2. Notice of STAR meetings and reviews
Simulation and analysis software expert workshop at LBL 29 November to 3 December.A Electronics and Software systems design workshop will be held in University of Texas at Austin from November 7 to 11.
The next STAR collaboration meeting will be held at LBL from January 17 to 21. This meeting will be precceded by a two day STAR physics workshop to be held on January 14 and 15 in Monterey in conjunction with the Quark Matter 95 conference.
A series of meetings has started here at BNL, with Mike Marx as the chairman, to look into more detail on what the "End Game" for the RHIC project will be. One of the primary goals is to mesh the schedules of the accelerator and the detectors during the last year or so of the project (i.e. 1998 * March of 1999). We've had two meetings so far. In the first meeting Mike Harrison presented the schedule for the accelerator commisioning and gave some thoughts on what the first year or so of operations might be like. In the second meeting I, along with Jim Mills and Ralph Brown, presented STAR's schedule and plans for this time period. At the next meeting (11/2) PHENIX will present their schedule/plan, and on 11/21 BRAHMS and perhaps PHOBOS will present their schedules. The general approach being taken is to see all of the schedules before we start trying to fit them together. I'm very interested to see what PHENIX presents next week.
A review of the 90 percent complete BNL plant engineering drawings for STAR's 6 o'clock Assembly Building was completed. Several issues and exceptions were discussed and rectified. Preparations began for the next electronics workshop to be held in Austin, Texas in November 1994.
Tom Noggle, the lead engineer for TPC Front End Electronics, accepted a position in the private sector, and will be leaving STAR at the end of October. We wish to thank Tom for his enthusiasm and dedication. Tom's position will be filled by Fred Bieser, an engineer in LBL's Nuclear Science Division.
With the beginning of the new fiscal year, a new feature will be added to the STAR Monthly Report - "The Photo of the Month." This new section will feature a photo of one aspect of STAR construction that illustrates significant progress within the project.
A majority of the mechanical integration manpower for the month of September was again spent on the rebaselining effort. Preliminary assembly scenario work has begun. This work has focused on the movement of the magnet pole tips and supports and how this movement relates to the location of mechanical and electrical components in the Assembly Building and WAH. The TPC and EMC groups were contacted and asked to provide to the magnet group features they required on the magnet steel.
Locations of electrical components in the WAH and Assembly Building were determined (i.e. transformers, power distribution boxes etc.). The one line electrical diagram for AC power was refined.
A review of the new assembly building rebid package was performed. An understanding of the impact of the de-scoped package on the assembly of the detector is being developed.
Buckbee-Mears has delivered five production pad planes. The dummy sector is nearly complete and the first real sector has started through the production line. Machining of the outer sector backers is roughly 95 percent complete.
The Sector Mounting Tool (SMT) arm design required some rework after an interference with other structures within the TPC was found. An FEA evaluation of the arm support frame design is nearly complete, and indicates that the tight deflection criteria can be met. Rework of the detailed drawings of the arm are in process.
Alexei Lebedev and John Boehm have begun to lay out the laser fan-out system. This work includes the selection of optics, and the preliminary design of mounts and enclosures.
The detailed design of the wheel will begin in October. Significant progress has been made including the generation of a 3-D model. Work on the wheel is being paced by the design of the laser fan-out.
A new resource-loaded schedule for the TPC has been completed as part ofthe rebaselining effort.
All available DAQ personnel were occupied with preparations for the October TAC review.
The interface between TRIG and DAQ is nearly final. Details of the handoff mechanism for events stored in the level 2 buffers are being discussed. A document is now under discussion with the different detector groups that will establish the interface to detector subsystems and the distribution of the level 2 information. Two members of the trigger group have been appointed liaisons to the software and simulations group. The connection to the new upgrade detectors, TOF and EMC, have been formalized so that the trigger group is represented.
An EPICS Collaboration Meeting at LBL was attended by Sakrejda, McShane, Gross, Burke, McParland, Jacobson, Ghazikhanian, Howe and Engelage. Gross presented the status of STAR to the collaboration, and conducted tutorial sessions for members of the Slow Controls group. The group organized a workshop that preceded the meeting. Sakrejda attended practice runs for the October Cost and Schedule Review.
Work proceeded on several modules in the full analysis chain used in the simulations shown at the August STAR collaboration meeting. The changes are intended to make the analysis chain more robust. A new driver for the SVT tracking package (stk) was installed which automates the iterative cone-search track-finding procedure. Progress was made in joining the TPC track segments generated by the standard TPC track finder (tpt).
An option was added to the global track refitter (egr) to allow global tracks formed from SVT-TPC matched track pairs to use position information from the SVT, and momentum information from the TPC. Work began on a global track evaluator for momentum resolution studies. The TPC dE/dx and PID modules (tid) were modified in order to eliminate merged TPC hits from the dE/dx calculation for each track, thus significantly improving the TPC PID capabilities. A prototype visualization shell which links the STAR visualization code, Stargl, with TAS was developed and tested.
A final payment brought the total STAR contribution for the Oracle Database software to $7.2K. Software infrastructure activities in September consisted of interfacing TAS to column-wise ntuples, continuing work on interfacing TAS to the dataset library, and organizing the GNU software tools on the RHIC computers. Investigation of CORBA and related OMT (Object Modeling Techinque) technologies continued.
The committee consisted of TAC members: Don Geesaman (ANL), Bruce Gibbard (BNL), Andrew Lankford (UC Irvine), Tom Ludlam (BNL-chair), Michael Marx(Stony Brook), Bernhard Mecking(CEBAF), Jerry Nolan (ANL), Dennis Theriot (FNAL-ret) and consultants: Joel Bowers(LLNL), Hans Hilke CERN), and Venetios Polychronakos (BNL). Observers included Satoshi Ozaki (RHIC Director), Dennis Kovar (DOE), and other cognizant people from DOE and RHIC management.
In broad summary, the committee found that STAR construction is proceeding satisfactorily. With about 25% of construction costs obligated, fabrication and major procurements are proceeding on or close to the baseline schedule in all areas. The new" rebaselined" cost and schedule was judged reasonable and appropriate although the present level of contingency (18.7% of remaining obligations) was judged low for this stage of construction. (This assessment is consistent with that of the STAR Project director who informed the committee that a contingency of 20% would be more comfortable.) Given the fact that STAR management is alert to this situation and is closely monitoring costs and schedule, the committee does not regard this as a serious concern at this time.
On the technical side the committee judged that nearly all essential technical development issues have been resolved for the baseline detector. The committee's major comments and recommendations indicate their view that: a) the TPC is in an advanced state (as the committee noted "with great satisfaction") and that their tour of work in progress at the LBL shops was "impressive and reassuring;" b) the solenoid magnet has made excellent progress since the last review; c) the redesign of the data acquisitions systems appears satisfactory; d) the recent development of a Structured Analysis Structured Design model for the entire STAR electronics and software systems has had important benefits in defining interfaces and clarifying functions between subsystems; and e) the SVT has made significant progress in the development of drift detectors in the past year.
The committee also indicated that: a) the TPC front end electronics appears to be in excellent shape; b) the hardware of the current trigger design will work as intended and, provided that the physics algorithms it reflects are powerful enough, will perform the desired trigger functions; c) the progress and status of the slow controls is very impressive; and d) that the integration effort is proceeding well with a good understanding of the system requirements, detector interfaces, and the movements and clearances required to install and commission the magnet and detector elements.
The committee also indicated a number of areas of concern and provided STAR management with a number of useful recommendations to help alleviate these concerns. The concerns include: a) some design changes in the TPC which depart from previous TPC experience and have not yet (in the committee's view) been fully evaluated with regard to potential risk; b) the slow rate of progress, compared to expectations, towards the fabrication of a full ladder prototype of the SVT in order to address systems aspects; c) although there is substantial progress in the computing, analysis and simulations effort, there are not enough well-defined intermediate milestones in this part of the project to make it straight-forward for the collaboration to monitor progress and it did not appear to the committee that general simulations were being used extensively throughout the collaboration to make and justify decisions based a clear physics gains.
In summary, the Review committee felt that "the STAR collaboration and its management have assembled an effective construction team, involving national laboratory as well as university resources. While there are some areas that need strengthening (see concerns), the committee feels that this team has the resources and the capability to complete the project on schedule and within budget."
Reported by Spencer Klein
Tom Noggle, lead engineer for the TPC electronics has accepted a position as Director of R&D for Logitech Corp., where he will focus on imaging devices (scanners). He will be replaced by Fred Bieser, who is currently working on the TPC electronics for NA-49 at CERN.
Although Tom will be leaving us as of October 28th, he has been working hard to ensure that there will be a smooth transition. Tom commented that he is sad to be leaving, that he had enjoyed working with everybody on STAR, but found this opportunity too good to pass up.
Fred has worked at LBL since 1982, most recently as the lead engineer on the NA-49 TPC electronics. STAR is very fortunate that Fred is available to step in to help us. Besides his obvious skills, his experience on NA-49, where the electronics bear many similarities to STAR, will be extremely useful on STAR. Before coming to LBL, Fred worked at the UC Space Sciences Laboratory.
The server contains:
Various enhancements will occur during the next year. Please send any suggestions to pdg@lbl.gov.
Joining STAR -- Fred Bieser
3. Christies Corner
4. STAR Project Summary (from the July monthly report)
The final baseline cost roll-up was completed in late September. The last iteration of the Integrated Project Schedule (IPS) and subsystem summary schedules were finalized. Dry runs were held for all talks prepared for the October TAC review.
TPC Summary and Highlights
TPC Summary and Highlights The field cage of the OFC 5-cm gas gap prototype has run for up to 160 hours at 120 kV without breakdown using hexafluoroethane (C2F6) gas. The OFC winding mandrel is complete with the exception of the foam outer layers.
Magnet Summary and Highlights
The contract for the main and space trim coils was awarded near the end of September. The cost was very close to the estimate. Work continues on the detailed design of the pole-tip trim coils. The Final Design Review of the core was held in early September. The design passed the review with some helpful suggestions for clarification and improvements. Work is proceeding on the main and poletip supports.
Electronics Summary and Highlights
The SAS16 chip submitted at the end of August had an error in the top level metallization. The designer found this error a few days after the first submission, and a corrected design was submitted a week later. Work on modifying test jigs and on the automatic IC tester for this part has started. The SAS16 part uses a more balanced power supply, necessitating a different power supply rating (more current on the negative supply). A new power supply specification is being developed for STAR=92s Russian colleagues at MEPhI to see if they can build a supply to the new specifications. Chip testing of the 2600 SCA/ADC devices is complete and the parts have been returned to LBL. The 33 percent yield was slightly lower than expected. Much effort and time focused on the STAR baseline review in October.
Computing Summary and Highlights
A rack-mounted system with four 10.8 GB (raw) disks was delivered on September 30. The disks will be used to replace smaller STAR-owned disks on ribm00.
5. Contributions
Summary of Review of STAR by the
RHIC Technical Advisory Committee (TAC)
{summarized by Jay Marx from initial report of TAC}
The first annual review of the STAR construction effort was carried out at LBL on October 10-12 by the TAC. The committee's primary aim was to assess the status of the STAR construction project, now approximately 1 1/2 years beyond approval, with respect to the cost, schedule and technical progress. The committee evaluated the new cost and schedule baseline developed by the project staff to accommodate the stretch out of RHIC until March 1999 and examined the major changes proposed by STAR to the original technical baseline: a new architecture for the data acquisition system in response to the problems with the T-9000 transputor and the capability using a He-ethane (50-50) gas mixture in the TPC in addition to the P-10 originally proposed. In addition, the status of the SVT R&D was presented to the committee although it is not part of the current construction effort.
Changes in the front end electronics group
World-Wide Web
The Particle Data Group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is pleased to announce the availability of its new World-Wide Web server at http://pdg.lbl.gov/
6. Comings and goings at STAR
Leaving STAR -- Tom Noggle