STAR Newsletter

August 2018 edition

Contents:

• From the Spokespersons
• FMS Disassembly
• Summer Sunday Recap
• STAR arts

A note from the editor: as a collaboration-wide communication tool, this newsletter is set up to allow comments (subject to moderation against abuse), and all STAR Collaborators are welcome to do so! Please keep in mind that some content (including all comments) may be considered internal to the Collaboration and only accessible when logged into Drupal. Documentation is available here.

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From the Spokespersons
(Zhangbu Xu - Co-Spokesperson)

STAR summer maintenance (shut-down) has progressed well and is on schedule. The detector has been rolled out to the assembly building after a very successful Summer Sunday (August 5^th, read a recap of the event below). The installation of iTPC sectors is ahead of the schedule with all 12 sectors on the east expected to be replaced by the end of this week. To date, twenty three good iTPC sectors have arrived at BNL from SDU.

After a slow start on paper submissions early this year, we have picked up the pace in the last few months with 11 papers submitted for journal publication and 11 papers have been published.

We had the Collaboration Meeting at Lehigh University from July 16^th-21^st with its first day as the Juniors’ Day and last day as an EPD workshop. The main goals were to review the status of detector upgrades, finalize the results from Quark Matter for publication, and discuss the software for production/calibration and analyses. The townhall meeting focused on preparation for BES-II data-taking and physics analyses, and drafting of a letter to BNL management on continuing STAR operations beyond BES-II (the letter is available here).

An election committee has been set up by the STAR Council to oversee the council chair election as the term of our current council chair (Prof. Olga Evdokimov from UIC) is up this year. The committee consists of Jana Bielcikova, Sevil Salur, and Flemming Videbaek (chair).

There are a few internal meetings in the coming months scheduled as follows:

• ALICE-STAR Indian Meeting (NISER) September 17^th-21^st, 2018
• STAR-CBM joint meeting at Heidelberg on September 29^th, 2018
• STAR Regional Meeting at USTC in Hefei/China October 31^st-November 2^nd, 2018
• STAR Analysis Meeting at BNL, December 12^th-14^th, 2018
• STAR Collaboration Meeting at BNL, March 29^th-April 2^nd, 2019
• STAR Collaboration Meeting in Cracow, August 19^th, 2019
• STAR Pre-QM meeting in Qingdao, November, 2019

Congratulations to James Daniel Brandenburg from Rice University, Suvarna Ramachandran from University of Kentucky, and Fuwang Shen & Jincheng Mei from Shandong University for the successful defenses of their PHD theses:

Daniel’s thesis title: "Systematic Measurements of Dimuon Production in p+p and p+Au Collisions at sqrt(sNN)=200 GeV with the STAR Detector",
Suvarna’s: "Probing the Low-x Gluon Helicity Distribution with DiJet Double Spin Symmetrie in Polarized Proton Collisions at sqrt{S} = 510 GeV",
Fuwang’s: "MWPC prototyping, construction and performance tests for STAR inner TPC upgrade",
and Jincheng’s: "Measurement of Transverse Spin Transfer to Lambda and anti-Lambda in Transversely Polarized Proton-Proton Collisions at RHIC-STAR"


FMS Disassembly
(Roy Salinas - Abilene Christian University)

This summer, a team of undergraduate and graduate students from UCR, Valpo, UKY, and ACU spent time disassembling the FMS. Our team removed the lead glass blocks from the detector platform and transported them to a storage room in the basement of the physics building. The blocks were carefully packed to assure that each layer of lead glass was padded to prevent any damage.

Being at Brookhaven was a wonderful experience, allowing us not just to see what STAR is about but also to hear from other students as to what drives them to pursue a life in physics. Personally, I was - and still am - very glad I was able to help in any way I could on the STAR experiment.

(Editor's note: see the STAR arts contribution below for a different view of the FMS glass from the disassembly work)
Summer Sunday 2018 Recap
(Gene Van Buren - BNL)

Dear fellow STAR Collaborators:

As noted in the previous Newsletter edition, RHIC's annual Open House was held on August 5^th. The crowds at each of the events in BNL's "Summer Sundays" tour program series were again large this year, including about 1200 visitors for RHIC (the final event). Starting in 2017, PHENIX was no longer a stop on the tour, leaving only STAR and the tunnel (via the collider center building at 1005). However, continued refrigeration of a portion of the RHIC for cooling studies meant that 1005 would be unavailable, potentially leaving STAR as the only stop. Fortunately, the collider group was able to utilize an access point to the ring tunnel on the north side of PHENIX so that visitors would still be able to see the collider itself.

At STAR itself, the detector was still in the experiment hall, being readied for roll out the very next week for iTPC sector replacement work. Additionally, the TPC sector replacement tool and its supporting structures were in the assembly hall, constricting the areas where the tour groups could go. We also had an opportunity to display an old inner TPC sector unit for public viewing in the assembly hall.

Despite the logistical constraints, the flow of tour groups went very smoothly and without any particular incidents. This was in large part due to helpful preparations of the area by Bob Soja and Bill Struble, and cooperation among the tour guides, whose names are listed under the photos below (all of whom were again kindly willing to wear the easy-to-identify tour volunteer shirts that aren't always everyone's favorite color or style). These collaborators, who unselfishly gave their own time and energy to educate and answer questions for the public, and share their excitement about our work, deserve our recognition and gratitude for their efforts on our behalf! Thank you!

Please consider joining the Summer Sunday effort next year!



STAR arts
(Tong Liu - Yale University)

This is a feature for Collaborators to contribute something creative/artistic that relates to STAR. This could be a really cool looking graph generated from some analysis, or a striking photograph. The idea is akin to the "Back Scatter" feature of Physics Today (example), or the Picture of the Month of CERN Courier (example). Please feel free to have fun with this and consider making a contribution yourself for the next edition!



Light shining through the FMS glass (from the disassembly) (open the image in a new browser tab or window to see full resolution)

Previous Edition: June 2018