Comments on how to organize future International Conferences on High Energy Accelerators HEACC

Report of the ICFA ad-hoc Committee on HEACC

1 General Remark

On the initiative of ICFA, a small committee has been formed to discuss the essence and purpose, and the future prospects of the International Conference of High Energy Accelerators HEACC in the presence of large regional accelerator conferences. The committee members have been proposed by the important accelerator institutions. A memo, which was the result of the work of this ad-hoc committee, has been presented to ICFA in February 1998. ICFA did not make a final decision of how to proceed with HEACC. But the proposals made by the ad-hoc committee have been well received and the committee was encouraged to continue. It has been suggested to invite more members in order to broaden the spectrum represented by the committee and to work out a concrete programmed example of a future HEACC conference. The following accelerator experts from the large accelerator laboratories have responded to a request to participate in the extended HEACC-committee and have agreed to contribute to the discussion: P.Colestock; FNAL M. Harrison, BNL, K. Hirata, KEK, Gerald Jackson, FNAL Philippe Lebrun, CERN, Igor Meskhov, JINR, Dieter Moehl, CERN, Stephen Peggs, BNL, Dieter Proch, DESY, R. Schmidt, CERN, John Seeman, SLAC, Robert Sieman, SLAC, F. Willeke, DESY, M.Yoshioka, KEK The discussions were carried out by exchange of e-mail. Not all controversial issues could be discussed sufficiently and a consensus could not always be reached. The following report is a short version of the report submitted to ICFA. It summarizes the status of the discussions. The report has been written by F. Willeke who takes the responsibility for the correct compilation of the opinions of the committee members.

2 Introduction

The International Conference on High Energy Accelerators (HEACC) is the traditional accelerator conference of the high-energy physics community. It has been held every three years since 1950. Discussion within the community of accelerator physicists seems to indicate that there is considerable interest to keep this forum alive, where accelerator theory, performance and technology has been discussed and whereby the emphasis is put on new developments and options for future accelerators for particle physics. There is another aspect, which is important.

In order to assure further strong, international cooperation on future large-scale accelerator projects, a truly international forum, which is not dominated by regional interests and influences is important. HEACC has been such a worldwide forum in the past and therefore should be preserved as such. On the other hand, there are two large well-established accelerator conferences, the American PAC and the European EPAC, which take place alternately every two years. In addition, a third conference, the Asian APAC has been organized for the first time in 1998. On top of the three international general accelerator conferences there is the LlNAC conference, which is held every two years, a number of accelerator technology- related conferences such as the magnet conference and a number of accelerator-related workshops. Furthermore, ICFA seminars are being organized every two years. The topics presented at these conferences represent a complete overlap with the topics of HEACC. Noting the tight resources of the accelerator laboratories, it is a fair question to ask whether all these meetings must be supported in the future. In particular one has to discuss whether HEACC has become obsolete by the establishment of new international accelerator conferences during the last decade.

3 Relationship with Regional Accelerator Conferences

The EPAC and the PAC are very important meetings for the accelerator community. They have a number of very interesting features:

• The PAC and EPAC programs provide complete coverage of the whole field of accelerator-theory, -technology and -operation experience. Therefore these meetings provide a very good overview of the state of the art including recent developments and activities
• The broad coverage of accelerator related topics makes EPAC and PAC interdisciplinary meetings which provide many possibilities for contacts between experts from different fields, for which there is otherwise little opportunity.
• The PAC and EPAC schedule review talks. Some of them have a pedagogical nature. This is interesting for students and newcomers to the field.
• PAC, EPAC (and certainly APAC as well) conferences, though being meetings with international attendance, have a more regional character. A majority of PAC attendees comes from the US or Canada. The same applies to EPAC and APAC where the majority of participants are from European and Asian laboratories respectively. This regional character helps to limit the costs of these meetings.

On the other hand the large regional conferences have a number of disadvantages, which a conference like HEACC can avoid more easily:

• The PAC and the EPAC are conferences with more than a thousand participants. This does not create an ideal environment for intense communications. It is sometimes difficult to even find a particular partner for discussions. Most of the participants do not know each other. In the large plenary sessions, no discussion takes place. Most of the participants are very reluctant to raise their hand and express their opinion in a large anonymous audience. The larger the number of the participants, the more passive the audience tends to be.
• The fact that PAC and EPAC cover the whole field of accelerators also has the disadvantage that it is more difficult to concentrate of special topics of interest. Thus the interest of the participants is very distinct and there are many closed groups of people with little desire to communicate with other groups.
• In order to squeeze the large programs of PAC and EPAC into a limited time, several parallel sessions are unavoidable. Despite the efforts of the organizers, it often occurs that two interesting topics, which attract the same group of attendees, are scheduled the same time. Much interesting information is presented in the form of poster sessions, which are often in competition with the oral program.

These disadvantages of PAC and EPAC can be avoided in a small conference. This can only be achieved by focusing on a narrower spectrum of topics. The most important task is to define this focus and match the organization of the conference accordingly. The following is an attempt to define "rules" which may serve as a guideline for future organization of HEACC.
The way the committee views PAC and EPAC is thus as broad FORUMS, whereas HEACC is a specialized conference. It is not a workshop because it covers many aspects of the subjects within its focus.

4 HEACC Programme Rules

• HEACC should specialize to accelerators, which are operated or developed to be operated at the frontier of high beam energy and related topics and technological aspects. An important aspect of the HEACC programme is that it emphasizes projects, which require international collaboration because of its scale, the technical challenge, the large amount of R&D and the intense use of resources. The HEACC programme should feature pioneering accelerator and acceleration techniques especially that these issues have been neglected somewhat in the recent past. The committee however does not agree on the question whether High Luminosity facilities like B-Factories, Tau-Charm Factories should be in the scope of HEACC. In each case, HEACC should not exclude any accelerator topic a priori, but conference organizers should always be conscious about the relevance of the topic under consideration to the objectives of the conference. For example, while synchrotron light sources are clearly outside the scope of HEACC as an independent topic, certain aspects or techniques described in the context of synchrotron light, sources may, however, be relevant and interesting. New developments in the low energy part of an accelerator chain are sometimes important for the choices and performance at the high-energy end. Therefore, one should not exclude such " low energy" topics from the HEACC program. A case to case judgement has to be made. The HEACC topics should concentrate on accelerator physics and accelerator technology. Operational aspects and existing facilities should only considered only to the extent that they are relevant to the main objective of HEACC.
• The HEACC programme should feature new technical developments relevant to high-energy accelerators and should avoid standard accelerator technology, which is well and comprehensively covered by other meetings.
• The programme of HEACC should avoid laboratory status reports. These reports are usually very redundant and do not provide much new information to HEACC participants. Reports on accelerator performance should emphasize the technical and beam-scientific aspect.
• The HEACC programme must concentrate on new effects and should avoid pedagogical review presentations. The HEACC program committee should not hesitate to reject contributions, which have obviously been published or presented elsewhere. Contributions to HEACC must provide new, original information. Contributions with redundant or obsolete material should be rejected. Summary reports from other meetings are to be avoided because the information is mostly redundant.
• The HEACC programme should leave sufficient room for contributed papers. Contributed papers are a necessary compliment to invited talks. New topics are likely to be introduced into the conference by contributed papers.
• Poster sessions are a good complement to oral presentations. Oral papers may also additionally presented as posters. They are recommended.
• Parallel sessions are to be avoided.
• The raporteur talks as they are practised in the high-energy physics conferences summarize the contributions on a certain subject. These are an interesting possibility to make the meeting more effective. The HEACC program should include such raporteur talks. The rapporteurs should be chosen the same way as invited speakers. They should be supplied with the abstracts of contributed papers referring to a certain topic well before the conference. Authors can be contacted before or during the conference. Rapporteur talks might be a nice way of closing the conference (in analogy to workshop summary reports)
• As a complement to rapporteur talks, at the end of the conference there should be a summary or concluding talk, which could be presented by the chairman of the programme committee or the session chairpersons.
• For a conference like HEACC, a round table discussion is a possible and useful tool to enhance the interactions and communications. The session chairman must be carefully selected as real senior expert in the field covered by their sessions. They must be able to stimulate and lead the discussion of oral presentations.
• Imbedded workshops have been proposed as a further means for stimulating discussions and enhancing interactions among participants.

5 HEACC Organization Rules

5.1 Organization

The HEACC is to be organized by one of the big accelerator laboratories respectively which appoints a conference chairman and a local organizing committee. The host laboratory provides the legal framework and the financial management of the conference. It may approach potential sponsors to obtain support for the conference. The local organization committee is responsible for the conference facilities. It should in particular provide an appropriate auditorium, meeting rooms and space for poster sessions. It organizes the registration procedure and hotel accommodation of the participants. The organization committee will arrange for publishing and for distribution of the proceedings. It is responsible for printing and distribution of information bulletins, a conference poster, the conference programme and a booklet with the abstracts of the conference contribution. The organizing committee decides on parallel meetings such as an industrial exhibition. It also takes care of the social programme.

5.2 Programme Committee

The composition of the programme committee should be international. The committee should be able to cover the full spectrum of the expertise on high energy and high luminosity accelerators. In order to provide continuity and experience in making a good conference programme, it is proposed to form a permanent programme committee. The members should never be exchanged at once but there should always be members from the programme committee of the previous conference. Correspondingly, a large fraction of the current programme committee members should serve on the programme committee of the next conference. Thus committee members should in general serve for more than one term. ICFA should take the initiative to propose an initial programme committee. The permanent committee could for example be constituted as an ICFA sub-panel. Furthermore, the chairman of the local organization committee and members of the current committee should have the possibility to propose candidates and to take part in the election of new members. This form of conference organization has proved to very useful for EPAC and PAC. Operating rules for the programme committee are discussed in more detail below.

An international scientific committee should support the programme committee. The advisors should be invited to comment about topics and to propose invited speakers on the base of a first draft of the conference programme.

The HEACC programme committee should invite an observer of the organization of the other big conferences to co-ordinate the conference schedule and to avoid unnecessary duplications in the conference programmes.

5.3 Participation

The HEACC should be a relatively small conference with not much more than 200 participants. The participation should be by invitation only but, there should be an open call for abstracts and the programme committee should decide the invitations on the basis of the abstracts or on recommendation from its members and/or the laboratories. This way, HEACC can continue to be the forum where those responsible for decisions meet the technical experts to discuss the future of our field. HEACC should not be primarily a conference for students and newcomers in the field. This should not exclude students from participation but the program should not be compromised in order to be useful for students and newcomers. HEACC should however not be a conference for senior scientists only. Young scientists should be encouraged to submit contributions to the conference, which must comply with the scope and the requirements of the conference programme.

The programme committee, the scientific advisory committee and the accelerator laboratories can propose participants. The conference chairman submits a call for papers based on their proposals. The intended contributions are reviewed and refereed by the programme committee on basis of submitted abstracts. Only new and interesting material will be admitted to the conference. In order to allow for a judgement on the contribution, abstracts should be larger than usual. Up to a full page should be possible. Ambiguous abstracts, which do not allow a judgement on the work to be presented, should be rejected. On the other hand, judgement on abstracts should be such to leave room for reports on work in progress and for results to be expected in the near future. The committee however recognizes that this rule might be difficult to enforce. At least it puts a heavy burden onto the programme committee who has to select the papers. The committee's opinion on this point is not unanimous. The conference chairman sends out the invitation to the conference based on the evaluation of the programme committee .

5.4 Conference

Proceedings Contributions to the conference should only be published in proceedings if the contribution has been presented at the conference. There should be no " publish only" option. The contributions should only be published in the proceedings if they have been presented at the conference. The conference chairman is encouraged to make use of an accelerator journal for publishing. Refereeing of the contributions is recommended, if serious refereeing can be assured in an appropriate time. The discussions and questions on contributions during the oral sessions should be recorded and should become part of the proceedings.

5.5 Co-ordination of HEACC with other Conferences

The committee discussed the possibility to organize only one large accelerator conference per year as proposed by some of the members. This apparently does not comply with the need of the whole accelerator community and was in particular rejected by the organizers of the PAC conference. Thus there will be every year a PAC or an EPAC conference. The current frequency of HEACC is one meeting every three years. As a relatively small conference, HEACC thus not really compete with PAC or EPAC. HEACC has to be viewed as a specialized meeting like the LlNAC conference or similar meetings. The three-year cycle of HEACC appears to be an appropriate average frequency to assure that there is sufficient new and interesting material to discuss.

It is not recommended to organize HEACC together with PAC, EPAC, APAC or the high-energy physics conferences. HEACC would be reduced in this case to just an appendix label to the names of these conferences.

Since the HEACC scope overlaps with the programme of the international ICFA seminars and since there is a large overlap of potential HEACC and ICFA seminar attendees, one should avoid that both meetings take place independently. Moreover it is proposed to organize these meetings at the same time and at the same place with a large common programme.

In order to avoid a situation like in 1998 with four accelerator conferences taking place in 2004, it is proposed to organise the next HEACC in 2000 and continuing with a frequency of 1/3y. Another possibility would be to shift the phase of APAC by one year. In this case the next HEACC would be held in 2001, which would be the natural continuation of the 1/3year frequency.

6 Proposal for HEACC Permanent PC Operating Rules as a base for Discussion

6.1 The HEACC permanent programme committee (PC) has the following functions:

• It provides continuity in the organization of HEACC
• It helps to avoid, that the rules be re-invented at each conference
• It helps the conference chairmen to form a competent and experienced programme committee
• It keeps the contact with regional conferences for coordination and to avoid unnecessary programme overlaps
• It keeps contact with and informs ICFA
• It evaluates possible conference sites and prepare for decision by ICFA

6.2 Requirements

• The conference chairperson must have a strong influence on the HEACC programme.
• It has to be made sure in the process of choosing the programme committee chair, that conference chair and programme committee chair are able to cooperate closely.
• The experience made at one conference must be carried over to the next one
• The programme committee should evolve continuously. Therefore members must be replaced from time to time.

6.3 Constitution of the Permanent Committee

The permanent committee is proposed to be constituted as a panel of ICFA. The panel and delegates from the local conference organization form the programme committee for each conference.

7 Summary

The committee arrives at the conclusion t,hat it is worthwhile to preserve HEACC. However it must focus on high-energy and in the opinion of some members also on high-luminosity accelerators. The program must be limited to new information. The number of attendees must be kept around 200. Intense interactions and discussion among participants must be encouraged. The coexistence with other important accelerator meetings must be carefully coordinated .