Dear Johan and John,
even if I was not able to participate to the close ACC-meeting, I'd like to send you the opinions of my
group about the LoI for hosting of AGATA 2017--- the GANIL request to extend the stay of AGATA @ GANIL up tothe end of 2018 is strongly
supported by the many proposals they have already received.
- the LNL LoI for hosting AGATA in 2019-2020 seems very reasonable due to the fact that the SPES
facility is planned to end the commissioning of RIB's in 2018. This is also supported by the number
LoI presented at the SPES Workshop last May that show a great interest of using AGATA with SPES
beams.
- the LoI from REX-ISOLDE for hosting AGATA in 2020-2022 is certainly interesting and will bring
AGATA in a top rank facility, but we are seriously concerned about the manpower and technical
issues.
- the RIKEN LoI should be reconsidered: Japan has not yet took part nor to the financing not to the
realization of the AGATA array and we think that european laboratories must take priority.
Best regards,
Adriana
________________________
Adriana Nannini, PhD
INFN - Sezione di Firenze
Via Sansone 1
50019 Sesto Fiorentino (Fi)
phone +390554572246 - 2712
fax +390554572346
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear John,
unfortunately I have to leave earlier tomorrow night and will not be able to participate to the close
ACC-meeting.
Angela will still be in GSI and she accepted to substitute me for Milan institute.
Please find here some consideration from our group regarding the various
LoI:
- The GANIL LoI for an extension of the stay AGATA @ GANIL up to dicembre 2017 seems absolutely
reasonable in view of the beam request for the many proposals already placed and those expected
for the following campaign with other ancillaries,
- The LNL LoI for placing AGATA @ LNL in 2018-2019 seems very reasonable in view of the starting of
SPES planned for 2018 and the expected months of commissioning that will bring naturally the
possibility to make experiments from later in 2018 on. The many LoI that were presented in the SPES
Workshop last May show a great interest of the international comunity to make measurements with
AGATA @ LNL.
- the LoI from REX-ISOLDE probably needs some technical and manpower consideration to be
verified before being really considered.
- The RIKEN LoI seems really out of the european collaboration and would need a participation of
Japan to the building of the apparatus to be considered. Moreover, we do have some commitment
with our financing agency to get our labs to be involved on first line so that I would suggest RIKEN is
considered in case all european labs would be stopped simultaneously for various upgradings.
Best regards,
Bénédicte
-Bénédicte Million
INFN - sez. Milano
via Celoria, 16
I-20133 Milano
tel: +39-0250317292
fax: +39-0250317487
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------From
Dr. Alexandre Obertelli
CEA Saclay – Service de Physique Nucléaire
Orme des merisiers, building 703
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette cedex
France
Gif-sur-Yvette, July 7th 2014
Object : Host laboratory for AGATA from 2017
Dear J. Nyberg, Dear J. Simpson,
AGATA is a wonderful detector array. Its expected capabilities for high spin physics when a large
number of detectors will be available or the gain in terms of resolution and efficiency for fast in-beam
experiments are a great step forward compared to the previous state-of-the-art spectrometers. Such
figure of merit completely justifies such a development and our investment. Even though the
functioning of the detector has been proved to be as expected in the last two campaigns in Legnaro
and at GSI, in my belief the produced physics results are not yet reflecting the potential of AGATA or
justifying the tremendous efforts of the collaboration.
The Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory of the RIKEN Nishina Center is the world leading facility for
radioactive ion studies. The impressive beam intensities produced since 2007 and the continuous
efforts to increase them even more, the excellence of RIKEN researchers and their strong ability to
think beyond the state-of-the-art rank the RIKEN Nishina Center as a unique institute for experimental
nuclear physics and collaborations at the international level.
Since you asked us/me during the EGAN meeting in June 2014 at GSI, I wish here to give an opinion
on the fantastic opportunities provided by a physics campaign with AGATA at the RIBF from 2017. I
feel that several arguments were not enough considered in the discussion of the ACC I attended.
1) Excellent scientific outcome
A discussion on physics cases, chances of success and uniqueness of foreseen experiments should
be done to compare the different possibility to host AGATA from 2017. The detector has been created
above all to achieve unique physics results. The scientific excellence of our physics outputs is very
important to get a full support from European institutes for the completion of the array.
2) GANIL extension, RIBF campaign and SPES campaign are compatible
It is not obvious to me that it is indeed a clear-cut choice between the first two that has to be made.
First of all, GANIL is currently hosting AGATA. This means that a physics program with AGATA at
GANIL will be made. The most interesting development for AGATA in the coming years is the gas
filled mode of VAMOS which is expected to be available from 2016.
In order to satisfy part of the community interested in such low energy reactions, one may decide to extend the
GANIL campaign to 2017 under the condition that the gas filled mode is operational. A fast beam campaign at
RIBF could then be agreed with the RIKEN management for 2018 (maybe up to 2019). This leaves room for
SPES, provided the machine is ready to use.
3) Fast beam community and European RIBF users have a strong overlap with AGATA
The AGATA collaboration gathers quite a significant part of physicists interested in the question of
shell evolution in neutron rich nuclei. Several of us have experience in intermediate energy
experiments performed at GANIL, GSI, MSU or RIBF. It would be understandable that such physics
questions and experimental methods could continue to develop in the collaboration at the highest
level.
Using AGATA at the RIBF is according to me a win-win situation: of course our Japanese colleagues
will benefit from the excellence of AGATA that we developed at cost. It has been said during the ACC
that this situation is unfair. What about the use of the RIBF by European team? Many of us do go to
RIBF for experiments and even propose experiments. At the RIBF the AGATA collaboration will
benefit from the best machine worldwide. The high costs of the beam production are usually covered
by RIKEN which is by far the largest expense of such a campaign.
We obtained from the European Research Council a grant to develop MINOS, a physics program and
an apparatus focused on the search for new nuclear magic numbers at the RIBF for the period 20102015 and FAIR in the future. MINOS has been primarily developed to get the best out of AGATA. This
project contributes to a strong collaboration between the RIKEN Nishina Center and the European
nuclear physics community. The joint physics program based on the use of MINOS in association with
the RIKEN gamma-ray spectrometer DALI2 has led to a Proposal for Scientific Program called
SEASTAR (Shell Evolution And Search for first Two-plus energies At the RIBF). SEASTAR aims at
the first spectroscopy of even-even neutron rich nuclei beyond accessible regions anywhere else in
the world and focuses in the search of new shell effects to better understand nuclear structure. The
collaboration gathers now more than a hundred of experimentalists and theorists around the world. As
an example, at CEA, our involvement to this physics program is rather strong. Other groups in Europe
are also polarized towards RIKEN and staff physicists as well as PhD students are engaged on the
SEASTAR physics program.
4) Organizational details should be discussed on a later stage
Acknowledging the unique opportunity of RIBF is far from being the end of the story. There are of
course many organizational points to be solved. Will our institutes support such an initiative, will our
engineers accept to go to Japan, will we manage to overcome the effort? I am absolutely confident
that all these points can be solved. I believe that most of us, once motivated by the physics and such
a collective adventure, have already overcome similar difficulties.
Respectfully yours,
Alexandre Obertelli