[Moller] MOLLER collaboration meeting conclusions/action plan

[Krishna Kumar]

Dear MOLLER collaborators:

This is an update on near-term plans regarding MOLLER that emerged from discussions at the end of the collaboration meeting a few weeks ago. At the end of this message, I have attached the action items as listed by Mark Pitt and subsequently edited by the two of us. But I want to also update you on a few other things. 

- First regarding potential reviews:

While we have been preparing over the summer under the assumption that a Director’s review later this Fall focused on “technical feasibility”, JLab management told us that they would prefer to organize a broader Director’s review which would show the Lab that we are ready to pass a DOE-style CD-1 review. This requires significantly more documentation on the various experimental subsystems at the level of the DOE-style Project than we were preparing. After discussion with Hall A management, it was decided that, provided some Project Management resources are made available to us from the Lab, we could be ready to pass such a review by March or April of 2016. 

The rationale for this is sound, as was explained to us. It is likely that MOLLER will enter the CD-n process sometime next year, after the LRP report is released and 2017 and 2018 budgets become a bit clearer for NP. Therefore, the Lab wants us to be ready for any further reviews at the level of a “full” CD-1; it is our expectation that the Science Review of September 2014 will certainly suffice as the basis for CD-0. We are therefore setting up preliminary near-term goals to work towards a “Director’s CD-1-style Review” in Spring 2016.

There remains the issue of whether a separate review is required to establish our readiness with “Technical Feasibility”, something we are prepared to do at any point given the progress we have made in the past couple of years on detectors and the spectrometer and general simulations. We are currently in a dialog with JLab management about whether such a review is needed this Fall. We will update you on the outcome of this discussion as soon as a decision is made.

- Next, there is the updated Proposal document we are working on, which at this point we can call a “Conceptual Design Report”. Given that a review is not imminent and the authors of key subsystems were behind with their contributions, we have set ourselves a new deadline of late September to complete the first draft. 

- Finally, I just want to emphasize that the most important activity over the next 2 months is going to be the work of the ad-hoc Backgrounds Working Group chaired by David Armstrong (see attached slides). We expect the final version of the very positive Science Report to be given to us soon.  It has a recommendation that we should comprehensively inspect our backgrounds, and send a report to DOE by early December. 

Cheers, KK

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