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STAR Newsletter #91

April 2002
Star Home Page
Editor: Howard Matis

Contents

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

Spokesman's Column (Tim Hallman)

STAR continued to make strong progress this month towards the production of FY2001-2002 data summary files. At a meeting at BNL on Sunday, March 24th, the status was reviewed by the physics working group convenors and other members of the STAR software and analysis effort. A number of technical issues were discussed, as well as plans for analyzing data for QM02. (Analyses planned for QM02 will be addressed in detail at the upcoming analysis meeting at LBNL, May 3-6.) One observation was that an amount of data greater than that from the first run had already been processed and was available for people to begin analyzing. Production for pp was anticipated within the following 7-10 days, after which processing of minbias and central collision heavy ion data would continue.

In addition to analyzing new data, work continued to finish a number (10) of publications now in STAR God Parent Committees. The goal is to complete this work soon, so that STAR can focus fully on the 200 GeV data set. Since the last newsletter (at the time of this writing), 1 paper has been submitted to PRL, and two other papers have been placed before the Collaboration for final review prior to submission.

A recent highlight for STAR was the announcement of a STAR Upgrades Steering Committee chaired by Tom Ludlam to help organize the Collaboration's activities regarding the development of an R & D plan for the next phase of STAR experimentation at RHIC (see the article by Tom in this newsletter). One of the first activities of the Committee will be to organize a meeting at the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine from June 17-20.

Jamie Dunlop was appointed at the new STAR Physics Analysis Coordinator. Jamie comes to this post from the RICH effort, and from having responsibility for calibrations, where he did a great job which was part of the essential work necessary to get the ongoing production effort underway. I look forward to working closely with Jamie and the Physics Working Group Convenors as we push forward to help the Collaboration achieve its scientific goals.

Several new Council Committees, including the STAR Publication and Talks Committee (distinct from the STAR Talks Committee chaired by Declan Keane), the STAR Service Work and Resources Committee, and the STAR Advisory Board have been formed by the STAR Council Chairman, Jay Marx, to participate in various aspects of STAR's governance.

Looking to the calendar for the future, a Trigger Workshop will be held at LBNL on May 6-7 following the Analysis meeting there on May 3-5. A preliminary agenda for the workshop will be distributed soon. A main goal for the meeting is to understand STAR's physics goals for the upcoming run (and somewhat beyond) in the context of requirements that will be placed on the STAR trigger system and the enhanced STAR trigger capability projected to be available for the next run. There will also be a STAR Collaboration meeting just prior to Quark Matter at Subatech in Nantes, France from July 11-16. Information on practical arrangements (travel and housing) at Nantes is available using the link for the upcoming collaboration meeting on the STAR home page.

STAR Operations (Ralph Brown)

It is March 21st; do you know how your STAR Technical Support Group is progressing with the STAR shutdown plan? According to the plan we should have:
  1. Rolled the detector into the AB and connected utilities. **Completed on time**
  2. Removed the East and West FTPC's and stored them in the clean room for testing. **Completed on time**
  3. Test the SVT electronics for source of noise. **Completed and David Lynn should report the results of these tests**.
  4. Test the integration of the SSD mount on the cone. These initial tests found that the SVT/SSD cable bundles interfered with the SSD mechanical mount. The fiber glass shields around the cone nearest the IR were trimmed back to expose more of the cable and their restraints. Time was spent re-dressing cables on the West side to show that they would clear the area for the SSD mounting ring. Although this appears to be successful with the SVT cables and hose, we are uncertain about the path of the SSD cables. We also have to plan for time and resources to complete the cable re-dressing effort on the cone. The SSD had announced to STAR Operations during this integration test in late February, that they would only be installing 3-ladders on a special mounting ring for the FY03 run. The integration of this special mounting ring and 3-ladders remains an issue, and the SSD group will return in April for further discussion.
  5. Hydrostatic leak testing of the SVT cooling system revealed multiple water leaks in the SVT assembly on the cone. It was decided to remove the SVT and perform further tests back in the Physics lab. Those tests are being performed now and documented so that a plan for repair can be formulated by the end of March. This repair effort and the resources required will have to be integrated into the STAR shutdown plan.
  6. Remove all SVT RDO boxes for test and repair. The boxes have been removed and testing will begin soon under David Lynn and Dan Padrazo supervision.
  7. Removal of the RICH Detector and cable and gas utilities from STAR Detector for relocation to the Northeast. The RICH has been removed from the magnet along with the gas and liquid lines, and it is being stored in the AB.
  8. Install seismic anchors on the EAST and West Pole Tip Carriages in the WAH. The anchors were installed on the West carriage, which is the Pole Tip that will support the new EEMC being partially installed this shutdown. It was discovered that the East carriage, which rolls on a series of 6-chain roller trucks has serious misalignment problem that prevents installation of the seismic anchors. This misalignment also gives us difficulty when removing and installing the pole tip in the magnet. Re-alignment of these rollers requires disassembly of the carriage, which is not in the scope of this shutdown and will require further discussion within STAR Ops.
  9. Install BEMC modules from the East side. The cables and tray have been peeled back from the Northeast half of the detector and the Northeast TPC arm removed. We began installing modules this Monday and by the end of today will have install 6-modules #45-40. This is progressing rapidly and I believe we will be ahead of schedule thanks to the hard work from the two C-AD Mechanical technicians (Steve Pontieri, Robert Karl).
  10. We have placed a purchase order for a 900-gallon liquid Argon bulk storage tank which will become operational for the TPC this September. C-AD is assisting with the preparation and installation of a concrete support pad for this storage tank.
  11. Now that Spring has arrived, our STAR Liaison Engineer, Al Pendzick, has finally removed the old miniscule roof over the gas pad and a new larger roof will be installed soon?
  12. Renovation of the Counting House trailer. Bids will be opened today and a vendor selected to perform this renovation. I suspect they will begin in early April and hopefully completed in May (I will keep you posted).
  13. We have requested and estimate from Plant Engineering for installation of a new suspended ceiling in the STAR Control Room. The scope of this effort will require modification to the fire sprinkler system, air conditioning ducting and new recessed light fixtures. A determination as to proceed will be made once the cost is understood.
  14. We have installed the new 50-HP air compressor and supply line for the SSD cooling system. It now awaits startup and test

I hope I didn't forget anything and I will do my best to keep you posted on the progress of these shutdown efforts and the many twists and turns that lie ahead.

Please note that this report represents progress as of March 21 - Editor

STAR Council (Jay Marx)

No contribution this month.

Detectors and Subsystems

FTPC (from Volker Eckardt)

After the removal of both FTPCs from the detector, the broken FEE boards of one chamber were replaced. The repair work for the second one has started at MPI. The work on the reconstruction software has made progress in various areas:

We expect to have everything ready for production by the end of May.

Slow Controls (from Mike Cherney)

The Slow Controls software has been transferred to two new workstations. An update has been made to the software for the barrel EMC. The test station at Creighton has been reconfigured to support the operation of the user interface directly from a PC (without the need to logon to a workstation). A presentation on the remote system access was made at a regional meeting.

EMC (from Alexandre Suaide)

No contribution this month.

TPC (from Blair Stringfellow)

No contribution this month.

Level 3 Trigger (from the commissioning contingent)

No contribution this month.

Endcap EMC (from Will Jacobs)

An Integration, Installation, and Safety review of the Endcap EMC went well (BNL 3/1302; chair Ralph Brown). Since the last EEMC report, highlights of the present status of detector construction include:

Lots done ... lots to do! :-)

RICH

No contribution this month.

TOFp - (Bill Llope and F. Geurts )

No contribution this month.

Period Coordinator Reports

Physics Working Groups - (See the protected area)

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.

No articles this month

People

Announcements and Notes

Summary of the 2002 RHIC Retreat (Bill Christie)

As part of the Collider Accelerator Department (C-AD) self assessment process, there was a three day RHIC Retreat held on March 5th - 7th. In addition to the attendees from C-AD, representatives of the five RHIC experiments were also invited. The goals of these RHIC Retreats (this was the third one) are to assess what went well, and not so well, in the recently completed RHIC running period, and incorporate this information into the planning for the next running period. The web page for the Retreat, which contains essentially all of the talks, can be found here.

If you look at the agendas for the various sessions at the retreat you'll see that the sessions were organized around "Issues", and were filled with many short presentations. There was a closeout session at the end of the three days, and then a more formal Closeout session on March 28th here at BNL.

There are two talks that I think STAR collaborators will find particularly interesting. The first is one by Thomas Roser, that you'll find on the Web page in the Closing Session, with the title " RHIC Status and Plans (Updated)". If you look toward the end of this talk you'll find projections on the performance that can be expected for various beam conditions (AuAu, pp, d-Au, and SiSi (all at 100 Gev on 100 GeV) for the FY03 Physics run. Please note that the guidance given by Thomas Roser in his talk is that we can plan for the collider performance in FY03 to be somewhere between where things ended at the end of the FY02 run and the collider performance numbers listed on the slide. On the slide after this, one can find estimates for the integrated luminosity that one can expect for various numbers of "running modes". A "running mode" is defined as a given beam species combination (e.g. AuAu, SiSi, d-Au, etc.) at a given beam energy. I think that this slide in particular can form a useful basis for discussion as we discuss the STAR Beam Use Request (BUR) for the next RHIC run. Please note that the second talk which I think STAR Collaborators will find useful is the Overall Summary for the Retreat that Fulvia Pilat gave at the March 28th Closeout at BNL. This presentation condenses down the output of the Retreat to a few key issues, and plans to address them. The talks from the March 28th Closeout are not on the Web as of April 1st, but I've spoken with Fulvia, and C-AD expects to have them posted soon.

Overall I found the RHIC Retreat 2002 to be a useful and worthwhile meeting. Time will tell how well the discussions and output from the Retreat are incorporated into the actual operation of the RHIC program for the FY03 physics run.

The STAR Upgrades Steering Committee (Tom Ludlam)

Following Tim’s announcement of its formation last month, the committee held its first meeting, at Brookhaven, on April 4. The committee membership is: Tom Ludlam (chair), Huan Huang, Peter Jacobs, Gerd Kunde, Tonko Ljubicic, Dick Majka, Peter Seyboth, Thomas Ullrich, Steve Vigdor, and Howard Wieman.

Some of you may recall my presentation at the February collaboration meeting, and a subsequent discussion with the Council, in which I summarized the plans being discussed by Brookhaven and DOE for upgrading RHIC, and a proposed sequence of events for STAR to develop a plan for upgrading the detector as part of the RHIC II project. Since then some further developments have occurred.

The Nuclear Physics Long Range Plan for the Next Decade was unveiled at the NSAC meeting held March 14-15. The document is subtitled Opportunities in Nuclear Science, and prominent among those opportunities is the study of QCD at high energy densities, with a recommended increase in support for operations of RHIC as “one of our unique new facilities… which will greatly enhance the impact of the nation’s nuclear science program,” and initiation of R&D for RHIC II, “a significant enhancement of the luminosity at RHIC, together with upgraded detectors.” Concurrently, Brookhaven and DOE have been discussing concrete plans for initiating the RHIC II project. Under DOE’s present rules of management, large construction projects need quite a bit of advance work before the shovel meets the ground. The first of several “Critical Decisions” is CD-0, approval by DOE of “mission need”. This requires an independently-reviewed preconceptual design plan and mission statement for the proposed project. Once achieved, CD-0 sets the stage for conceptual designs, and puts the project officially on the table for future construction funding. Brookhaven is beginning now to prepare the documentation for CD-0 approval for RHIC II, which, if achieved this year, would allow for construction funding to begin in FY 2005.

A year ago, the RHIC accelerator physics group began an R&D effort on electron cooling of ion beams, the main accelerator component of the RHIC II upgrade, in collaboration with the Budker Institute in Novosibirsk. Last November, a workshop on detector R&D for RHIC was held at Brookhaven, and subsequently (last week) BNL has issued a call for proposals for detector R&D to be funded beginning in FY 2003 (you can find it on the RHIC, or RHIC/AGS Users home pages). These proposals are due September 20, 2002, and will be reviewed by a Detector R&D Advisory Committee later in the fall.

Against this backdrop, the Steering Committee is charged with the task of helping to guide the collaboration through a process to define the physics objectives that will drive the future evolution of the STAR detector, and to ensure the collaboration’s participation with BNL and the larger RHIC community in shaping and carrying forward the RHIC II project. The committee’s first step is to begin organizing a STAR Workshop on Future Physics and Detectors, June 17-20, 2002. The purpose of this workshop is to examine the scientific goals for STAR in the RHIC II era, and the physics requirements that will drive the planning for future upgrades to the detector. Avenues for upgrading the STAR detector, and performance of the present detector at high luminosity will be considered in order to set priorities for R&D and for initiating the necessary detailed simulation studies. All members of the STAR collaboration are welcome and encouraged to participate. A number of interested theorists will be invited, and other non-STAR scientists may participate as well. The workshop will be held in a remote and (we hope) stimulating environment on the Maine coast, at the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor. A web site with details and registration info will go up on the STAR home page very soon.

Future meetings of the Steering Committee will be held in venues where interested members of the collaboration can attend and participate. The next meeting will be held at the Analysis Meeting at LBNL, on May 5. Subsequently, the committee will meet at the June workshop in Maine, and the July collaboration meeting in Nantes. A meeting at Brookhaven will be scheduled in September.

Comments and ideas are welcome. You know how to reach us.

Employment Opportunities

Postdoctoral Position (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

The Relativistic Nuclear Collisions Program (RNC) of the Nuclear Science Division at LBNL is seeking outstanding candidates to fill a postdoc position. The RNC Program plays a leading role in the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL. Candidates having interests in all aspects of heavy ion physics or spin physics at RHIC are invited to apply. In STAR, RNC has major responsibilities for the central TPC detector, TPC electronics, and related software. We also have strong detector and software R & D programs and we are responsible for STAR computing at the National Energy Research Supercomputing Center at LBNL which provides a valuable computing resource for STAR. Interested candidates should have obtained a Ph.D. in nuclear or high energy physics recently. To apply, please send a CV and a list of publications to: Hans Georg Ritter, LBNL MS 70-319, Berkeley, CA 94720 or by E-mail to HGRitter@lbl.gov. Three letters of reference should be sent to the same address.

Postdoctoral Research Scientist (Purdue University)

A position is available with the experimental high energy nuclear physics group at Purdue University to perform research with the STAR experiment at RHIC. The successful candidate will be expected to carry out a significant analysis using STAR data. Experience of data analysis in a large high-energy or nuclear physics experiment and expertise with software development using C and C++ in a research environment are desirable. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in physics or a related field. A two-year appointment is anticipated, renewable for a third year upon mutual agreement. The successful candidate is expected to start in the summer of 2002. Applicants should send resume, a list of publications, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to Prof. Fuqiang Wang, Department of Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, or E-mail: FQWang@physics.purdue.edu. Purdue University is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor (Creighton University)

Creighton, a Jesuit university committed to excellence in the liberal arts tradition, has been rated the #1 comprehensive Midwest university for 5 of the past 6 years. It is located in downtown Omaha, a vibrant community of 600,000. The Physics Department offers both BS and MS degrees. For a tenure-track Assistant Professorship, beginning August, 2002, we seek candidates with effective communication skills who will share our commitment to outstanding teaching and to involving undergraduates in research programs. Preference will be given to experimental condensed matter or quantum electronics physicists. A Ph.D. is required. More information about our department and this position is at http://physicsweb.creighton.edu. Submit a current CV, transcripts of all college-level work, a statement of teaching philosophy, evidence of successful teaching (if available), and a research plan, and arrange to have 3 reference letters sent to Dr. Janet E. Seger, Search Committee Chair, Physics Department, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, JSeger@creighton.edu. Review of applications started Dec. 1. Creighton is an EO/AA employer and seeks a wide range of applicants in support of our core values--gender, ethnic and cultural diversity.

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