sPHENIX is a new detector at RHIC.

["W.A. Zajc" <zajc AT nevis.columbia.edu>]

Dear Dave and Gunther:

Please find below my comments on the new draft. These are mostly wordsmithing, with a couple of substantive points embedded.

Overall, the document is very impressive, thanks to your hard work and that of many others. It reads well and the arguments are well-developed. Congratulations!

Best regards,

Bill

—————————————

W.A. Zajc

I.I. Rabi Professor of Physics

Columbia University

New York, NY 10027

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————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Executive Summary:

  9: MAPS —> MAPS-based ; also define MAPS

Table 1: “the project” —> “sPHENIX Project Management”

Body of text:

   4: collaboration —> Collaboration

 15: “the project” —> “sPHENIX Project Management”

 26: reconfiguration —> descoping (I find “reconfiguration" too euphemistic)

 30: “be identified” —> “become available” (e.g, from conserved contingency)

 85: re-scoping —> de-scoping (same reasoning as above); same for line 91 and wherever else this appears

131: drop “unchanged”; reads awkwardly

134: insert “other” before “experts”

142: I really think you should use “de-scoping”

143: and if you insist on “rescoping” you’ll have to decide whether it’s hyphenated or not…

171: you might consider adding words to the effect “but it is clear all of these effects result in performance degradation.”

175: “reducing the \Upsilon statistics” Is there an associated reduced ability to perform precision spectroscopy on the upsilon states, e.g., 2s vs 3s ? If so, this should be said, as a ‘mere’ reduction of statistics doesn’t sound so threatening…

214: Although venturing beyond the re-baselined baseline, it is still of interest to note that the single layer of MAPS is (presumably) recoverable, in the sense that additional layers could be added as funds permit.

219: SUMMARY TEXT

This text seems repetitive, as essential identically words have appeared in the Executive Summary and the Introduction. You might consider adding words along these lines:

“An important conclusion from these studies is that the sPHENIX design has been well-optimized and is tightly integrated. It is not possible to make significant reductions in the detector configuration without associated major impacts on the key physics driving the sPHENIX program.“

Table 1.1: 

“see MAPS above” —> “removes performance risk”

242: “response,” —> “response and”

245: sphenix —> sPHENIX; also line 269

320: I would hesitate to call this “An advantage”, since it’s an advantage only wrt another unpleasant idea. Perhaps this could be rewritten as

“While the second option provides for a finer segmentation than the ganging option, it would not allow the reference…”

330: “finding to" —> “findings then”

354: “have much” —> “have a much”

(I have only spot-checked the remainder of the document.)

542: unresolved FIXME

 

On Jun 5, 2016, at 8:33 PM, David Morrison <dave AT bnl.gov> wrote:

Dear collaborators,

There was a very good discussion of the response to the ALD’s charge at the Friday general meeting, and here is a draft that incorporates some of the advice we received.  For example, there is now a table of scenarios in the executive summary.  There is also an appendix with summary budget numbers.  We’d like to consider this draft provisionally final (we’d turn off the line numbers in the truly final version of course), but we’d be happy for any specific comments by noon ET on Monday.  After the Friday meeting, we had arranged with Berndt Mueller to move the deadline from Friday to Monday.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qsy19ir6z551ls1/draft_v3.pdf?dl=0

I’m tripping over some technical problems trying to produce a diff between this version and the previous one, but if I manage to overcome those I’ll post a link to a diff too.

Regards,

Dave and Gunther

David Morrison Brookhaven National Laboratory phone: 631-344-5840
Physics Department, Bldg 510 C email: dave AT bnl.gov
Upton, NY 11973-5000

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