I have a few items in the response on your mails concerning dE/dx in BES-2 and after:

1. It will be a good practice if the minutes from S&C would be published to the collaboration, especially for S&C management meeting where you do have limited audience.
2. I have doubt that we will be able  “to release final results at the upcoming QM conference”.  I see two main obstacles: dE/dx and fixed Target event timing:
   
   1. dE/dx

                                                              i.      In early productions with STAR libraries before SL23c we have observed that the “old dE/dx” model used before does not work with new data. The problem has raised from low momenta tracks and heavy particles starting with proton. 

                                                            ii.      To address this problem dE/dx model has been revisited together with calibration procedure. This “new” dE/dx model has been deployed in STAR library SL23c.

                                                         iii.      The “new” model has addressed the most but not all issues with iTPC era data.

                                                          iv.      The new dE/dx calibration has been done for OO200GeV_2021 ( https://drupal.star.bnl.gov/STAR/system/files/RunXXI%20OO200GeV_1.pdf), 14p5GeV and 19GeV 2019 (https://drupal.star.bnl.gov/STAR/system/files/dEdx_14p5_19GeV_Revision.pdf), and all fixed Target data for run 2019-2020 (https://drupal.star.bnl.gov/STAR/system/files/RunXIX_XXFXT.pdf).

                                                            v.      Till now only OO200GeV_2021 and 19GeV_2021 data has been reproduced.

                                                          vi.      The problem has been reduced but there is some room for improvement. A half year ago we (me, RICE and Dubna) formed a “Combined PiD group” to address these issues.

The Idea is to use identified e, pion and proton from unique reconstructed V0 decays to tune dE/dx and ToF, and after that by using ToF tune dE/dx for kaon, deuteron, …

 There are the second order effects depending on the particle type which should be accounted.

We have to start this new only OO200GeV_2021 and 19GeV_2021 samples produced with SL23d. Time line is kind of difficult to estimate but I hope to have the results in 6 months.

2. fixed Target event timing: Due to long bunches in the fixed target mode (β^* ~ 10 m) there is a jitter between TPC start time (RHIC clock) and time of interaction ~30 ns. This jitter affects track matching through TPC membrane because the jitter split tracks from the East and West halves of TPC.  See Tommy’ slides on TPC meeting (https://drupal.star.bnl.gov/STAR/event/2023/07/06/Weekly-TPC-Meeting/Vertex-resolution-and-space-charge-distribution-different-runs).

The problem is that the simulation does have this jitter and the efficiencies obtained in the embedding are overestimated. For the fixed target the membrane region is a significant part of the phase sace.

3. The additional point about git system employed in STAR. Switching from CVS to git has introduced a delay of a few months before a Pull Request can be deployed in the STAR library release.  

This is unacceptable situation.  This has forced us to do any development in separate branch (TFG).