Dr. Oliver Noll (Photo: ON/private) has received the PANDA PhD Prize 2021 for his doctoral thesis "Digital Signal Processing for the Measurement of Particle Properties with the PANDA Electromagnetic Calorimeter" at GSI, FAIR and Mainz University. His doctoral advisor was Prof. Dr. Frank Maas from Mainz University. The award was announced by the spokesman of the PANDA Collaboration, Ulrich Wiedner from the Ruhr-University Bochum, at the most recent Online PANDA Collaboration meeting.

The PANDA Collaboration has awarded the PhD Prize once per year since 2013 in order to honor the best dissertation written in connection with the PANDA Experiment. In his dissertation, Physicist Oliver Noll worked on the development of the PANDA electromagnetic calorimeter, which is one of the main subsystems of the PANDA experiment. Prior to Oliver Noll’s work no specific algorithm for the digital processing of the APFEL readout chip signals existed. In the thesis work, a detailed study of the APFEL pulse shape and noise components was performed. Within the PhD work also major contributions to the development, construction and operation of EMC prototypes, were carried out and which were used in beam tests for proving the functionality of the PANDA EMC design and optimizing its performance. Finally, several contributions to the design and to the construction of the backward end-cap EMC have been made, ranging from mechanical solutions for holding and encasing the detector components to the development of a system for the calibration of the temperature sensors or the implementation of various parts of slow-control software.
The PANDA Collaboration awards the PhD Prize to specifically honor students’ contributions to the PANDA project. Candidates for the PhD Prize are nominated by their doctoral advisors. In addition to being directly related to the PANDA Experiment, the nominees’ doctoral degrees must have received a rating of “very good” or better. Up to three candidates are shortlisted for the award and can present their dissertations at the PANDA Collaboration meeting. The winner is chosen by a committee that is appointed for this task by the PANDA Collaboration.

The "Outstanding Achievement Award 2020" goes to three groups. The awardees are: Outreach Committee, EMC Software Team and our three Coordination Engineers

The Outreach Committee consisting of Miriam Kümmel, Michael Papenbrock, Mustafa Schmidt and Rebecca Seip has given strong momentum to the outreach activities and their efforts will help spreading knowledge and interest about PANDA in society.
The presentation of their work during the Collaboration Meeting 2020/3 was an impressive demonstration of what they have achieved so far: Development of PANDA models in 3D, Lego and virtual reality. This outreach session was very well received, and has, in combination with the aforementioned initiatives given momentum to the outreach activities.

The picture shows a CAD PANDA model consisting of about 10.000 Lego bricks, which was generated by a special Lego planning tool.

 

The groups from Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS, Beijing University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei and Nankai University, Nankai led by Sun Shengsen did extraordinary work on updating the EMC offline software. The work includes implementing the latest geometries, updating the digitization algorithms according to the test beam data and firmware algorithms, as well as work on the reconstruction software and the calibration algorithms.

The contributers - Guangshun Huang, Chunxiu Liu, Dong Liu, Qing Piu, Sun Yankun, Guang Zhao and others – paved the way to a better PANDAroot software for the simulation and reconstruction of the PANDA electromagnetic calorimeter.

The picture is a Monte Carlo study of the angle between two photons detected by the EMC coming from a $\pi^0$ decay as a function of the pion energy.
 

The three engineers performed a significant concerted effort to work out the detailed specifications of the PANDA infrastructure regarding support structures and supply infrastructures.  Daniel Glaab, Stefan Koch and Jost Lüning designed support structures in particular cover platforms, support frames, rails and movements systems, installation devices and supply infrastructure in particular covers drag chains, cable trays, electrical power distribution and grounding, cooling water and technical gases, everything with the whole lifetime of PANDA in mind, from installations to data taking periods and the maintenance phases in-between.

The detailed design serves as a crucial input for the common fund investments for infrastructure of PANDA and has been a central part of the recently submitted TDR to the FAIR ECE. It brings the collaboration in the position to plan the tendering of the construction of the required infrastructure components.

The resulting detailed technical report was praised by experts at FAIR and from CERN reviewing the document for the level of detail and expertise.

The picture is a CAD drawing of our detector in the maintenace position with all support platforms in place.

Congratulations to all awardees. You have done an outstanding job!

The yoke of the PANDA Solenoid Magnet was fully assembled at the steel construction company SET in Novosibirsk.The final tests of doors were done on December 25, 2020 - a nice Christmas present for PANDA.

The assembly of the yoke octants is aided by a star shaped installation tool. After its removal the octants stayed in place with minimal deviation. All parts are surveyed with a laser tracker employing fixed fiducial marks even during the assembly process which facilitates the whole operation providing much better precision. No mechanical stoppers are used, as their precision would be too low. 

The four doors, two downstream and two upstream, are bolted to the yoke in their closed position. Before opening the doors the bolts are unfastened and the doors are lowered to the sliding rails resting then on heavy weight rollers. The 22t door wings were opened sliding on the rollers with a friction of only about 0.5% - two persons were able to move one wing with a simple manual winch. In the final configuration BINP will equip the doors with hydraulic jacks and actuators, which were not part of the deliverables of SET. Documentation for the completion of the factory acceptance procedure is under way.

The yoke was again disassembled and the parts will be transported to BINP were they will be stored in two halls waiting for the assembly of the complete magnet for testing and field measurements at BINP. The octants and downstream doors will be kept in a climate controlled hall to avoid any unwanted corrosion within the gaps. The outer frame can be stored at simpler conditions.

Currently the cryostat of the superconducting solenoid is in production. At the same time the production of the superconducting wire is in preparation. The assembly of the entire magnet at BINP will take place next year and allow first tests and finally a complete field mapping. For this operation the cryogenic plant of the KEDR magnet at BINP will be employed to provide the necessary supply of liquid Helium for refrigeration.

Antoni WossDr. Antoni Woss (Photo: AW/private) has received the Panda Theory PhD Prize 2020 for his doctoral thesis "The scattering of spinning hadrons from lattice QCD". His doctoral advisor was Prof. Dr. Christopher Thomas from the University of Cambridge. The award was announced by the spokesman of the Panda Collaboration, Klaus Peters from GSI, at the most recent Online Panda Collaboration meeting. 

The Panda Collaboration has awarded the Theory PhD Prize for the second time to honor the best theory dissertation written in connection with the Panda Experiment. In his dissertation, Dr. Woss has demonstrated extraordinary depth and breadth of knowledge and his thesis breaks new ground in lattice calculations of hadron spectroscopy. He developed and then applied state-of-the-art lattice QCD methods to determine precisely the properties and interactions of hadronic resonances, in particular for hadrons with non-zero spin, overcoming conceptual and technical obstacles that to date have hindered such lattice QCD calculations. Dr Woss' thesis includes a number of "firsts" - the first-ever lattice QCD extraction of the mixing between dynamically-coupled partial waves and the first lattice coupled-channel calculation involving hadrons with non-zero spin. He also developed an elegant general way to present scattering amplitudes involving an arbitrary number of coupled channels - a significant result on its own. The body of work in this truly excellent thesis now enables lattice QCD calculations which are directly relevant for PANDA's planned investigations of excited and exotic hadron resonances, including for any potential hybrid and tetraquark states.

The Panda Collaboration awards the PhD Prize to specifically honor students’ contributions to the Panda project. Candidates for the PhD Prize are nominated by their doctoral advisors. In addition to being directly related to the Panda Experiment, the nominees’ doctoral degrees must have received a rating of “very good” or better. Up to three candidates are shortlisted for the award and can present their dissertations at the Panda Collaboration meeting. The winner is chosen by a committee that is appointed for this task by the Panda Collaboration.

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