The next meeting of the Projects Peer Review Panel (PPRP) will take place in Lecture Theatre 3 on 3rd and 4th July 2013, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ.

The Panel will be reviewing 4 project proposals.

Members of the science community should contact Tahmina Aziz on telephone 01793 442058 or e-mail Tahmina.Aziz@stfc.ac.uk if they are likely to attend the open sessions.

The proposals being reviewed are as follows:

3rd and 4th July 2013

3rd July 2013

12.45 – 13.30 – Phase I Loading of 130Te in SNO+

The SNO+ experiment builds on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which found the first unambiguous proof of neutrino flavour transformation. In this project the collaboration has decided to pursue the deployment of 130Te as the primary target isotope for double beta decay. Thus, the central volume of heavy water will be replaced with liquid scintillator to provide unique sensitivity to a wide range of fundamental physics.

This proposal requests support to contribute to the additional costs associated with the first phase of this endeavour.

13.30 – 15.00 – Closed session

15.00 – 16.00- WEAVE: The next generation wide-field spectroscopy facility for the WHT

WEAVE is a UK-led project to deliver a new wide-field spectroscopy facility for the prime focus of the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope by mid-2017. The facility will comprise a new two-degree field-of-view prime focus corrector with a fibre positioner delivering high multiplex multi-object spectroscopy and a number of integral field units feeding a dual-beam, dual-resolution spectrograph.

Designed to provide a Northern Hemisphere spectroscopic complement to ESA’s Gaia satellite and the European SKA pathfinder missions (LOFAR and Apertif), WEAVE is a collaboration between the UK, the Netherlands, Spain and France, with an anticipated 5 year survey delivering close to 15 million high quality spectra.

The UK components of the instrument include the overall optical design of the spectrograph, the robotic fibre positioning system, the spectrograph detector systems and the data reduction pipeline, as well as the overall project lead, systems engineering and instrument science roles. The instrument will be constructed over a 4-year timescale, with delivery to the telescope at the start of 2017.

The Panel goes into closed session for the rest of the day.

4th July 2013

09.30 – 10.30 – COMET (COherent Muon to Electron Transition)

The COMET experiment is seeking to make the first observation of a neutrinoless muon interaction through the conversion of a muon to an electron and so make the observation of charged lepton flavour violation (cLFV).

Construction of COMET has started recently at the Japanese Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC), which is also the location of the T2K neutrino oscillation experiment.

The COMET experiment will use a slow-extracted bunched proton beam from the J-PARC Main Ring (MR) synchrotron to the Nuclear and Particle Experimental Hall. The experimental set-up consists of the dedicated proton beam line, the muon beam section and the detector section.

The proponents want to make improvements in the quality of beam “extinction” at COMET; will design and build the systems that produce pions out of the proton beam and will produce particle detector systems to survey the beam.

10.30 – 13.15 – Closed session

13.15 – 14.15 – A measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon to 0.14 ppm using the FNAL g-2 experiment

The proponents are seeking to measure the magnetic moment of the muon to a precision of 0.14 parts per million which will be over a factor of 4 better than the previous measurement, in order to test the predictions of quantum mechanics to a very high level of precision.

This measurement will be carried out by injecting a beam of muons into a circular storage ring (of 7m radius) which is subject to a 1.45 T magnetic field. This will be done in 2016 at Fermilab in the USA.

The proponents will build the detectors that measure the muon beam’s trajectory, the device to measure the magnetic field and the magnet that injects the beam into the circular storage ring.

The Panel goes into closed session for the rest of the day.