Users Group: Board of Directors Minutes
Minutes of the meeting on Friday, November 2, 2001
BOD Members Present:
Alan Nathan (Chair)
Charlie Glashausser (Past Chair)
Haiyan Gao
Douglas Higinbotham
Mark Jones
Sebastian Kuhn
Dave Mack
Clara Perdue
Alicia Uzzle
Jefferson Lab Representatives Present:
Christoph Leemann
Larry Cardman
Roger Carlini
Javier Gomez
Andrew Hutton
Bernhard Mecking
Dennis Skopik
SURA Representative Present
Jerry Draayer (SURA President)
1. Executive Session
The Jefferson Lab Users Group Board of Directors meeting began with an executive session. The progress on the director search was discussed along with the search for a new chief scientist for the lab.
2. Reports from JLab Management
2.1 Christoph Leemann reported that the lab considered the last year a success with excellent physics coming out of the experimental Halls, a mention in the NSAC report for both continued funding and the 12 GeV upgrade, the FEL continuing to improve, and the lab working on building cavities for the SNS.
The lab is moving forward with finding new leadership. The new lab director and a new Hall-C leader will be announced soon, and the lab is now searching for a new chief scientist and/or head of the theory group. It will be the mission of the new chief scientist to lead in the development of the long term science program of the lab, to make the reach of the 12 GeV upgrade as significant as possible, and to be an advocate of the Lab to the public and to congress. The lab is also searching for a head of the Center for Advanced Studies of Accelerators (CASA).
Despite earlier optimism, the DOE budget for nuclear science is the same as last year ($360.5M), though the wording of the budget did urge the Department to use its funds to enhance operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia. It is not clear if this wording will have any real impact on the lab's budget. As it currently stands, there will be flat funding for JLab in FY2002 (which began Oct. 1), which amounts to a real decrease, given the inflationary impact of salary increases. Christoph reported that the lab can get through FY2002 with no layoffs, but that some retrenchment can be expected beyond that. There is also some concern over a recent DOE memo that states (paraphrased) the science per se is not a mission of DOE but only an enabler for the mission of security. Itis not clear what impact this statement will have on funding for basic science.
The lab is optimistic about obtaining CD0 approval for the 12 GeV upgrade sometime in the next month. This would put the lab on track for its next milestones CD1, CD2, and CD3 in late 2003, 2004,and 2005 respectively. Each milestone must pass congressional review. CD3 is when serious money can finally be allocated for the project. The hope, if all goes well, is that there could be 12 GeV beam at Jefferson Lab before the end of the decade. (Later in the meeting, under other business, it was decided that the annual JLab Users Group meeting in June would be a workshop-type meeting, much like the meeting in 2000 in which the physics case for the 12 GeV upgrade was put together. This time, the workshops would be organized around the experimental equipment needed for the upgrade, with the outcome being a draft CDR for that equipment. See paragraph 6 below).
Christoph reported that the September S&T review was successfully completed. Although the formal report has not yet been issued, the initial feedback from the committee is that the nuclear physics program has received high marks for quality and relevance and that there is a strong physics case for the 12 GeV upgrade. He also reported that the lab will soon hire two lattice theorists. Finally he remarked that a major challenge for the lab and users is to improve the way we justify what we do to the larger scientific and nonscientific communities.
There was some discussion about the impact of SNS R&D on accelerator operations. We were all reminded that the lab is funded separately for SNS work and that any diverting of resouces from accelerator operations to SNS is the result of flat funding for the former. On the other hand, SNS funding allows the lab to maintain its infrastructure in the face of flat (or worse) budgets for nuclear physics.
2.2 Andrew Hutton reported on the accelerator operations. Andrew reported that during the past year, the accelerator made at least one major change (i.e. a pass or energy change) once a week. Even so, average machine availability remained high and the average number of Halls receiving beam, while the accelerator was operational, was 2.79.
The major down times in the past year were due to a vacuum leak in the injector area which caused the machine to be down for two weeks in early January 2001 and a break of the low conductivity water line to the south linac caused the machine to be down for a week in October.
The machine is presently running at its maximum acceptable beam energy(5.7 GeV). Acceptable being defined by lab management as a trip rate causing no more than 10% down-time. At present, going to an energy greater than 5.7 GeV would cause the trip rate to exceed this administrative limit. Work is being done to reduce the time it takes to recover after a trip. Also, a long term solution of adding more cavities to the accelerator is being pursued, but this would not be done for at least two years.
The machine continues to be plagued with magnet over-heating problems in the north linac. Back flushing the magnets seems to unclog the cooling lines and stops the over-heating fault, but this is only a patch, it is not fixing the underlying cause of the clogs. Improvements to the water filtering and chemical systems will hopefully fix the fundamental problem.
Starting immediately there will be a new maintenance schedule. Once a week the machine will go down starting at 7 am for a 12 hour "no access" maintenance and machine development period. There will no longer be any four-day downs scheduled. Hopefully, this will improve the availability of the machine for physics. Moreover, the current 4 days/month of maintenance will be "banked" and applied during times of actual emergencies rather than on a regular basis.
At present, the machine is running with three lasers (one for each Hall) shining on the cathode at the injector. Also, the G0 laser has been installed. Before Thanksgiving, the G0 laser will be tested. The pulse rate will be 1/4 of the nominal and the beam will be sent to Hall-A (due to the present setup in Hall-C, it cannot be used for this test). The final goal is to be able to run the G0 laser at 1/16 of the nominal 500 MHz that is presently sent to the Halls.
Charlie Sinclair has retired as head of the injector group. With Charlie's retirement, the injector group has been broken into two groups. In these groups, Matt Poelker will take charge of the polarized sources and laser development as head of the source group and Mike Tiefenback will lead a group to take care of optics issue with the injector.
Finally, it was reported that there will be no push to achieve 6 GeV until it can be done with no more than a 10% reduction in beam availability. From a practical point of view, it is not likely that 6 GeV will be achieved for about 2 years.
Andrew's talk is posted on the web at http://www.jlab.org/intralab/calendar/archive01/hutton/
3.Hall Issues
3.1 Hall-C: Roger Carlini reported the status of Hall-C. The Hall is presently running the second half the Donal Day et al.'s GEN measurement. In early 2002 the Hall plans to make continued use of the polarized target in the Hall and run the E01-006 nucleon spin structure experiment. Starting in March, the Hall plans to start installing the G0 magnet. The installation and testing of the magnet will take place over the next six months.
3.2 Hall-B: Bernhard Mecking reported the status of Hall-B. The Hall has now been taking data for 3.5 years. The publication stream from the Hall has started with 12 NIM papers, 7 Physics papers in publication, and many more on the way. The Hall is now running e1-6 (polarized electrons on the proton) at 5.7 GeV. Next year the Hall plans to run the e6, the e1 and the g7 experiments. The Halls schedule for next year has been changing due to the uncertainty in when the Hall-A septum magnet and the Hall-C G0 magnet will be installed.
3.3 Hall-A: Javier Gomez reported the status of Hall-A. The Hall is presently measuring 16O(e,e'p) at large momentum transfer. Starting in mid-December the Real Compton Scattering (RCS) experiment's detector will be installed in the Hall, this is expected to take approximately one month. At the end of the RCS experiment the Hall will run a test for the Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) experiment and than run the final part of Pete Markowitz's kaon experiment. This will be followed by Ralph Segel and John Arrington's super Rosenbluth separation experiment.
Note: The schedules for all the Halls will change if there are further delays in either the Hall-A septum magnet and/or the Hall-C G0 magnet.
4. Executive Session
The board of directors spent an executive session speaking with Jerry Draayer, the president of SURA. Jerry explained to the board how the search for a new lab director was conducted and that a name has now been sent to the Department of Energy for final approval. SURA is now waiting word from DOE before making an official announcement regarding the next director. SURA now is focused on helping the lab find a new chief scientist and/or head of the theory group. Jerry also mentioned that SURA's contract to run Jefferson Lab would be facing review in about two years and that it may have to compete with other management organizations for the Jefferson Lab contract.
5. Area Reports:
5.1 Graduate Students (Douglas Higinbotham and Alicia Uzzle)
Douglas reported on the possibility of starting a Sigma Xi honor society at Jefferson Lab. Larry Cardman, who is also a Sigma Xi member, wanted to know how a Jefferson Lab society would choose its members and asked Douglas to check with other National Labs to see how they handle their membership. The board of directors agreed that Douglas should pursue the matter as Larry suggested. Douglas also reported on giving the students a discount on food. It would cost approximately 10k per 10% to give the students a discount. Another issue was lack of space. (see Haiyan's Report)
Alicia reported Bob Welsh is having trouble getting students to give talks at the monthly pizza meeting. Douglas agreed to meet with Bob to help him find student candidates to give talks. Alicia also reported that some users were not reporting the status of their Jefferson Lab PhD students to the lab. For funding reasons, it is important that the lab keep track of the number of students that are trained at the lab.
5.2 PAC and Scheduling Issues (Sebastian Kuhn)
Sebastian raised two issues relating tp PAC and scheduling: 1) Due to the still fairly large backlog of approved beamtime in Hall C, it is likely that several experiments which have already gone through jeopardy review (successfully) will end up being up for jeopardy once again. Several users have expressed a preference for extending the jeopardy review cycle to 4 or more years during the recent user survey. In this light, it would be good to get once again user feedback whether the present 3 year cycle is considered optimal and/or whether this issue should be taken up by the UGBoD. 2) Recently, the beam schedule for the 3 Halls had to be revised fairly frequently due to new developments, including slippage of large installation experiments due to delays in the construction of equipment. This has lead to rescheduling of experiments with rather short notice(sometimes less than 3 months), with the possibility of problems especially for outside users who need to plan teaching schedules, sabbaticals, trips to the laboratory etc. It may be appropriate to discuss the relative merits of a fairly dependable schedule versus the desire to schedule the most highly rated experiments as soon as possible, even if it is less than certain that the latter can be ready in time. All JLab users are encouraged to contact S. Kuhn directly (skuhn@odu.edu) with their opinions and (hopefully constructive) ideas how to achieve the best balance in both cases.
5.3 Quality of Life (Haiyan Gao)
Haiyan reported that in general users continue to be satisfied with life at Jefferson Lab, with the notable exception being the shortage of office space. It was reported by lab management that DOE has given the lab the green light to pursue funds to add two wings to Center Center.
5.4 Running Experiments and Mini-Meeting in Maui (Dave Mack)
Dave reported that Hall-A has successfully completed running two polarized 3He experiments (A1n and g2). In Hall-B data was taken for the g6 and the first run of the g8 experiments. The g8 experiment needs that better beam control will be needed. Hall-C has been and is continuing to measure GEN. Dick Madey et al.'s measurement of GEN has been completed and Donal Day et al.'s measurement is taking place now.
Dave also reported that the mini user meeting in Maui was a success, with good food and a good turn out. Dave and Clara will take care of organizing the next mini meeting which will be held during the APS meeting in April. As long as this is done early, the meeting announcement will be placed in the APS bulliten.
5.5 Computers (Mark Jones)
Mark reported that there are no pending problems with the computers at JLab and that the computer center is doing a good job keeping the present system up to date.
6. Miscellaneous Business
6.1 A committee will be formed to nominate new members to the Board of Directors. The outgoing members are Charlie Glashausser, Dave Mack, Haiyan Gao, Mark Jones, and Alicia Uzzle. Thus one doctoral student, one postdoc, two regular members, and one vice-chair will need to be nominated.
6.2 It is time to start thinking about the 2002 SURA Thesis Prize. The deadline for applications will be around March 1st.
6.3 Clara points out that due to tighter security, foreign visitors (including students) may soon have to show their visas when getting a badge.
6.4 The annual meeting of the Users Group will be held in mid-June, 2002. After some discussion, it was decided to have a workshop-like meeting, organized around the CDR for experimental equipment associated with the 12 GeV upgrade. Broadly speaking, there would be a plenary session with an overview of the physics and the devices anticipated in the various halls. Then there would be parallel working sessions, one for each hall, organized as workshops. At the end, everyone would regroup in a plenary session with summaries presented for each hall. The net outcome of this would be a first draft of a CDR for the experimental equipment. The overall organizer for the meeting is Alan Nathan, with help from representatives from each of the four halls.
7. Executive Session
In the afternoon executive session that board discussed SURA's management of the lab. Also, the board discussed possible candidates for the job of chief scientist. The tentative date of March 22 has been set for the next Board of Directors meeting.