Organized in a co-production between Fermi- and Argonne Laboratory the Third Annual US FCC Workshop (now actually called Annual Higgs Factory FCC Workshop) was a smashing success. After our initial road trip to the First Annual US FCC Workshop at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the second instantiation at MIT we went to the Midwest. This year fom the PPC only Jan and myself participate but Anja from the MIT LHCb group also gave a very nice talk on Particle ID. We had no UROPs this year because we had prepared for the APS and expended all our resources.
The visit to Fermilab and Argonne went very smoothly, lots of reminders and a great supporting team. The highlight of the four day event were, a) the tutorials (as I heard, because I was still teaching on Monday) and b) day two with a full day of dense parallel sessions.
A few things that came up:
- I still do not understand the Beam Induced Background (BIB), but had a great conversation with Spencer G. and we agreed to follow up.
- Why did so few institutions in the U.S. signed an MOU? It is easy and there were so many more than 9 U.S. institutes present. We have to rally and get our community fired up.
- Artur has a fantastic lab for silicon and quantum sensing right next to Wilson Hall. I will spent quite some time there to learn about MAPS and hopefully contribute my share.
- I got my FNAL users (Affiliate) Id and they told me that I should be able to rent the house on site during the summer.
- I visited Argonne National Lab for the first time, a smoothly run very nice place.
Sarah Eno’s closeout ended on a very classical note quoting Walt Whitman, the (arguably) most American poet:
“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.
– Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman’s Camden Conversations