Executive Board Meeting Minutes¶

Present:

• Ken Long (left early)
• John Cobb
• Alain Blondel
• Mike Zisman
• Alan Bross
• Christopher Tunnell
• Daniel Kaplan

Apologies from:

• Maurizio Bonesini
• Vittorio Palladino
• David Colling

Discussion of Previous Meeting Minutes¶

The previous meeting's written minutes were well received and are now public. Long supports them being public but wanted to make sure there was a consensus on having 'open management'. Blondel recalls that the EB minutes (except for technical ‘details’) have always normally been public and thus supports minutes being public. There were no voiced objections.

Current Actions¶

MOU¶

Zisman and Kaplan still need to send the DOE and NSF, respectively, MOUs to Bonesini. They have now received a draft of the whole MOU to which they'll contribute such that they can fit the style. This draft way relayed by Blondel who says that the US MOU must be done by the first week of January to allow time to iterate before the FAC.

Zisman states that they're revisiting the approach of the MOU since MAP now exists, but Long thinks MOUs are invariant to this since they are agreements between institutions instead of funding agencies.

Deadline from Blondel: first week of January.

Magnetic measurement plan¶

Blondel will call Hanlet about this.

Length of RFCC module¶

Bravar asked what he should do, which is produce change request and write note. In progress.

Prepare program of rf cavity tests¶

Derun made VC talk. Needs to be put on paper, but Derun Li was in China. Must follow up.

Integration Physicist Role¶

No progress. Long and Blondel will coordinate a draft together in the meantime to get the ball rolling then circulate it around.

Fall 2011 meeting.¶

Decision done: the meeting is at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. There were no objections and previous non-MICE meetings that have been hosted there have been well executed. Don Summers is making arrangements.

Mice Meeting 2011 RAL¶

This will be handled by Blondel and Victoria Blackmore. All of the conference rooms and Ridgeway hotel rooms are booked. Current work is towards the agenda and social event.

MICE first paper plots¶

Apollonio presented a rough rough draft at VC. He needs feedback; please go back in review. As Apollonio expects, the logical order of the paper may be able to be improved. Also the focus of the paper may want to have more focus on the basics. Zisman and others believe that projections of 2D plots help the interpretation.

There was much discussion on which journal to publish the paper in. Tunnell discovered that, given that this was an accelerator physics paper, people in the accelerator physics community do not use the arxiv in the same fashion as our colleagues in particle physics. This fact makes choosing a journal an important point.

There are two camps of opinion with regards to when we should choose the journal. Cobb's camp believes that we should figure out which journal we want to publish in so we can write the paper accordingly, whilst Long's and Blondel's camp feels we should write the paper then find the journal.

In terms of which journal to publish in, there are a few options. Blondel points out that given we're too long for any 'letters' journal, we should consider online journals like JINST. Cobb thinks that Physical Review Special Topics: Accelerator and Beams (PR STAB) may be a good idea, and Kaplan agrees since he thinks that's where we'll want to publish the final cooling result. PR STAB is also where the Muon status reports get published so is the right audience. Blondel wants to know if the STFC has a policy towards where we should publish, which would surprise Long if they did.

The consensus leans towards PR STAB, which is also free online, with NIM also as a possibility even though it's not available free online. Cobb points out that that we should rank the publications by impact factor, which rules out NIM.

ACTION: Determine what the impact factor of various journals are

Approving plots¶

Deferred to next EB.

Step 3/4 document¶

We still need to assemble the step 3 versus step 4 document. Tim Carlisle is currently writing his comparison from the accelerator physics perspective. A discussion with Tim Hayler is needed to discuss the engineering estimates.

ACTION: Blondel to discuss this issue offline with Cobb

Blondel to receive CERN MOU¶

Done. They are iterating and sending to CERN people.

Thickness of solid absorbers.¶

There was some iteration between Cobb and Tunnell and a document of proposed solid absorber thicknesses was presented at an analysis meeting. This should be communicated to Pavel Snopock, Wing Lau, and Chris Rogers. Zisman wants to include stainless steel since in a neutrino factory the beam will hit it. Blondel wants to add copper and iron. Cobb doesn't want to use non-easy materials like lithium or beryllium; for instance, beryllium is hard to machine and expensive.

ACTION UPDATED: Cobb and Tunnell to prepare a proposal for five solid absorber materials.

Change Request Template¶

In progress: Nichols follows up, Jason Terrant does the work.

RF tests at CERN proposal¶

This discussion can be summarized in Blondel's words: "The proposal is on hold and if it's not pushed it will die". If not enough people on MICE want this, then it is hard to sell to CERN. Also, it is uncertain whether MAP as a whole is interested or not: it's NF R&D but splits MUCOOL effort.

Zisman pointed out that this is an issue bigger than MICE, however the author of these minutes will summarize briefly the discussion. Blondel is worried about the lack of interest on all sides, but CERN may consider it for the sake of MICE if we can get them more interested. Cobb feels we need to know ASAP if these cavities work in a magnetic field. Long wonders if supporting the MTA somehow means they'll support this effort. Zisman wonders if we actually gain in the amount of time it takes to understand RF cavities in magnetic fields, but likes the idea of two independent test facilities. It's mentioned that Gersende Prior (a CERN contact) thinks it's like the chicken and the egg since both CERN and ourselves are waiting for the other. Long wants this discussion in Eurocard 2.

Runplan for 2011¶

Blondel is looking for MOMs and finding them. So far so good until the end of April due to nice contributions from various people.

Blondel will work from Linda Coney's summary from Bulgaria. Possible things to include in runplan:

• new target commissioning - Blondel says that ISIS wants us to use a new target ASAP, but Long feels the new target tests in R78 are orthogonal to MICE running and we should hold off on the target installation in ISIS until it is absolutely necessary. It takes a few days to switch targets.
• beamloss studies - continue Adam Dobbs work even though he's graduating
• EMR commissioning - should be delivered in 2011
• redo step 1 measurements - or extend, do for the first time, etc. This allows studying, for example, the electron/positron difference, which even though Cobb believes it is not important for our final measurement, Zisman says is important for unarguably demonstrating to the world that we understand MICE.

The dates of this are dictated by:

• when the SS arrive (hopefully) at the end of the year
• when we can commission the hydrogen system and 2 MW amplifier
• when ISIS starts up
• when the EMR arrives and the TOFs rearrive

and optimizing this allows for efficient hall work (and holiday for those people), physics taking, and time to analyze data.

ACTION UPDATE: wait till hall work plan ready

MICE website internal/external¶

No update.

mice.iit.edu¶

Blondel says Yagmur Torun is busy, so when that happens there are hiccups. Kaplan says that in 8 years, there have been two downtimes, but maybe we could mirror at RAL. This is for Colling and Torun to resolve.

Spectrometer review.¶

The review was distributed. Blondel has made a summary at the VC. They looked at the repair plan and seemed to agree with a lot of it. It sounds like a good idea to have 5 cryo coolers to ensure good temp for HTS leads.

However, they did not recommend starting the repair. The review was given to the EB, the TB, and MAP to aid in coming to a common consensus. Steve Virosteck needs clear marching orders.

The following email Blondel wrote has been agreed to by EB:

The review report was distributed. (included again for convenience)
Suggest the following line of action

1.  Steve Virostek will produce a response to the MICE review by 7 Jan. He will deliver this first to the MAP management, to be reviewed by the MAP technical board, and presented to the MAP Program Management Group (a Division-Head-level group that represents the resource providers for MAP). The response will include the proposed MAP solenoid repair plan. (7-14 January).

2. The  responses to the MICE review and proposed plan, together with possible additional MAP comments, will be presented to the MICE technical board chaired by the MICE PM and then to the MICE executive board. The MICE management should: (i) if needed, suggest to MAP management improvements to the plan that should be considered, (ii) assess whether MICE should complement the plan with some additional things to be funded by resources to be found beyond MAP, (iii) assess whether an independent back-up plan needs to be explored by MICE. (14-20 January)

3. It should be clear (except in the extreme case 2 (iii) above) that  the overall responsibility of the spectrometer solenoid successful delivery and operation is a MAP responsibility towards the MICE collaboration. 

Comments arising from the email fell into two categories: 1) understanding the review that was just received and 2) taking next steps.

Per understanding the review, Virostek needs time to respond to the review and this is expected soon to MAP and MICE. If MICE doesn't like this plan, then it's up to MICE to find a new plan says Zisman, however there does not appear to be any contradicting technical advice. Blondel highlights the importance of converging with MAP on a plan. The main concern, raised by US colleagues, is that minimizing risk requires maximizing both time and money; if the rebuild fails, we are of course delayed, but similar delays happen if we are too conservative. Blondel states that the reviewers were trying to keep in mind limited resources. Zisman thinks we can use use the first magnet as a repair prototype.

With regards to next steps, it's the institutions responsibility to rebuild the magnets. However, a time considerate schedule which gets advice from both MICE and MAP is outline in the above email. We're trying to get the plan done by the middle of January.

anything from VC¶

Chris Rogers has lots of questions about how to do his job. There'll be a meeting in person early in January to make sure the software doesn't diverge.

Editorial board chair¶

Asked Gail about this. Does Kaplan want to continue? Otherwise, Maurizio will take it over. There are many options: Kaplan or Chris Booth as a consultant, etc..

2011 conferences¶

Palladino not here: emailed comments.

Common fund¶

Long left at this point.

ACTION: Alan Bross, compile list of contributors for common fund since he's collaboration board chair.