On May 20 - 24, we held a joint meeting of the Kent and OSU nuclear experimental groups. Since I and Zhangbu both started at our respective positions recently, we wanted to introduce our groups and cover a broad range of material beneficial for new students. The agenda allowed ample time for discussion and questions from everyone. We had the meeting at Kent State University on Monday - Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon we took a group excursion to the Cuyahoga Falls National Park (see pictures below). On Thursday - Friday we hosted the meeting at OSU. We had about 20 people in attendance each day including undergraduates, pre- and post- candidacy students, post-docs and faculty from both universities. We had 21 talks on various topics in high-energy heavy ion physics.

On the final day we used this opportunity to also pilot another idea - to unify nearby institutions contributioning to the electron ion-collider and the ePIC experiment. On Friday we hosted the first ePIC Midwest meeting to discuss the ongoing efforts at Kent and OSU. Our agenda focuses on three topics according to the recent leadership positions taken by each institutions: 1) Zhangbu is the detector subsystem leader for the AC-LGAD TOF detector, 2) Leszek is the detector subsystem leader for the backward HCAL, and 3) I recently led the implementation of the initial electron-finder into the official EICRecon framework.

The meeting was a great success on several fronts. Scientifically, it provided a friendly and welcoming environment for new students to gain foundational knowledge about the field. Eight of the twenty participants were pre-candidacy or undergraduate students, and seven members gave their first presentation (outside of local group meetings). We also opened the ePIC Midwest session over ZOOM to welcomed University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to the backward HCAL effort.

Meeting Agenda - Monday May 20

Time Topic Speaker
9:00 - 9:30 Introduction Zhangbu & Daniel
9:30 - 10:00 Baryon junction introduction/analysis/paper status and plans Tommy Tsang
10:30 - 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 - 11:15 what I have learned so far about baryon junction and hadron spectra Shilpa
11:15 - 12pm Discussion All
12pm - 2pm Lunch (on your own)
2:00 - 3:00 Introduction to v1 flow and what we learned so far from BES data Declan
3:00 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 4:30 v1 and magnetic field, what is the measurement and how we are sure? Ashik
4:30 - 5:00 Discussion All

Meeting Agenda - Tuesday May 21

Time Topic Speaker
9:30-10:30 dilepton and thermal radiations Zhangbu
10:30 - 10:45 Break
10:45-11:15 virtual direct photon analysis and plan Xianwen Bao
11:15 - 11:30 what I learned so far about thermal dileptons Daniel S
11:30 - 12:00 Discussion All
12:00 - 2pm Lunch
2:00 - 3pm Azimuthally sensitive femtoscopy Yevhenia
3pm - 4pm Entanglement Enabled Spin Interference Daniel B.
4-4:30pm Break
4:30-5pm Measurements of odd harmonics from the Entanglement-enabled spin interference Sam Corey
5 - 5:15 what I have learned so far about VM production in UPC and my research plan? Peter

Meeting Agenda - Wednesday May 22

Time Topic Speaker
9:30-10:30 Interference of J/Psi in UPC, analysis status and plan Ashik
10:30 - 11 break
11 - 11:45 Search for photonuclear phi-meson production in A+A UPC Xihe (Daniel) Han
11:45 - 12 Travel to Zhangbu's house
12 - 2pm Lunch - bbq at Zhangbu's
Hiking at Cuyahoga National Park:
https://www.nps.gov/cuva/learn/historyculture/brandywine-falls.htm

Meeting Agenda - Thursday May 23

Time Topic Speaker
9:00-10:00 Breit-Wheeler process, nuclear geometry measurement and plan. Muonic atoms Xiaofeng Wang
10-10:30 break
10:30 - 11:30 Angular modulation signatures in gamma+gamma -> e+e- from sudakov soft photon radiation Nick Jindal
11:30 - 12 Discussion All
12 - 2pm Lunch
2 - 3 entanglement in non-UPC (rho) status and plan? Leszek K.
3-3:30 Astronomical HBT Josie Rose
3:30 - 4 lab tour

Meeting Agenda - Friday May 24

Time Topic Speaker
9:00-10:00 Search for toroidal vorticity at LHCb Maria S.
10-11am Backward HCAL at ePIC Leszek
11-11:30 Break
11:30 - 12 what I have learned about using polarization and vector meson diffractive at EIC? Maci
12 - 2pm Lunch
2-3pm AC-LGAD TOF Zhangbu Xu
3-3:30pm ePIC electron finder Daniel Brandenburg
3:30 - 4 Discussion / plan for next time All

Pictures