[Gpdtc] Update....

[David Richards]

Dear All,

I mentioned just before our meeting on Tuesday that Jianwei had received a call from Feng Yang (LBL) regarding topical collaborations, and it is only now that we’ve had an opportunity to talk.  Let me summarize my understanding of the discussion between Feng and Jianwei, and then start some discussion about how to proceed.

Feng Yang approached Jianwei about a possible topical collaboration broadly in the area of GPDs, and touching on CNF, and the people mentioned were Xiangdong (UMD/CNF), Yong Zhao (ANL), Hatta (BNL), Matthias Burkhardt (NMSU), and Phiala Shanahan (MIT).  

A few observations.  Firstly, the numbers of participants are is somewhat smaller than our group.  Second, the breadth of effort appears somewhat less, notably it is more heavily focused on “theory”, and less so on “lattice" and certainly on “global fitting/error quantization” and it is the amalgam of these efforts toward a common goal that is at the core of our discussion.  Finally, looking at the lay of the land,  it is hard to see how any of the institutions mentioned above are likely to be able to obtain a commitment for a bridge position that is almost certainly an important criterion.

We do have a strong team, but having two proposals addressing too closely aligned physics goals would probably be pretty damaging to both.  Further they do bring important strength across certain areas of demography.  So one option is to ask them whether they would like to join our effort, and in what role - and if we are to approach them for discussion, probably the first points of contact would be Feng and Xiangdong.   However, how to proceed has to be a collective decision of all of us, so we need to have some discussion first.

Regards,
David