STAR NEWSLETTER NUMBER 5
(2 August 1993 - Ed Platner, BNL)
I. STAR Collaboration Meeting (July 13 - 17)
A STAR collaboration meeting was held from July 13 to July 17. 99 members of
the collaboration registered. Two council meetings were also held. At the
second one the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute was admitted to the
Collaboration. They are planning to play a major role in STAR with 17 people
identified as participants.
II. STAR "PHYSICS" COMMITTEE
The physics committee presented their report to the council. The charge to this
committee was "To develop a detailed long-ranged strategy for implementation of
the necessary upgrades to the presently-funded portion of the STAR detector by
optimizing the physics, weighted by the possibility of detecting a QGP, as a
function of the cost, feasibility and time."
B. Bonner J. Carroll
T.Cormier K. Foley
M. Gyulassy J. Harris
J. Marx E. Platner (chair)
R. Stock M. Tincknell
The committee concluded that:
1) the originally proposed STAR detector subsystems provide important and
complementary physics potential for the STAR experiment.
2) the STAR "physics baseline" detector should include the presently funded
baseline detector defined in the STAR Project documentation plus the Silicon
Vertex Tracker (SVT) and portions of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMC),
Time-of-Flight (TOF) detector and External Time Projection Chamber (XTPC).
The committee stated that it is essential to proceed with all subsystems at
this time and recommended that necessary R & D continue to be able to decide
upon technology choices for purposes of submitting funding proposals.
The scope of the proposal to DOE/NP may be revised after additional information
is known.
An EMC proposal will be submitted to the NSF this month.
III. STAR SIMULATIONS AND APPLICATIONS SOFTWARE (SAS) COMMITTEE
M. Bloomer (chair)
"To work with the STAR Physics Committee and perform realistic simulations to
answer questions on the performance of the STAR detector(s)."
The STAR Physics Committee plan is to work with the SAS committee on
simulations. At the next collaboration meeting there will be a one day session
on simulations and physics followed by a Physics Committee meeting.
IV. Design Reviews for STAR
The Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for the STAR Software Infrastructure
effort took place in early June. The committee found that the approach taken
by the software group was appropriate and that its general level of technical
expertise was high and made several constructive suggestions for improving
the software effort.
The Magnet and Front End Electronics PDRs are next on the review agenda.
The TPC Sector Final Design Review (FDR) is tentatively scheduled for early-
September at LBL with sector production scheduled to begin in February of
1994.
V. TPC Summary and Highlights
The outer field cage (OFC) lathe is now ready to fabricate prototypes. A
mandrel has been completed and parts for the first tests are on hand. Early
results of a flat gas insulator test set-up indicate that a 30-kV gas-insulated
OFC would perform adequately. Resistivity-versus-time measurements indicate
that the candidate adhesives exhibit increases in volume resistivity of a
factor of ten over ten days.
All parts necessary to start assembling the prototype sector are completed. The
second generation pad plane board arrived, but it has not yet been inspected.
A jig that aligns the connectors to the copper connector pads enabling the
connectors to be soldered onto the pad plane board was completed. The artwork
for the double layered pad plane board has been completed and is ready to go to
the vendor.
Several of the TPC/magnet iron support components were sized, and a draft STAR
note was completed. Additional quotes were received for the wheel, indicating
that the budgeted funds appear sufficient.
VI. Magnet Summary and Highlights
By the end of June, visits were made to four possible coil vendors and three
steel manufacturers to determine if the present magnet design posed any
problems in construction. All potential coil manufacturers visited felt that
they could build the coil. However, none has much experience in building
aluminum coils this large. Steel vendors capable of producing all parts of the
iron were identified, but several of the larger pieces could not be handled by
most vendors. The possibility of making the large components in several pieces
is therefore being explored. Ways to ensure good quality control in the coil
construction process are under investigation.
VII. Electronics Summary and Highlights
The latest Pre Amp Shaper Amp (PASA) and Switched Capacitor Array/Digitizer
(SCA/ADC or SCAD) ICs are being tested. The latest shaper amplifier shows
lower noise than the earlier version, but no conclusion has been reached as to
whether the noise level is acceptable. The new batch of lower noise SCAD ICs
received from the foundry had a good yield. Five of the 12 chips returned are
100% functional. Design of the prototype production FEE card for the TPC has
been reviewed. A prototype production card is being sent out for circuit board
layout. Mini-DAQ hardware design and fabrication is going well.
STAR still does not have a T9000 transputer. However, the T9000 production
problems are showing signs of clearing up. A minimal functionality board to
receive the T9000 chip, together with EPROM, memory, and simple I/O has been
designed and is in production. The mini-DAQ system necessary for TPC prototype
sector testing is well underway. The mini-DAQ will utilize the experiment
control "state machine" concept which will also be a key part of the STAR DAQ.
The STAR DAQ software design process has begun. Algorithms for use on the
final readout board are being studied.
During the month of June, the trigger group began its excursion into the world
of slow controls, continued its meetings on third level architectures and
approaches, and continued discussions of the level 0 and 1 hardware issues. The
group is now beginning to consider different approaches to the user interface
for trigger setups, which takes it into the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of
the slow controls group.
The slow controls group received an Allen-Bradley 1771 module, scanner card
(will connect the 1771 to a VME crate), and a TTL input card for the 1771. A
TTL output card for the 1771 has been back-ordered. The Sun Workstation will
be picked up at LBL next month.
VIII. Computing Summary and Highlights
A 1.9 GB disk was installed on ribm00 and named /star/starlib. Its purpose is
to relieve the constant filling of the /u2 disk.
A preliminary design review for STAR software was held June 7-8 at LBL. The
committee report has been published and the overall finding was that the plans
for the software infrastructure are technically sound.
IX. STAR Software Workshop Summary by Bill Love
A summer workshop to develop simulation of the STAR experiment
was held at Brookhaven from July 19th through 30. Initial attendance
was higher than expected with thirty two participants from sixteen
institutions. At the final wrap-up session there remained nine
travelers joined by the seven people resident at BNL. Many joint
efforts begun the first week continued after participants had separated.
For the many beginners attending, Doug Olson and Matt Bloomer conducted
an intensive two-day training course in the use of the still developing
software infrastructure and the simulations effort so far. By popular
demand Richard Morse gave an impromptu course on the running of the
GEANT task. There were sub-groups that met more or less daily on:
(a) Detailed signal simulation for TPC (Peter Jones, chair)
(b) Third level triggers and DAQ (Pablo Yepes)
(c) Event reconstruction (Bill Love)
(d) Tracking (Iwona Sakrejda)
(e) Event visualization (Jeff Mitchell).
We attempted to divide the time between individuals tapping on computer
keyboards and groups talking in conference rooms. Many people remarked
on the value of the interactions made possible by getting a critical mass
together in one place. There will be summaries of the sub-group efforts
available shortly after we finish.
(Addendum by STAR Spokesman - This Workshop will become a regular event for
STAR.)
X. THE FOLLOWING EVENTS ARE PRESENTLY BEING PLANNED:
<![CDATA[
Magnet PDR September 1-2 or 9-10 at BNL
TPC Front End Electronics PDR September 1-2 or 8-9 at LBL
TPC final design PDR September 14-16 or 21-23 for 1
day at LBL
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XI. POST DOC POSITION
There is a post-doc position in LBL Information and Computing division for a
person with an experimental physics background to work with software
engineers on the STAR software infrastructure. Interested persons should
contact:
<![CDATA[
Doug Olson
olson@lbl.gov
(510) 486-4567
or
Stu Loken
scloken@lbl.gov
(510) 486-7474
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