[Clascomment] OPT-IN:Suppression of neutral pion production in deep-inelastic scattering off nuclei with the CLAS detector

[Taisiya Mineeva]

Dear Dan,

Thank you for carefully reading through the paper, pointing to the grammar
fixes and providing valuable comments. All of your comments were
implemented, and questions are clarified below. I attach the new version of
the paper draft. Please, let me know if you have further comments.

Page2:

 - Paragraph 4. Line 5. "it was placed 30 and 25 cm upstream of the CLAS
> center". I cannot make sense
>    of what you are saying here. What do the values 30 cm and 25 cm
> represent? You just stated in the
>    previous sentence that the liquid and solid targets were separated by 4
> cm. Please review.
>

The deuterium target was 2cm long and the center of the target  was placed
30 cm upstream CLAS center. Yes, it was not clear that the position
referred to the center of the target.
The 4cm separation is then between the end of the deuterium target and the
solid targets.

I received a similar comment from Stepan. Sentence rephrased.

Page 3:
>  - Fig. 1. I do not think that the right figure showing just the
> background adds anything of value and
>    could be eliminated altogether.
>

I tend to agree with you on the non-usefulness of the right figure
depicting solely the background shape; it was not in the first version of
the paper draft but we added it later. The point was to show how the mixed
background shape is fitted with a 5 parameter function (right figure); the
predetermined shape is then normalized by only free parameter of
background, p[0], (left figure) to fit the background under the invariant
mass. I did not remove the background plot from this version of the draft
but we are considering your comment, thank you.


>  - Paragraph 3. Line 2. Use "... was fit with a ...".
>

Since APS is the publisher of PRL, I see that I should indeed use American
English for the past tense of 'fit'! The 'fitted' is the British English
version.


> Page 4:
>  - Fig. 2. I cannot distinguish between your slightly different shades of
> red, blue, and green. I am also
>    not a fan of the different colored horizontal bands of bin width that
> just add business and little content.
>    Perhaps it is better to use different color symbols and symbol types
> for the z bins on each plot and use
>    a gray scale for the bin widths. The detail about the different bin
> widths for each PT2 is not so important
>    to reflect on the plot, so I would use a single light gray band for the
> PT2 bin width of each bin.
>

Considering the gradient scale of Fig.2 in red, blue and green shades, I
see your point, thank you. I am attaching the previous color scale, which
was in the paper draft approved by CLAS committee review. Let me know,
please, what do you think, whether it appears more readable.

In general, the message that this plot should convey is the correlation
between z and pT2 dependencies of multiplicity ratios. The gradient scale,
in our opinion,  allows one to easily distinguish between high-z events,
which are indicated by the darker scale, relative to low-z events indicated
by lighter scale. Darker points are visibly more supressed compared to the
lighter events that are enhanced. For the horizontal bands, I understand
what you mean by more business less content; we included them to indicate
the size of bins, but more so to guide the eye  through the transition from
one bin to another.  We are considering the possibility of removing them,
thanks.

 As far as using different symbols for different z-bins, it could be an
option but on this plot it gets too crowded and harder to follow the trend
as compared to the color indications.

 - Paragraph 1. Line 13. "-17\% to +8\% above unity". What do you mean by
> "above unity"? Is this term even
>    necessary here?
>

 Good point. Given the minus/plus signs of the corrections,  the 'above
unity' is not necessary; removed everywhere.

Page 5:
>  - Fig. 3. This figure is absolutely unreadable to me in its current form.
> There has got to be a better way
>    to convey this information. The symbols on each postage stamp plot are
> utter unreadable and the text
>    legend at the both is of such a small font size as to make one's eyes
> go cross. If your point is that
>    the different points in each z bin for each target are similar, perhaps
> just show an average. If that is
>    not acceptable, remove the statistic error bars as the box outline
> conveys this message. You have to do
>    something to make this more digestible and less busy.
>

We tested numerous ways to present data, both on Fig.2 and Fig.3, and the
final decision is based upon the message that is conveyed in each figure.
Here, the main message is conveyed by the color bands in red, blue and
green which indicate the average behavior as a function of z. The
'cluttering' of points is to show that we could access three-fold behavior
in nu and Q2 as a function of z, but the dependencies on electron
kinematics are weak and are within uncertainties indicated by the box.


 - Question: As model calculations (especially GiBUU) should be available
> or can be done, this paper seems
>    deficient with no theory comparisons. You have some hand-wavy
> discussions, but these are no so impressive
>    without the calculations included here. I think this lack of theory
> detracts from this work.
>

We purposely did not include any model predictions in this paper,
publishing it à la HERMES (2011) two-fold results:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epja/i2011-11113-5.
Yes, preliminary GiBUU predictions on pi0 exist, they were done along with
charged pions predictions published earlier. However, they do not explain
the difference in Cronin effect between pi0  and charged pions that we
observe in our data. Nor does the other model (Guiot-Kopeliovich)  used in
charged pion publication; it does not contain ingredients that would
differentiate between three pion states. We intend to collect a larger body
of model predictions to publish a conclusive explanation. Our 'hand-wavy'
discussions are based on general principles of the interplay of partonic
and hadronic interaction in nuclei.  Finally, the target journal is PRL, it
has a limit of 3650 words.

References:
>  - Do not include arXiv information for already published papers.
>

I prefer to include arXiv references, at least for now,  since not all the
institutions have free access to all the journals, arXiv is accessible to
everyone.


Many thanks again, and best regards,
Taisiya
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