Present:

• Alain Blondel
• Mike Zisman
• Christopher Tunnell
• Maurizio Bonesini
• Andy Nichols
• Vittorio Palladino
• Ken Long
• David Colling
• Alan Bross
• John Cobb
• Paul Kyberd (from Brunel University for discussion of shifts for EMR test)

Minutes and actions of the previous meeting¶

TB website¶

ACTION UPDATE: Still pending.

Solid absorbers¶

Cobb is now on the mailing list. Cobb could have issues paying for Wing Lau's time, but Lau could make some designs and drawings. Oxford is not going to make the absorbers.

Nichols can include these absorbers into the schedule and help make them once we know what we want to produce.

Magnetic measurement plan¶

In the current plan, there are a lot of interfaces between the physicists, engineers, people measuring, etc.. Cobb believes this should be turned into a document. There is the manpower issue of who owns the problem: postdoc or student? We need to know how well we need to measure the fields to notify Felix Bergsma how well he should build the measurement device, so Cobb and Bergsma should discuss this issue then notify Roy Preece.

The first magnet to be measured will probably be the FC at RAL and will probably be tested in R9. CERN is currently building the measurement device says Blondel.

With regards to the latest action on organizing a meeting: who are the people interested? Mike Courthold and Roy Preece are the two magnet coordinators so may want to be involved. Courthold is generally fairly busy and Preece is at Wang NMR to help with the magnets, so they may be hard to track down. However, Zisman assures us that California has phones.

ACTION UPDATE: Cobb's organizing of a meeting of interested people still pending
NEW ACTION: Blondel to discuss with Cobb the manpower issue.

MOU¶

Blondel to meet with Charlotte from STFC to clarify what our MOU means.

Integration physicist¶

No progress.

Step 3 versus 4 document¶

There is a document relating to the accelerator physics differences between step 3 and step 4 which Tim Carlisle and John Cobb are finalizing. Progress is being made but it's just a summary of the collaboration meeting talk.

There needs to be a more general document that includes aspects like the engineering. Nichols say that Tim Hayler is currently working on this from the engineering perspective. Blondel says that they need to write a short description of the motivations for step 4 against step 3.

Both the physics and engineering documents will make it into a larger document that will be presented at the MPB in June.

ACTION UPDATE: Cobb to finish accelerator-side step 3 versus step 4 paper with Carlisle
NEW ACTION: Nichols to work with Hayler to write a short description for the motivation of step 3 versus 4

Mechanism for approving plots¶

No progress.

MICE mailing list¶

ACTION CLOSED: Done. Blondel cleaned up up our main mailing list.

Prepare a program of RF cavity tests¶

ACTION UPDATE: Draft of measurement plan sent to Andy. Zisman assumes its going to TB.

Website move¶

ACTION UPDATE: Colling says, "No progress. Maybe even negative progress."

Online group head¶

ACTION UPDATE: Blondel will discuss this with Coney next week while at RAL.

Schedule review in preparation for the MPB and FAC¶

Nichols is having trouble keeping up with his organizational responsibilities because the domestic workload on MICE is at a "serious peak". The drop dead date is the 28th of April. Nichols was also invited by Steve Gourlay to the SS workshop.

Zisman wants to know how the coupling coils are factoring into this, but Nichols believes focusing on the step 4 schedule and having a loose step 5 schedule is the way to proceed. Though everybody agrees we should not ignore the CCs.

Schedule review sometime in early June. Nichols notes that one reviewer declined but there are other reviewers to consider.

Common fund¶

Discussed later.

Software for first paper¶

Colling has an issue with software that produces results that are not reproducible within neither other scientists nor the collaboration. He wants to know who is going to take over the responsibility for this code.

Cobb reminds us of the dichotomy of the situation: what's good for MICE and what's good for students who need to graduate is different. Blondel wants to make a strong message and reinforce that when people do analysis, there is a development time which should lead to mature code by each collaboration meeting so others can use it. The issue is students who get delayed graduating because they don't have the code of other students.

Long asks Bonesini who takes over the TOF code. Bonesini is more worried about the step 1 paper and wants to get that paper out as the highest priority. He feels that the step 1 paper should mainly be on the hardware: beamline, target, and construction. Bonesini says: "even if it is not optimal, we can bargain on the software side of the analysis".

Zisman says that releasing code is different from having it vetted. Colling says that we create tests, do code review, etc., and that we can never be perfectly certain but can do 'good enough'. These are the coding techniques used by many projects (including industry) since it's computationally impossible to formally prove the correctness of code so these techniques are used instead. Zisman learns from Colling that we don't have anything external to check the code against. Tunnell says that the review process of the code includes rough sanity checks on physical quantities. Tunnell, after being asked, says that there are two different things being discussed: making the software maintainable for future use and making the software ready for the first paper.

Long brings up another issue. Chris Rogers has told him that we don't have people who are responsible for the parts of the reconstruction software. Cobb also had a chat with Rogers. Cobb and Long think that Rogers is correct and that this is even an issue within the tracker group.

Colling says that students doing this type of work isn't a problem if it's public and reviewed. Cobb says that students need correct code supervision and explains the example of Nick West within the Oxford physics department who was a programmer who helped students. Colling says that even though both Rogers and Tunnell do this, this couldn't reasonably made a majority task for the limited manpower. Colling responds that what's important is that the code is handed back to the collaboration; the TOF analysis is probably good.

Zisman summarizes that nobody disagrees with the principles discussed since they're not controversial: the question is how do we practically solve this given the size and scope of the project? Within accelerator physics, people provide hardware then others analyze it. In particle physics, if you build a detector then you write the code for it.

Blondel says we need better review within the software project.

Matters arising from TB¶

Nichols has left.

MICE running¶

Zisman wants a negative polarity run with proton absorber in.

ACTION on Blondel: Does Rogers want to takeover the beamline?

Blondel is not convinced we need that many shifts, but agrees with Long that we can schedule them. If needed, we can cancel shifts. Given that we will have a BLOC, the EMR guys, the DAQ expert on call, how many shifters do we need? Kyberd feels that one shifter is sufficient if you have a shadow shifter too, which addresses Blondel's comment that we have a lot of people who need to be trained.

Matters from VC¶

Question from Snopok: how to formulate the MICE schedule in talks? Last schedule from Mar. 2010. There is strong opposition to renaming the steps. The consensus says that we should say: "the schedule is being addressed". We should show it to the collaboration before the next MPB.

Long is worried since we need to hand in a proposal for the completion of MICE on June 15th. Blondel thinks that we can send complements to the proposal after the due date since he has done that before.

Common fund and request from USA.¶

The USA has 1.2 M USD for RF. Zisman wonders if this could be the in-kind contribution to the MICE common fund. Long says that since the RF is an STFC responsibility; they may agree to pay the US monetary contribution to the common fund which would open up funds for the magnets in the USA. Zisman says that the price of the magnets keeps going up since we want reviews, speedy delivery, redesigns and a rebuild, and that the price of the magnets is about 2M USD from the US.

Bross is concerned about how we're defining a common fund. Long says that this isn't actually an in-kind contribution. Long wants the STFC to give money to the magnets in a trade for the RF money. There is some concern that this is tricking funding agencies by certain members, but we are assured that we will be clear with the funding agencies with what we're doing.

MICE first paper¶

Cobb says that there is no significant update. Marco Apollonio came to Oxford and there was also a long phone conversation. We're waiting for Mark Rayner's final results. Not much progress on the paper. Apollonio really does want to help us even though he now works for Diamond at RAL.

Blondel says we need to compromise between realism and perfection.

Common fund¶

Already discussed.

Editorial board¶

Bonesini thinks that we should focus as much on the hardware as the beam composition for the first paper.

Speaker's board¶

No salient updates (the secretary left by this point and this was reported to him).