STAR NEWSLETTER NUMBER 59

1. From the Deputy Spokesman:

Reported by Tim Hallman

As you will see from the enclosed summary of STAR's progress in the last month, the construction project is continuing to move steadily toward completion. Despite this good news, a problem which is becoming more and more critical is the shortage of manpower needed from the Collaboration to ready STAR to begin on time. There are daily pleas from a number of STAR Project Leaders (TPC, software, front end electronics,..) for manpower from the Collaboration which is critically needed NOW so that the data taking program can begin on schedule. There are also many good opportunities, for people who can help in these final months, to become familiar with the detector system, and to gain experience which will be important in understanding the data STAR will take. So, if you are not already working at least 50% on STAR (and even if you are), please take a few moments to think about where you can help out. If you need more information about where help is most needed, please contact John or myself, or the appropriate STAR Project Leader.

On a more upbeat note, it is a pleasure to comment that two proposals (the Endcap Electromagnetic Calorimeter and Silicon Strip Detector) which were considered and approved by the STAR Council at the last collaboration meeting have now been formally submitted by John to Tom Kirk for consideration by the BNL Program Advisory Committee (PAC). In addition, we have now received formal notification from Tom Kirk that the FTPC proposal submitted by STAR has been approved by the BNL PAC, with the comment that some further review of the technical details relating the beam pipe and the FTPC cell occupancy may be required by the RHIC Technical Advisory Committee.

A fourth proposal, for the addition of a RICH detector to extend the high pt PID capability of STAR is under active consideration by a STAR committee headed by Tom Humanic. Thus far, there has been a good dialogue between the Committee and the proposing STAR collaborators, and a number of important questions have been answered. A preliminary report from the RICH Committee is expected in 1-2 weeks.

Excerpted from the STAR Monthly Report for July 1998.

The TPC group is jumping through the last remaining hoops and should begin flowing P10 gas in early August. Laser system parts are well into production and the TPC installation fixturing design is nearly complete. The plans are to install the TPC into the Magnet in November.

There are currently two-and-a-half sectors worth (~10%) of Production FEE cards installed on the TPC. Installation efforts were delayed during August and the focus shifted to getting Readout and mini-DAQ working so that testing of the installed boards can begin.

TPC Summary and Highlights

The requisite hardware, procedures and gas are in place for operation of the TPC with P10 Gas. The manifolds and automatic switch-over controls for the argon, Dewar-based supply system has been installed under the dire ction of Blair Stringfellow. An Allen Bradley programmable process controller based safety interlock system, incorporating the Gas Mixing room flammable gas monitors and subordinating the pre-existing "hard-wired" gas system interlock chain, has been programmed and documented by Jim Thomas. "Interlock Committees" at both LBNL and BNL, in compliance with the findings of the RHIC Operational Readiness Review (ORR) committee, reviewed this system. Questions from both interlock committees were satisfactorily addressed.

Detail design of the TPC installation hardware continues. The detail design of the supports which mount the installation beam to the magnet are nearly complete as is the design of the installation beams themselves.

Magnet Summary and Highlights

Electronics Summary and Highlights

Front End Electronics (FEE)

Data Acquisition (DAQ)

Trial usage of SCSI hardware linking the DAQ and `buffer box' between DAQ has resulted in a 20 MB/s throughput with virtually no CPU utilization on the DAQ side. An effort was made to use the same link with Online's NT box and has yet to succeed due to driver problems on the NT side.

Trigger

Slow Controls

Computing Summary and Highlights

At the collaboration meeting, Computing was reviewed especially the status and plans for ROOT in STAR. In June, it was proposed to decide upon the scope of ROOT in the Fall following broad evaluation within the collaboration and stress-testing in production in the Mock Data Challenge. This strategy was discussed in detail, agreed upon and endorsed unanimously by the Collaboration Council. The completed integration of ROOT in STAR software, available in the production version and supported by web-based tutorials and a tutorial meeting, provides the foundation for this evaluation.

Cray T3E-based simulation production is now underway to provide the simulated raw data input to MDC1. The reconstruction chain could be used today in MDC1. Remaining critical MDC1 issues include: transferring and archiving raw data from offsite T3Es to RCF, working with HPSS (not yet available to us), integrating the reconstruction chain with the job management software that RCF is writing (not yet available to us), completing an Objectivity-based event store for the DST, integrating the Grand Challenge data mining apparatus with STAR infrastructure, and incorporating one or more (probably one; the event by event code) physics analyses into a CAS chain for use in MDC1.

Manpower remains a critical issue; the manpower provided by the collaboration is inadequate for the readiness and success of MDC1. Even the most critical requests to the collaboration (via management, the Council and computing representatives), for help in developing and operating production, have had slow and only partially successful responses. The impact of our inability to hire a database person is evident in the immature state of our Objectivity database, far from ready for MDC1, and the likely unavailability of an Objectivity-based calibration database for MDC1. The effort at coordinating and executing the CAS side of MDC1 has been far from adequate.

Conventional Systems and Integration Summary and Highlights

The 100 replaceable filter elements for the rack filters arrived from the manufacturer. The first shipment of VME crates arrived. The trigger VME crates were delayed because of a problem in installing the p3 backplane; however a solution has been found.

The current capacitance of the Magnet and South platform has increased to 13 nf. This is about three times larger than the original budget. The capacitance will be monitored in the upcoming months to determine its real value. It was noticed that the TPC FEE water system exceeds its envelope in a few places. The intrusion is limited, but is located in the integration reserve area.

Bill Christie asked me to write down a few words about the tragic turn of events that took place Wednesday night September 2, 1998. The creator of the Parton Cascde Model, Nuclear Theorist, beloved collaborator, and good friend Klaus Kinder-Geiger perished in the Swissair flight 111 crash. This is a great loss for our heavy ion field. Klaus, a German citizen who had been an associate theoretical nuclear physicist in BNL's Physics Department since April 1996, was 36. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Frankfurt, Germany in 1989, and is survived by his mother, his brother, and his former wife, Sharon Kinder-Geiger.

Last night after spending a numbing day waiting to learn the truth, which was personally very devastating when it came at 3:00 in the afternoon, I and my wife went to Billie's Tavern in Port Jeff which was Klaus' second home. Everybody there was very sad. He was loved and cared for about as much there as he was around Brookhaven and all the Universities and National Labs. Al Ricky, the owner was very upset that the News Media did not call him Dr. Klaus Kinder-Geiger. I told Al that only my mother calls me Dr. Ron Longacre. But Al was of a strong will and I noted today the media refered to Dr. Kinder- Geiger physician.

In one months time Brookhaven will have a special memorial conference which will include lectures by most of the physicists who worked with Klaus and will highlight his life's work.

Ron Longacre

greetings from long island. as far as i can remember (it's been that busy around here) the weather in august was warm and pleasant. the long island sound and the atlantic ocean are both wonderful temperatures for swimming. i'm a bit late getting this month's newsletter out so in what follows you'll hear about some of the tasks that have taken place in the first week of september.

Things are moving forward at a fast pace out at the STAR site. The TPC gas system has been fully operational, with P-10 gas, for just about the entire month of August. One sector of the TPC has been instrumented with electronics and people have been working to get the mini-DAQ system back up and looking at pedestals and noise from the FEE. We recently received the necessary safety approvals to allow us to operate the high voltage on the anode plans of the TPC and start checking the currect draw of the wire planes. The present status seems to be that there are likely broken wires on three of the 48 TPC readout sectors, and an additional one sector is drawing more current than it should. The studies are continuing and the three suspect sectors will be swapped soon with spare sectors.

We recently received the safety approval to operate the Laser system so that all the optics can be aligned in preparation for taking calibration data with the TPC. My impression is that this initial alignment of the optics will take a few weeks. It's quite a system how the single laser beam is guided around the outer circumference of the TPC wheels and sent in along the various "laser rafts". We also recently received the necessary safety approval to operate the central TPC cathode high voltage. Testing of this system will likely get started the second week of September.

The next major milestone here for STAR will be to test out the Power Supplies for the magnet, put current into the magnet, and map the magnetic field. The magnet mapper has been installed in the magnet for a few weeks has has been successfully operated. A test field map was taken with zero current in the magnet coils, and another taken with a few amps in the coils which was supplied by a temporary supply. The last few weeks have seen intense activity to get all of the water connections, power connections, control connections, temperature and voltage monitors, interlock systems and such hooked up and checked out. At this point it looks like the major testing of the power supplies and the magnet will get going mid to late in the second week of September. It's taken an enormous amount of effort to get to this point, and though I know it isn't true, for at least a moment one could imagine that life will get easier for a bit once the magnet is up and running.

To satisfy the safety rules here at BNL we are required to have a twenty four hour a day watch at the STAR site when we are running the gas system. Once we get to the point where we have the TPC high voltages up constantly we will also need to have shifts to monitor the detector. In last month's newsletter I put out a call for volunteers to come to BNL and help out on manning these shifts. As you can perhaps guess, the response was NOT overwhelming, so I'm going to make a pitch to you again.

STAR has been in the construction phase for so long that one could perhaps forget that it is actually a physics experiment. One could also imagine that as the project officially ends in June of 1999, while we should be taking our first data, that this is the date when STAR collaborating physicists should plan to start spending time at BNL. I'd say fortunately, some others might say unfortunately, this is not the case! STAR, the physics experiment, has started. The detector systems are being checked out and debugged now, the shifts have started, and the time to start sending members from our respective groups/institutions is now.

For those of you who are graduate student members of STAR, you may not have had the opportunity to work with detectors yet, and may not know what you're missing. Building, setting up, debugging, learning how the detectors work, and getting them up and running is probably the aspect of experimental physics that I enjoy the most. I was fortunate as a graduate student, working at something called the HISS facility at the BEVALAC, in that we set up and ran two to three experiments a year for more years than I care to admit to. It was alot of work but also alot of fun. To gain the experience that you really can't gain any other way, to get your share of what I think is the most enjoyable part of experimental physics, to further your education by working side by side with exceptional physicists such as Howard Wieman and others here at the STAR site, to get started on the research aspect of your education, and last but not least to have references when you go out for your first job, you should ask your advisor when he's going to send you here to BNL!

If any STAR collaborators are interested in coming to BNL and helping out with bringing STAR online you should give Howard Wieman or myself a call.

	Howard Wieman (516) 344-7386   E-mail hhwieman@lbl.gov
	Bill Christie (516) 344-7137   E-mail christie@bnl.gov

Wayne State University

Faculty Position in Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics

The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites applications and nominations for a tenured or tenure track position in the area of Experimental Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics. We are seeking individuals with an outstanding record of past accomplishments and exceptional promise for future growth in Experimental High Energy or Nuclear Physics. The successful a pplicant will be an effective teacher at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and will supervise Ph.D. dissertations associated with a vigorous program in Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics.

We are particularly, though not exclusively, interested in candidates who can contribute to our existing program on the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Our group, consisting of three faculty, has had major responsibilities in STAR including the construction of the Silicon Vertex Detector and the Electromagnetic Calorimeter and we have physics interests that span the full range of the STAR program.

Applicants should submit a letter of interest including Curriculum Vitae, a statement of research interests and arrange to have at least three letters of reference sent to:

Professor T.M. Cormier
Chairman, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Wayne State University
Detroit MI 48202

8. New STAR NOTES since the last Newsletter