Weekly EC Meeting

Monday 15 Aug 2022, 10:00 → 11:00 America/Los_Angeles

Zoom info: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/93798137536?pwd=Q2JZRjVWRThUSkZ3UThLU28yc20vQT09

EC members present:  Stepan, Tim, John, Cameron, Norman, Rafo

Tom Eichlersmith's service work:

Tim presented some proposed plans for Tom's service work, based on input solicited from the offline group coordinators (analysis, recon, MC) and further discussion with analysis coordination. The proposal includes a required service task that is critical for our core analysis work on 2019 and 2021 and not motivated by the 2016 iDM analysis being proposed for Tom's dissertation. This pure service task is proposed to replace the usual requirement of contribution to construction or operation of the experiment, which is not compatible with Tom's timeline.  In addition, Tom would be expected to make contributions according to the work plans of the Reconstruction and Monte Carlo groups in the performance of his analysis, similar to the more generic service work usually proposed for HPS members. These two types of contributions and the possibilities associated with them were presented by Tim (see slides) and after some discussion, a consensus developed around the proposed service work, as follows:

The required service task is twofold;

• to debug and fully test the Millipede alignment framework for Kalman filter tracking on 2016 data and Monte Carlo where we have a well understood GBL alignment and a fully working detector.  PF has written code to enable Millipede alignment with KF tracks, but the code does not work for reasons that he has been unable to determine after working on it periodically over many months.  The deliverables here are 
  • benchmarking of KF based alignment against the existing GBL alignment, demonstrating equivalent functionality and consistent results.
  • demonstrating that KF based alignment works correctly when data is missing from some sensors, which is the key motivation for this tool.
• to work with the experts on 2019 and 2021 alignment to deploy this tool on the 2019 and 2021 datasets and assist in using it to improve the 2019 and 2021 alignment.  The deliverable here is not to produce these alignments, per se, but to provide those performing these alignments with support in using the KF-based Millipede alignment, include studies on data and MC that are required to understand its performance on these detectors.

Areas where we anticipate that Tom will collaborate with others to contribute significantly to the work plans of the Reconstruction and Monte Carlo groups in performing his analysis include:

• Revisiting, understanding and improving the MC tools being used for background, which is currently under study by Omar and of critical importance for all HPS analysis.
• Relieving key discrepancies between data and MC (tracking chisq, hit/track efficiency, momentum and time resolution) through improvements in reconstruction and/or better modeling of important effects in MC.  This is a broad topic that will involve work by all HPS analyzers.

While HPS expects that Tom will make significant contributions in these areas (and possibly others, as well) there are no specific and required deliverables.

Finally, Tim pointed out there are a large number of tasks beyond those allocated to Tom, where an EC meeting in the near future will discuss the broader set of tasks and assignments that Tim, Matt and Cameron drafted, including the plans for Alic (well underway), Emrys, Rory and Sarah, and how those fit with the planned activities of Norman, Matt, Omar, Cameron, Tongtong, and PF.

After some discussion to refine the proposal to the above points, the EC voted unanimously in favor of this plan.

Plans for Fall 2022 collaboration meeting

The EC discussed the importance of having a collaboration meeting soon, to focus the collaboration on the critical analysis tasks in the coming months.  John expressed the value of meeting as soon as possible, given how long it has been since we have met in person.  With JLab and SLAC meetings the last two weeks of October and the first week of November, this suggests a meeting in the first week of October.  (It has subsequently been pointed out that this makes attendance difficult for our European collaborators given current travel availability issues.)  The other option would be to meet the week before Thanksgiving.  A decision was deferred, but will be taken up via email in the next days.

10:00 → 10:30 Tom Eichlersmith service work

We will discuss the proposal for service work for Tom Eichlersmith of UMN.

Speaker: Timothy Nelson (SLAC)

Tom_Eichlersmith_proposal.pdf