sPHENIX is a new detector at RHIC.

[David Morrison <morrison AT bnl.gov>]

Dear sPHENIX collaborators,

A reminder that due to overlap with the ongoing RHIC/AGS Users' meeting, we'll forego the general meeting today.  Instead, we have several items of collaboration news to pass along here.  That's right, this week the general meeting is virtually virtual!

The 11th sPHENIX Collaboration Meeting will take place next Thursday and Friday, June 17-18, and the agenda can be found here: https://indico.bnl.gov/event/12086/
We are still open to suggestions regarding the agenda for the collaboration meeting.  We also need to head from our L2 managers about speakers!

Sookhyun Lee will organize an sPHENIX juniors' event for the evening of Wednesday June 16.  Look for an announcement from her soon!

There is a survey still circulating to the IB, asking them to update the collaboration roster and contact info.  We're really looking for all IB reps to respond to the survey.  This is important for a number of reasons, but one key reason is that we're using the roster to build a list of names allowed to access the sPHENIX Indico!

We had our first official meeting with Haiyan Gao (the new BNL ALD for Nuclear and Particle Physics).  Haiyan will address the sPHENIX collaboration at our meeting next wrrk – she's on the schedule for Thursday, June 17 at 3pm ET.  It's a great chance to meet the new ALD, show her how engaged the collaboration is, and even ask some timely questions!

You'll recall that one recommendation of the software and computing review was for a follow-up review before the SDCC finalizes their computing purchase plans.  Jamie Dunlop will be organizing that review, which really should be considered a procurement readiness review (PRR) more than a follow-up review of sPHENIX S&C.  No dates have been set yet, but expect it to take place sooner rather than later.

We raised with Haiyan the issue of simultaneous membership in STAR and sPHENIX.  This came up when the sPHENIX collaboration was being formed, but the question of how to handle this in an optimal way has taken on new urgency as sPHENIX is soon to be an operating experiment.  We impressed upon the ALD that it's important to decide on a sensible solution soon.  She agreed and a meeting between STAR, sPHENIX and BNL will be set up soon to discuss the issue and how to proceed.

The PAC meeting will take place on June 22-23.  There will be three sPHENIX presentations: Ed O'Brien on the project status, Gunther Roland on the collaboration status and beam use proposal, and Huge Pereira da Costa on the TPC outer tracker.

The task forces on bylaws updates and on publication policy have been busy and we expect to circulate the results of their work for collaboration comment soon.

There have been excellent sPHENIX talks and posters at the RHIC/AGS Users' meeting.  Jin Huang (BNL) on cold QCD with sPHENIX, Cameron Dean (LANL) on the sPHENIX HF program and a very nice sPHENIX overview in Thursday's plenary session by Ejiro Umaka (ISU). You can take a look at their slides here: https://indico.bnl.gov/event/11322/

See you next week at the collaboration meeting!

Cheers,
Dave and Gunther

-- 
David Morrison  Brookhaven National Laboratory  phone: 631-344-5840
                Physics Department, Bldg 510 C    fax: 631-344-3253
                          Upton, NY 11973-5000  email: dave AT bnl.gov