[Gpdtc] Topical collaboration....

[David Richards]

Dear Feng and Xiangdong,

Jianwei said earlier this week that you had been talking about the possibility of pulling together a team, focused on GPDs, to respond to the expected call for Topical Collaborations in Nuclear Theory.  We’ve been having discussions about this focused both on the physics, and on the potential to create university bridge positions.  At the moment, we’ve had discussions amongst participants at ANL, JLab/Hampton/WM, Temple, UConn.

In the case of the physics, we’ve formulated our ideas into the broad areas of

a) QCD Theory, and experimental processes
b) First-principles lattice QCD computations
c) Global analysis/error quantification using lattice + experimental measures
d) Implication for our understanding of internal structure of nucleons and nuclei

The other aspect we’ve been focused on is the issue of bridge positions, and in practice this is the issue where time is most of the essence, given the need to engage with the administrations at the universities.

Collectively, we all feel that a combined effort would provide an exceptionally strong proposal - none of us have seen the FOA, but certainly Tim Hallman has indicated that one focused on hadron structure would be a high priority, given the 12GeV data now emerging and the future EIC.  

Regards,
David