[Hps] Upcoming Election of New Members

[Jaros, John A.]

Dear HPS,

The HPS EC has received applications for membership in the HPS Collaboration from a number of new people, Chris Cuevas, Ben Raydo, Scott Kaneta, and Raphael Dupre.  

Their statements of interest, contribution, and commitment are copied below.

The Executive Committee has decided to hold an email election for these individuals instead of waiting until the next collaboration meeting, since that date is some time off. The election will be held in 30 days, on December 3. At that time, we'll request your votes on all four.

For now, please read over the attached statements. 

Sincerely,

John
for the HPS EC


1. Statement from Ben Raydo:

Formal request for acceptance into the HPS collaboration
10/30/2012
Dear HPS Executive Committee,
I was happy to participate in the HPS test run and see the pieces come together so quickly. The experience demonstrated the HPS groups' commitment to making this experiment happen. I am interested in joining the HPS collaboration and to give it the attention it deserves to ensure it is an experimental success. In the HPS test run I implemented a significant part of the triggering system for the ECAL and assisted in areas I was able to provide help (mainly DAQ and trigger). For the future of HPS, I am committed to deliver a refined and improved high level triggering system for the ECAL. I am also always happy to provide additional help where I can and look forward to continued work with the HPS group.
Thanks,
Benjamin Raydo 

2. Statement from Scott Kaneta

Hi everyone,

I would like to formally request to join the HPS collaboration.  For the HPS test run, I was the primary designer of the firmware for the Crate Trigger Processor (CTP).  It was at the CTP level that clusters were calculated in each of the two halves of the calorimeter to help form the trigger for data acquisition.

There are several improvements for the true HPS run that Ben and I would like to make.  The limitations of CTP prototypes used in the test run had a significant impact on the capabilities of the trigger.  More specifically, the data path between the FADCs and CTP limited the energy resolution of the trigger and the FPGA was pushed to its limits, preventing the addition of requested features (like hits per cluster).


While the specifications for the production version of the CTP are still being discussed, there are several hardware improvements we hope take advantage of.  First, the FPGA will be upgraded so more features can be added and timing issues with the previous firmware design can be reduced.  Second, while prototype testing is still in ongoing, we have seen encouraging progress toward potentially increasing the bandwidth between the FADC and CTP.  Among other things, this could provide a much better resolution of hit energy for trigger calculations.  Third, we have been testing an Ethernet interface on a different prototype that, if added to the CTP, could give much better access for control, monitoring, and troubleshooting.  New hardware with additional effort on the software interface and firmware should yield a drastic improvement of the trigger.  


It was exciting to participate in my first real experiment here at JLab and I look forward to working with you all again in the future.


Thank you for your consideration,
Scott

3. Statement from Chris Cuevas

Greetings,

I have had good intentions to write sooner, but will take this opportunity to let you know that several of us from the JLAB Fast Electronics Group would like to join the HPS collaboration.

I am delighted that the new pipeline DAq and trigger hardware that has been developed for the 12GeV experimental programs was useful for the HPS test run and provided a perfect beam test for the pre-production versions of the new hardware.  Other contributions from the group were the complete redesign and layout for the Calorimeter amplifier motherboard and interconnection board.

The recent HPS collaboration meeting at SLAC was very informative and included exciting news regarding the strong possibility to run the HPS experiment in Hall B when 12GeV operations begin.  The Fast Electronics Group is already delivering production hardware for the other experimental halls, so in less than a year, all 12GeV DAq and Trigger modules will be ready for installation.

The next HPS run will bring significant changes to the firmware and work will be needed to correct or redesign the Calorimeter motherboard/interconnection board.  I recognize that there will be significant work to integrate a Muon detector into the trigger system and many other electronic activities that could use our in house expertise and resources.

I admit that I have not read the HPS collaboration by-laws and do not know if we would be considered 'voting' members.  In the end, the HPS experiment work is technically challenging and is a perfect fit for our newly developed pipelined DAq and Trigger system hardware.

Please call or reply if you have questions or require additional information.

Best regards,
Chris Cuevas
Group Leader - Fast Electronics

4. Statement from Raphael Dupre

Hello Stepan,

You can find here my letter of application to HPS collaboration:

My name is Raphaël Dupré and I am a newly hired staff member in the JLab group of the Institut de Physique Nucléaire d'Orsay. I would like to join the HPS collaboration to participate to the experiment, my focus being on two topics. First, I would like to be involved in the calorimeter work carried out in Orsay and eventually in Jlab during installation. Second, I would like to participate to the data analysis,I am of course interested in the A' search, but also in	 the true muonium 
search.

I would work on hardware with the engineers in Orsay as a link with the collaboration in order to follow the advancement of work, but also the technical and financial issues. I would also take the lead for seeking a grant of the French organization ANR, in order to secure the participation of Orsay to the calorimeter construction.

The physics of dark matter in the "large" coupling region appears very appealing to me since it could solve some important issues with the muon g-2 puzzle. The capacity to go at very low coupling is also of much interests, to explore new grounds, but I would like to focus more on the true muonium search. Its implication as a precision QED measurement appears to be a powerful test of QED at small distances.

I hope I have convinced you of my motivation to join the HPS collaboration and am available for questions.

Best regards,

-- 

Raphaël Dupré
Institut de Physique Nucléaire d'Orsay