[Gpdtc] Update....

[Christian Weiss]

David, All,


Definitely it makes sense to combine the efforts.


I regard this as a very positive development. It would be a chance to create a very strong proposal and collaboration,
bringing together most of the active community in the US and the leaders in the field.


[Not to diminish our own efforts, but it was/is clear that we do not have the critical mass with the present group, 
and that substantial expansion would have been needed for us to be viable… I expressed this on several occasions.
Going together with them would solve this problem in a natural way.]


It is good that this is being coordinated now, before anyone starts with serious preparations. The question of involving
Xiangdong and the CNF was raised early on in our discussions; our explorations so far were based on the assumption 
that “this is not on their radar”; if you have other information now then clearly we should adjust our plans.


There is some merit in approaching them as a group, as you suggest; it would show our preparations so far and give all
of us individually more leverage in the upcoming merger. We should discuss whether there is anything we collectively
want to exact as a “price” for joining, as this would need to be brought up early on and clearly; so far I don’t see anything.
I personally am prepared to bring up in the larger effort anything I brought up in our group earlier ;-)


Again, this is a very positive development, and I look forward to working further with you in this initiative.


Best regards,


Ch.





> On Dec 22, 2021, at 3:26 PM, David Richards <dgr at jlab.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
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