sPHENIX is a new detector at RHIC.

[Gunther M Roland <rolandg AT mit.edu>]

Dear Colleagues,

Last weekend the project and co-spokespeople were notified by the ALD Berndt Mueller about a recent communication from the DOE office of nuclear science in response to the MVTX pre-proposal submitted last year. We met with the ALD last Wednesday, and discussed what we learned with the MVTX management team on Thursday and Friday. A summary can be found in a presentation prepared for Friday's biweekly MVTX meeting:

https://indico.bnl.gov/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=4114

The message from DOE is that while they "appreciate the compelling science this instrument could enable and why it is considered very important to the sPHENIX experiment by the collaboration" they unfortunately "do not foresee at this time that we would be able to identify new DOE funding for the purpose of implementing the MVTX". DOE "very much appreciate and encourage efforts to secure" international contributions to sPHENIX to implement elements of the detector that can not be funded with the RHIC budget constraints. 

Please see the presentation for further details and first thoughts on how to proceed. 

As before, we remain fully committed to building a detector that delivers the full sPHENIX physics program. While the DOE budget developments narrow our path to achieving this goal, there are other options available, in particular in regards to non-US sPHENIX institutions able and willing to contribute to the MVTX project. We will have further discussions involving project and BNL management in the near future. We will also have a brainstorming session at next week's general meeting, and are planning to call an EC meeting for further discussion.

Best,

Gunther and Dave