[Hps] Summary of the collaboration meeting

[Stepan Stepanyan]

Dear HPS,

With much delay, here is the summary of our collaboration meeting on November 18/19. Despite interference with ongoing workshops and conferences, especially LDMA-2019 where many of our collaborators attended, we had 30 registered participants. Many thanks to the speakers for well-structured presentations and for initiating lively discussions. Talks are available on the indico page,
https://www.jlab.org/indico/event/324/
This page is linked from our meeting page -
https://www.jlab.org/conference/HPS_NOV2019

As for the summary of the meeting, first, congratulations to new members of the Executive committee, Omar Moreno and Rafayel Paremuzyan. They have been elected by the collaboration in a very tight race, thanks to everyone who agreed to run in the election. Omar and Rafayel will replace Matt Graham and Nathan Boltzel on EC, many thanks to Nathan and Matt for serving more than two years as members of EC. 

Our two-day meeting among other things covered two important areas of activities that have a delivery date in about six months from now. First, is the completion of analysis of the engineering run data and the release of results for publication. Now that run is over, both analysis groups, for a resonance search and for the displaced vertex analysis, are making very good progress. Presentations were clear, with timelines for completion of various stages. Both analysis groups are working on analysis notes. Very soon we will start forming review committees for analysis review. The goal is to have results released sometime in May 2020.

A second important item that was discussed was the analysis of the summer run (the accumulated charge for golden runs, detector and beamline performances) and the status of calibrations and data processing. From Rafo’s presentation, we learned that the “golden” runs are ~49% of what was expected from 4 PAC weeks run (this includes runs taken with beam charge modulations). From the analysis of detector performance, it is clear that some work has to be done on detectors before the next run. Calibration of data started, calibration of the hodoscope is almost done, ECal and SVT are making good progress. While not fully calibrated, the first look on FEEs looks promising, as well as an initial look on SVT alignment. This work has the same deadline, we want to have the full performance of the 2019 detector (mass and vertex resolutions, evaluation of rates and acceptance for long-lived particles) by May 2020.

Besides the above, we discussed the status of our software for MC and reconstruction. A new MC framework is in the validation stage and soon will be available for us. In the reconstruction software, improvements are expected very soon especially in the tracking. 
 
The May 2020 date for completion of the above tasks is driven by JLAB PAC-48 deadline. PAC-48 will review Hall-B run groups as part of the jeopardy process. HPS is one of the run groups and must submit an updated proposal for running the remaining beam time and prepare a presentation for PAC. After discussions, we concluded that in order to succeed and preserve our approved beam time, HPS must have engineering run results out and should demonstrate that the proposed performance of the upgraded detector and ultimately physics reach are met. Both must be presented in the proposal update as well as in the presentation.

Regards, Stepan