Dear Colleagues,

The SSC has been dead for about a week. After considerable soul searching, it has become clear to many of us that only by making an initiative to the LHC can we hope to insure a long range future for our science. That being the case, a meeting of all staff physicists was called at FNAL on 10/27. At that meeting, the consequences of the SSC demise were discusssed in all generality. In particular, the possibility of an initiative at the LHC was endorsed by John Peoples, the FNAL Director.

The next step appeared to be an assessment of the support by the staff physicists at FNAL. A meeting was called on 10/29 where the LHC program was reviewed, and local support was assessed. The response was very positive, exceeding the expectations of the organizers. On the strength of that support, a "discussion group" was formed consisting of interested FNAL physicists. The question of in what context more extensive inquiries might be made was raised.

It seemed logical that the next step would be to see if the SDC Calorimeter Group might maintain some coherence in supporting a LHC initiative. Therefore, I am asking that you respond as to the sign and magnitude of support within your institution for an initiative to become involved in LHC calorimetry.

The situation is very fluid. There are many models for becoming involved in LHC, and it seems prudent to go slowly while checking on physicist and funding agency support. As a specific example, CMS has scintillation based calorimetry in both the EM and HAD compartments. There appears to be a degree of commonality in the SDC and CMS calorimeter concepts.

It is also true that neither the SSC nor the LHC experimental program could support 2 detectors. If a portion of the SSC experimenters moved to LHC there is some hope of creating a strong two detector program for our shared science, somewhere in the world.

Note that there is a meeting of the CERN Council on Dec 12. Prior to that meeting there will be a discussion at CERN to assess interest in LHC initiatives on the part of new groups. This date means that the SDC meeting is too late for us to be able to assess interest. There is a Users meeting at FNAL on Nov 19 which has been called to work through the PAC recommendations from Aspen, most importantly, the long term future of Tevatron B Physics. It seems that this meeting is a convenient and timely opportunity to try to gather together those physicists from the SDC Calorimeter Group interested in contributing ideas to the CERN meeting.

Therefore, we are calling such a meeting to be held at FNAL on Nov 20. The meeting agenda and the goals of the meeting will evolve on the basis of the responses gathered back from you as to interest in this new initiative.

"We shall not cease from exploration"

Best Regards,