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STAR Newsletter #77

December 2000
Star Home Page
Editor: Howard Matis

Contents

  1. Spokesman's Column
  2. STAR Operations
  3. Detectors and Subsystems
  4. Period Coordinators Report
  5. Physics Working Groups (protected area)
  6. People: Comings and Goings
  7. Announcements
  8. Employment Opportunities

Spokesman's Column (John Harris)

I would like to say that the STAR Analysis Workshop, held at LBNL on 15 - 19 November, was a pleasure to attend. The status of the various topics of physics analysis in STAR and that of papers in progress were discussed. The day with the theorists was very informative and will be useful as we develop our understanding of the data and what it is telling us. I look forward to having another meeting of this type in the future.

I have placed a draft white paper for STAR's long range plan and its accompanying report of the STAR Long Range Plan Committee on the web. The next Long Range Plan Workshop will be held at BNL on December 8. This workshop will focus on the physics and upgrades of RHIC and its detectors. Information on this workshop the its agenda can also be found on the web.

The STAR Elliptic Flow Paper has been accepted by Physical Review Letters and is scheduled tentatively for the issue which will appear on January 8, 2001.

Talks from the RHIC experiments for Quark Matter 2001 will be decided by the Program Committee next week (December 6 - 8).

I am looking forward to seeing everyone at the next STAR Collaboration Meeting in Austin, Texas (7 - 11 January 2001). The schedule is as follows (updated -December 7):

I will consult with the Physics Working Group Convenors to optimize the agenda and then send out a more detailed schedule.

The Brookhaven Program Advisory Meeting was held at BNL on November 30 and December 1. I presented the Beam Use Proposal for STAR. Yes, we will get beam. The PAC and BNL have decided that Plan B will be the operating scenario for RHIC next year. This will mean that we will close-up STAR in the Wide-Angle Hall on May 1, and commence running once the machine is up to full energy with Au (expected to be ~ 2 weeks). The run will last into FY 2002 (past October 2001). The present operating scenario can be found on the BNL web site.

Les Bland and I made presentations before the PAC of the STAR Proposal to complete the full EMC including pre-shower detectors. The recommendation from the PAC is that STAR should complete the full barrel. However, the PAC had questions regarding the pre-shower detector (PSD). The PSD was the new scope that we have proposed to add to the EMC, as compared to the EMC in previous PAC reviews. Since the pre-shower detector is essential for electron identification / hadron suppression (it gains us a factor of ~ 3 suppression of hadrons, or factor of 9 for electron pairs) we must make our case to be able to complete the PSD's. The PAC has provided us with a list of questions and asked us to submit to a separate PSD review, before they decide about incorporating the PSD's into the scope of the barrel EMC. I am consulting with the EMC Task Force to determine the best course of action and the time scale of our response and the review. I am confident that we will be successful at this, but this will require more work.

STAR Operations (Ralph Brown)

Detectors and Subsystems

Period Coordinator Reports

Physics Working Groups

This section contains summaries of the status of the physics working groups. These articles are in a protected area for STAR collaboration members only. This link uses the standard STAR account and password for physics results. If you do not have this information, please contact your council representative.

People

Announcements

STAR's volleyball team has been enjoying a fun season so far in the Brookhaven volleyball leagues. With many good teams in the league this year, and many new faces on the STAR team, success has not come easy this year. However, we ended November on the high note of our first win for the season and are looking forward to continued improvement! Especially when we face the PHENIX team in December! :-) STAR experimenters who have played with the team so far include: Lee Barnby, Bill Christie, Curtis Lansdell, Gaspare LoCurto, Akio Ogawa, Markus Oldenburg, Sylvester Radomski, Dennis Reichhold, and this year's captain, Gene Van Buren.

Employment Opportunities

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