Summary of the UK HARP Meeting held on Friday 1st December 2000 in Oxford

• Equipment: We have an allocation of £2.53k. Phone conferences have cost 0.15, while expenditure on targets, supports and work on rails at CERN comes to 2.4. Action: It is important we all get bills in promptly.
• Travel: We have spent £2.12k for the 1/2 year to October. (This is about half our allocation of £6k.) Several claims from November are still pending.
• Team account: We now have a team account, T258600. There are 2 cards, one with Mary Elizabeth, the other in Rob's CERN office.

• Rail System: The rails will be lower, out of the way when the magnet end-plate plug is removed. There will be two equerres, one to support the target insertion tube, the other for the Inner Trigger Counter. The TPC will be moved on a trolley, travelling on the same rails. This means the rails must take much more weight (due to RPCs attached to TPC). Mario Scandurra will be responsible for design and production of the TPC support.

  This is a large extension of the design, and has cost several weeks. Mario is getting quotes for production at CERN. (It is possible the rails should be produced as a casting rather than a welded structure.) Quotes are also being obtained in the UK, including the Oxford workshop. The estimated cost is aboout £7k + 2k + cost of fittings. Approval of the final design of the base should be obtained at CERN next week. Action: Giles.

  Some modifications to the design were discussed. Earthing straps will be added. The beam chamber support will need modifications. It was discussed whether the tolerances could be increased slightly, possibly removing the need for cast rails. A telescopic or hinged cover for the rails will be fitted, to protect them.

• Thin and Thick Targets: The Goodfellows list of pure materials is expensive. It was discussed whether we need ~100% purity - 98% would be much cheaper. However, it was decided that to obtain a 2% precision on the cross section we must keep systematics down, and need >99% pure targets. An aim of 99.7% was suggested, but this could be reduced if we know what the principal impurities are, and whether percentages are quoted by weight or volume. We are still waiting for a final list from Goodfellows of purities (and the exact meaning). Action: Richard to chase Goodfellows, and consider alternative supplier.

  For the thick targets, we need a central support and also a collar upstream. Alan offered to do a stress analysis to ensure the support will not deform too much with the heaviest target. We will measure the target thickness in several places. There should be an alignment groove so that we know the target orientation. Action: Richard to supply data to Alan; Alan to perform stress analysis. Giles to present planned target list, purities etc at CERN next week.

• K2K and MiniBooNe: Various notes have passed between Vittario, Giles and K2K people! K2K understood they should be ready for the technical run(!!) and have now ordered a target for HARP, with no discussions about mounting.

  There is even less progress with MiniBooNe. Some members will join HARP. We will send diagrams of our supports and the target environment, then follow up with discussions. Action: Giles to follow up with MiniBooNe.

• Target Recording: Rob reported that a barcode will be placed on each support cap, and this will be read automatically on insertion. Action: Rob to contact those responsible for slow control.

Lara has started looking at Mars (with Ian Dawson), with the aim of comparing with Fluka.

Simon is looking at simulations of atmospheric neutrino data, incorporating decay of mesons, using a Fortran program (Bartol). He has several problems at present!

Malcolm is looking at HARP reconstruction, with the NOMAD chambers. The GUI and display are too slow to run over the network. He will install MARS at RAL, using this first to study atmospheric neutrinos, then the HARP targets.

• Stage 2: This entails runs with helium, etc., hopefully early in 2002. It should require a relatively small effort on our part, and is very important for atmospheric neuttrino data. We would all be interested to take part.
• Stage 3: Giles is HARP Stage 3 coordinator! It entails high energy running using NA49. At the SPSC in November, the continuation of NA49 was approved, pending a decision from the Research Board; HARP-3 would need a future proposal. There are manpower problems. Barbara will do preparatory Monte Carlo studies.