality of the physics and the match to the proposed equipment, including the orthogona that PAC 23 review the CDR in lieu of their normal PAC function of reviewing proposals, skipping on PAC cycle. There was much discussion about this, some of it in executive session. The new result was that the strong sense of the BOD was that this should not be done. Instead, we recommended that PAC 23 perform their normal function and that a different panel review the CDR. Following this, CD1 might be forthcoming in April 2003.
2.6 Hall Reports
Kees de Jager reported on the recent Hall A running. The RCS experiment has been completed (preliminary data are now being shown at conferences), as well as the final high energy running on the hydrogen kaon electroproduction experiment. A short test run on deeply virtual separation. The hall is presently running the D(e,e'p) deuterium experiment.
The septum magnets are scheduled to be installed in August and September, and four experiments (GDH, Hypernuclei, HAPPEX-II and the parity violating measurement on helium-4) will run next. The first magnet is in final assembly and the company says it should be delivered in mid-July. GDH is making contingency plans to run with only one septum if necessary.
Bernhard Mecking reported on the recent Hall B running. The hall has taken 4.5 years of data split into 18 CLAS run groups and 2 other experiments. The analysis is going faster using the offline JLab farm. An impressive 9 physics papers have been published with 10 more presently under collaboration review. For the PAC there are 3 new proposals and 2 jeopardy proposals requesting 190 days of beamtime as well as 4 Letters-of-Intent. (There will be 83 days of beam time available).
There is a 2.9 year backlog currently. There is a PRIMEX test in June but there may be a scheduling problem (with a lack of possible experiments) June 2004 due to incompatibility with the other halls.
The CLAS Region III drift chambers have been troublesome but "cleaning" the wires with reverse bias high-voltage has helped. The problems may have been due to a batch of bad chamber gas. Better control of the gas and tracking/archiving of the chamber current is desired.
Rolf Ent reported on the recent Hall C running. In 2002 the polarized target spin-asymetry in the resonance region was measured, and the Hall is now in the midst of installing G0 (the installation is impressive to see). The plan is for a week of beamline tests in August. Currently the cryogenics for the magnet is "done", the target is "done" and the magnet is installed. The beam quality is still a concern. The magnet will be cooled in late June and July. In October the beam will be used for physics commissioning.
The triangular wave on the raster system is working. January 2003 will see G0 moved out of the way, the normal cryotarget re-installed, and the hall will run 3 "small" experiments.
Rolf closed by sharing his concerns. Regarding G0, the issues are the magnet working and the beam being of the quality needed. On the SOS, the quadrupole mapping is still an ongoing issue. In the HMS, the magnet controls are aging (as is the cryotarget for that matter). The beamline, HMS, SOS, G0 and SMS need maintenance. Finally, the hall users need to publish archival publications.
3. Video Conferencing
Sandy Philpott was kind enough to update the Board on a new issue, video conferencing. The Lab has two Polycom setups but there is only limited support (via service requests) and a lack of staff for video conferencing. There is a VRVS system which is IP-based and can deliver to the desktop. It runs the player on Linux and Windows. It is also possible to stream video with a Real Media server. This is one-direction and uses a web interface with RealPlayer. Hall B used this at their last meeting with some success although Doug Higinbotham reported that the details were lost (i.e., it was not possible to actually read the slides due to the pixel resolution).
4. Area Reports
- 4.1 PAC Issues
Sabastian Kuhn reported that he has had more feedback from the PAC than from users. The PAC members want to see the proposals include accurate error analyses. Subsequent discussion centered around the proposer's responsibility to address any overlap with other experiments.
4.2 Thesis Prize
Alan Nathan led a discussion on whether the current thesis criteria make it prohibitively difficult for theorists to win the prize with the emphasis on service, (e.g., building hardware) and benefit to the Lab. The feeling was that theorists should be equally eligible, and the Lab benefits from their calculations.
4.3 Running Experiments
Doug Higinbotham reported on recent user experiments. Hall A finished the super-Rosenbluth. There were problems with the spectrometer safety shields being left on the vacuum entrance windows after an access to service the target. The cameras were essentially unworking. (This is the second experiment in recent hall history to have this happen. A new change in the administrative procedures for accesses should make this impossible in the future).
Hall B has had tagger problems and is attempting to quantify requests for "good beam" to the accelerator. Recently 60 Hz noise at the injector has been observed to correspond to beam motion in the hall ( it is not known if this has been happening all along).
Hall C has been down for the G0 installation.
4.4 External Relations
Alan Nathan reported on the upcoming visit June 20th to Ray Orbach. A team including Curtis Meyer, Alex Dzierba, Gordon Cates, and Alan will visit.
Letter writing a la the APS's congressional letters (i.e., setup a web form and ask conference participants to stop by) may be effective in communications.
4.5 Graduate Students
Doug Higinbotham reported on graduate student issues. The need for getting a room listed for graduate students in the plans for the new wing has been agreed to by Larry Cardman and Dennis Skopik; it is up to the new BOD to be sure it happens. Bob Welsh has gotten TC84 as the graduate student lounge for the present time. Bob Welsh also has a graduate student association (GSA) started with regular meetings. Issues include a cafeteria discount and health care for postdocs. Finally, it was reported that very few students are using the workout room. It would be great if more students were to take advantage of it.
5. Other Business
Curtis Meyer reported that the wireless network is still problematic (there was a hardware problem with an access point during the user meeting) and the Residence Facility should consider adding it.
Paul Stoler spoke about the need to communicate our science in pieces meant for popular audiences, as well as to give more invited talks at the bigger conferences.
Alan Nathan discussed the science visa being pursued by various universities and laboratories including Fermilab. Clara Perdue reported she had just spent two days at the INS discussing this issue.
The next meeting will be Friday, October 25, 2002.