Zisis comments

Here are my comments on the proposal. Sorry it took me so long to respond. Overall, I appreciate the fact that it is well-written and easy to read with few typos.

Note: JEF is defined in the title but should also be put in the Exec Summary; I missed it in the title the first time through.

Matt and Curtis have made the point about addressing the PAC's questions so I will not repeat it here. Notwithstanding the new PAC rules on experiments needing new equipment, the physics case needs to be strong and focused. The proposal needs improvements in this area.

Specifically, the proposal is rather long. This makes it hard to read in that the message may be lost after 80 pages. Cutting out extraneous stuff and beefing up the "juice" should be done. In my opinion, the proposal is not strengthened by presenting the entire broad spectrum of interesting channels and physics effects, but would become stronger by focusing on those that are within reach of the proposed experiment and drop those that are too wishful-thinking. This is why on p.18 I suggest dropping that lengthy EDM paragraph on theta-bar. Likewise, on p.19 the discussion on Br(eta->pipi) does not sound convincing, namely that this effect is reachable within this experiment. If it is not, then it should be dropped, or please explain what would be needed in the future to bring it closer to within grasp. Finally, BSM physics that are tantalizing but not reachable, could perhaps be concentrated all together and discussed. p.22 flash ADCs: this last sentence should be repeated together with all similar ones towards the end (if not done so already) to demonstrate the superiority of this experiment to past work.

p.23 Background discussion. This is also sprinkled elsewhere the bulk concentrated in Section II on p26. It should be gathered in one spot. It is best to present the physics channels with theory without comments on the abilities of this experiment at those points, but rather concentrated in one spot. This is why having only the strongest-chance-of-success channels helps. Also, the PbWO4 Moliere radius is mentioned in a couple of spots before p49. Concentrate this stuff to make the proposal more crisp.

p.37 single to noise is given as 5+\-5! This is not convincing. Why is the error so large? The PAC may wonder why a larger sample was not run, since it is many months since the PAC's earlier viewing of this proposal. Ditto for a kin fit.

p .38: Are there plans to look at eta->4pi0? Very few things should compete with 8 photons. If you see signals here it would show a problem with the clustering algorithms (splitoffs) since the BR is <7x10^-7.

p.39: Hall D equipment. I understand the forward boost and 6m distance. None of the photons goes into the BCAL? If if not, can it be used to check for background, to at least help in its modeling?

Of course if our TDR was done, many details (tagger, collimator, etc) in the proposal could have been dropped by references to TDR sections. However, can this be shoved into an appendix? Clearly, if there are configurations specific to JEF running those should be highlighted (eg choice of collimator).

You may fetch is the annotated document from the link below. I used Adobe Acrobat Pro to do so. My annotations do not show up properly under Mac Preview.

http://kronos.phys.uregina.ca/~zisis/erd_main2013april24numberedlines.pdf

Cheers, Zisis...