Re: next reactor working group meeting

Ed, Gabriela,

A couple of comments on your proposal and possible meeting conflicts:

First, let me point out that we have already made arrangements to
have a US KamLAND meeting at Berkeley on May 13-14 as there is
overlap between the participants in the US KamLAND meetings and the
planned APS reactor working group meeting. A few colleagues from
Japan plan to attend the KamLAND meeting on May 13-14. Moving the APS
meeting to Chicago would imply that KamLAND members who are also
involved in the APS reactor neutrino group may not be able to attend.

My second comment concerns the issue you raised in your email
regarding the discussion and interaction with the
accelerator/superbeam group. It appears to me that it might be better
to have the discussion with the accelerator/superbeam group after the
reactor group has had a chance to discuss its position and clearly
outline it in the draft report. In your email you state that "these
groups are not likely to agree on the mix of experiments needed
before theta13 is established". If this is the case, I think it would
be problematic. Both for the proposed reactor neutrino experiments as
well as a domestic neutrino effort.

Also, it appears to me that we still have some work to do in the
reactor group to make a clear and concise case for the 1% experiment
we envision.

Perhaps it would make sense to have a separate meeting between the
reactor and accelerator groups at a later time, or postpone the
reactor group meeting if working group members plan to attend the
accelerator meeting at Fermilab.

Best regards,
Karsten

At 1:30 PM -0500 4/21/04, Ed Blucher wrote:
>Dear Colleagues:
>
>Although you haven't heard from us lately, a lot has happened since our
>last working group meeting. There's been significant progress on our
>working group report, and there was a "mid-course correction" meeting of
>the working group leaders and study organizers on April 1-2.
>
>The midcourse meeting included a discussion of how the final study
>report will be written. The report, for which writing has not yet
>been assigned, will be ~30 pages organized along physics topics.
>The individual working group reports will be appended to this report.
>
>The midourse meeting also included a discussion of how to deal with physics
>topics of interest to multiple working groups.
>In particular, there was a rather tense discussion about theta13 and
>whether superbeams/off axis and reactors are competing or complementary
>experiments. The bottom line of the discussion was that the reactor and
>off-axis working groups were urged to reach some consensus.
>While these groups are not likely to agree on
>the mix of experiments needed before theta13 is established, we think
>we can reach a consensus on how information from the two approaches is
>complementary when making measurements (e.g., how do different measurements
>contribute to searching for CP violation). We've already spoken with
>some of the off-axis/superbeams people and believe agreement on some
>issues is possible.
>
>The superbeams group will be having a meeting at Fermilab
>on May 13-14 (the days before we had planned to have our
>own meeting at Berkeley), arranged to coincide with a NOvA meeting
>on May 15-16.
>We think there are two options for our own meeting:
>
>1) We can keep our original plan and have a reactor working group meeting
> at Berkeley. In this case, we could try to reach a consensus with the
> Superbeam group at the June meeting (or informally before the
> final meeting).
>
>2) We could move our meeting to Chicago (May 15) and arrange a small,
> working meeting with some of the superbeams people on the 14th.
>
>
>We both feel that reaching some common ground with the accelerator group is
>critical to the final report, and therefore prefer the second option. (Given
>the short time before the final study meeting, it's not possible to schedule
>our working group meeting and a joint meeting independently.)
>We would like to get others opinions about this before making a decision.
>Time is late, so we would like to get comments by this Friday. We'll then
>send out a message with the plan for the meeting.
>
>Thanks very much.
> Regards,
> Gabriela and Ed
Received on Wed Apr 21 14:36:00 2004