Reported by JOHN HARRIS
Please find below an agenda for the Plenary Sessions of the STAR Collaboration Meeting. Remember that there are also other activities (Working Groups, Council, Technical Committee and Physics Committee meetings, etc.) starting January 30 and ending on February 5. Please refer to STAR newsletter #8 for the calendar of activities. (There have been some room changes for the working group meetings and a switch in dates for the "wine and cheese reception" to Wednesday. A final calendar will be e-mailed directly to you later today.)
Wednesday (2 February 1994)
Morning Session - B. 66 Auditorium, LBL
9:00 AM Welcome and Introduction - J. Harris
Collaboration News and Business
Collaboration Meeting Agenda
Report from the STAR Council Meeting
9:30 AM Status of STAR Project - J. Marx
10:15 AM BREAK
10:45 AM Status of STAR - J. Harris
11:15 AM STAR Software Simulations Report
and Preview of Friday Presentations - M. Bloomer
11:45 AM Interface between RHIC and STAR - W. Christie
12:00 PM Magnet Progress- K. Foley
12:30 PM LUNCH
Afternoon Session - B. 50 Auditorium, LBL
2:00 PM TPC Report -
TPC Overview and R&D - H. Wieman
Report on TPC Production and Design - R. Wells
TPC Sector Testing Program - B. Stringfellow
3:10 PM Front End Electronics -
FEE Requirements - T. Noggle
TPC Specifications for Electronics - H. Wieman
PASA Specifications - T. Noggle
SCA Measurements - M. Lisa
4:00 PM BREAK
4:30 PM "Baked Alaska" - J.D. Bjorken, SLAC
5:45 PM Adjourn
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Thursday (3 February 1994) - B. 66 Auditorium, LBL
9:00 AM The Star Computer Based Documentation System - A. Saulys
9:15 AM Trigger -
Hardware Overview - H. Crawford
Software Overview - P. Yepes
10:00 AM DAQ Technology Choice - M. LeVine et al.
10:30 AM BREAK
11:00 AM SVT -
Overview and Progress Report - R. Bellwied
Wafer Design - H. Kraner
Wafer Tests and Plans - J. Hall
Software Integration - C. Pruneau
12:15 PM XTPC R&D - D. Cebra
12:30 PM LUNCH
2:00 PM Status of STAR Computing and Software - W. Love
2:15 PM Status of STAR Software Infrastructure - D. Olson
2:30 PM "Telepresence" and Remote Experiments - S. Loken, LBL/ICSD
3:00 PM TOF Report - B. Bonner
3:15 PM EMC -
Status of EMC Proposal - G. Westfall
Current Technology Choices for EMC - D. Underwood
3:45 PM Spin Physics Update - A. Yokosawa
4:00 PM BREAK
4:30 PM Proposal for Forward Pb-Glass Detectors for STAR - Y. Arestov
5:00 PM Proposal for Photon Multiplicity Detector for STAR - Y. Viyogi
5:30 PM Discussion
6:00 PM Adjourn
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Friday - (4 February 1994) - B. 66 Auditorium, LBL
Simulations and Applications (Tentative Agenda)
_______________________________________________
Convenor - Matt Bloomer
(presenters must allow time for questions and discussion)
9:00 AM SVT Capabilities - (2 hrs)
SVT as a Stand-Alone Tracker Using STK - C. Pruneau
SVT as a Stand-Alone Tracker Using SVG - S. Margetis / D. Prindle
Evaluation of SVT/TPC Tracking Using Perfect Matching - K. Wilson
Impact of SVT on TPC Tracking - M. Bloomer
Secondary Reconstruction Efficiency - S. Margetis
dE/dx and Particle ID - S. Paganis
Description and Results of SVM - L. Ray
with perfect SVT/TPC tracks, with reconstructed SVT/TPC tracks
11:00 AM Break
11:20 AM Tracking in High Multiplicity Events (80 minutes)
1x, 2x, 4x Density Hijing Events in TPC - P. Jones
RHIC-Plasma Events in the TPC - W. Love
1x, 2x, 4x Density Events in SVT - ?
12:30 PM Lunch
2:00 PM Trigger Capabilities- (90 minutes)
Selection Tests & Event Generation - R. Longacre
Level 0 Algorithms - J. Whitfield
Level 1 and 2 Algorithms - Z. Milosovich
Level 3 Fast Tracking - P. Yepes
VPD Capabilities - ? MWC and CTB Capabilities - ?
3:30 PM Break
3:50 PM Particle ID of TPC Tracks (45 minutes)
dE/dx in the TPC for Central Au + Au Events - C. Ogilvie/J. Mitchell
TOF Results - P. Yepes
4:35 PM EMC Simulations - W. Christie (25 minutes)
5:00 PM Others??
XTPC Simulations (Romero?)
Event Vertex Resolution (Judd?)
Physics?
Discussion
6:00 PM Adjourn
Progress is being made in understanding the $900K shortfall of experimental facility funding for STAR. The facility drawings presently being reviewed look adequate for the assembly, installation, and utility needs of the day one STAR detector.
Preliminary work on the design of the cooling water distribution system and cableways inside the detector is about 50 percent complete. A preliminary allocation, by subsystem, of rack space on the platforms has been made and presented to the STAR Technical Committee. Two designs have been proposed for an umbilical cord to be used for getting cables off the detector. When the volume of cables is better understood, a choice will be made on which design to develop further. In either case, the signal cable coming off the detector will be primarily fiber optic.
Wire gain measurements on the sector prototype have been successfully performed at Purdue University. A non-contact method of wire tension measurement has been devised and tested at LBL. The effect of using 512 rather than 1024 time samples with Helium-Ethane has been evaluated and results in no significant loss of dE/dx resolution. However, whether two track resolution meets STAR s requirements without 1024 time samples needs further study.
Modifications to the original sector design are complete, and the group must await the results of the Partial Sector Test before fabrication can begin. The Partial Sector Test is being assembled and will be ready for testing in December.
Negotiations with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) program at LBL are underway to secure clean room space for the sector assembly effort.
The design of the steel continued with an emphasis on the details of the bolting system and supports, and on features of the assembly that will influence the configuration.
Enough working SCA/ADC devices (25) have been obtained to begin characterizing a population of these devices to look for device yields, gain and noise characteristics, etc. Initial static measurements have been completed on the 25 pieces, and the dynamic measurements have begun.
Progress on the miniDAQ boards continues. The VME Taxi card should be released to printed circuit manufacturing by December 3.
A workshop was held at LBL in November to consider alternatives to the Inmos T9 chips which probably will not be available. A decision was made to de-couple the choice of CPU's from that of network technology. A proposal has been made to move all intelligence off the TPC readout boards and into VME crates. This is made possibly by new developments in fiber optic hardware. This move also eases power and real estate problems on the readout boards, and make failure-prone components more accessible.
The miniDAQ taxi card simulator is complete. When expanding the number of event builders to match the permissible number of trigger types (8), it was discovered that each EPICS state machine requires between 50K and 100K of data structure storage to operate properly. Therefore, it has been decided to implement a script-based sequencing language and engine that will drive all miniDAQ vxWorks tasks.
The trigger software is now in TAS and is fully documented in the WWW format on RSGI00. Please peruse the area and make comments. In hardware, a test of the loading and timing of adder and comparator structures in the Xilinx 4010 series FPGA has been completed.
The name Slow Controls has been changed to STAR Controls. Construction of a two-part essential model in the spirit of Ward and Mellor s Structured Development for Real-Time Systems is underway.
A prototype for the data file manager was set up on a STAR computer at BNL. A new postdoc in LBL's ICSD will be working with the other software engineers, primarily on analysis shell-related activities.
Reported by HANK CRAWFORD
Our trigger software is available on RSGI00 for testing level 0, 1 and 2 selection criteria. We have begun analysis of asymmetry in level 0 and of entropy and other statistical variables in level 1 and 2. It appears that much of the selection can be done with very coarse pixel arrays, ie, at level 1 or even level 0. We could use loose criteria in level 0 and tighten up the selections in level 1 and 2. If you want to play with this software, take caution in the public areas.
Our hardware progress includes functional layouts for the two primary modules of level 0, the RAM/FPGA boards and the Trigger Control Unit. We are preparing for a test of the VPD detectors in the proton beam at BNL in April, and plan to use our home-made TDC and ADC at that time.
Contributed by AL SAULYS -- STAR documentation manager
LIZ MOGAVERO -- STAR documentation system librarian
This is to make you aware of the existence of the World Wide Web (WWW) computer based documentation system, if you are not aware of it. It is accessible through the browser tool called XMosaic (or Mosaic). The STAR home page can be found on
rsgi01.rhic.bnl.gov/star/starlib/doc/www/welcome_star.html.
The main access to STAR documentation is expected to be through this system. By making use of this system STAR has connected itself to the "information superhighway". There is a "wealth" of information on the WWW about STAR, RHIC, other experiments, physics, non-physics, etc...
The STAR documentation system is described in a document on the WWW. You should read it and understand it, if you wish to participate in the STAR documentation. A computer based documentation system is one of the best means of keeping abreast of the latest activities in the experiment, if the information contents is current. To make sure that this documentation system is current and as complete as possible is the job of Al Saulys, who is the STAR documentation system manager. He is assisted by Liz Mogavero, who is the STAR documentation system librarian. If you have questions or suggestions about the STAR documentation system contact one of them.
Contributed by ED PLATNER
Additions to the collaboration may be done by two methods: A new institution may be added after consideration by the council. However individuals may join existing member institutions by the approval of the institution representative. When this happens the institution representative must report this addition to the spokesman so that the collaboration role can properly reflect this addition. Conversely when people leave the collaboration, it is the responsibility of the institution representative to inform the spokesman.
Contributed by DOUG OLSON
The software group is planning another 1 week workshop to be held at BNL. It will include an introduction to using and developing software for STAR along with accessing and generating simulation data. This will be of approximately one week duration, probably at BNL and somewhere in the March-April-May time frame. If you are interested and have not yet received the announcement please contact one of:
Greetings from Brookhaven. As of October 1st I've taken a position with the RHIC project as the STAR Liaison Physicist. In general my duties are to serve as a line of communication between STAR, RHIC, and the other RHIC experiments. As the designs of the accelerator and STAR start to solidify I try to keep each side informed of changes and watch for any possible conflicts.
STAR has recently been assigned five offices in the Physics building. To be precise they are on the second floor corridor between the Physics building and the Computing building. While they are all designated for specific people or groups, at present a few of these offices are unoccupied. If you visit BNL and need a place to sit with a phone and perhaps an X-terminal, get a hold of me and I'll see what I can do.
If you have any questions about RHIC, the Wide Angle Hall, STAR, or anything else which you think I may be able to help you with please feel free to contact me.
Bill Christie Brookhaven National Laboratory Bldg #510 C Upton NY Office # M2-18 Phone (516) 282-7137 FAX (516) 282-3253 E-mail: christie@bnl.gov christie@lbl.gov