I have received many E-mails from our californian colleagues (D. Cline, B. Shen, J. Layter, T. Muller) and from our new collaborators (D. Green, W. Smith, A. Skuja). I had several discussions here at CERN with J. Layter, T. Muller, A. Skuja, A. Ball. We had a discussion of the US situation in our last CMS management board meeting 11 March.
Given the new situation created with the cancellation of the SSC, given the discussions started at CERN (Dec 93) with the CERN management and delegations of the SSC physics community, given the discussions at UCLA (2-4 feb 94) and at FNAL (16-17 feb 94) and in agreement with the CERN management the CMS collaboration is ready to take the risk of incorporating a large US contribution into the technical proposal due 15 December 94.
The CMS management therefore recommends the following:
1) A letter of intent signed by all US groups willing to join CMS should be produced as soon as possible. In addition to the list of names it should describe the various projects proposed by the US-CMS collaboration: Full end-caps including Forward muon chambers, Iron structure, Hadronic end-cap calorimeters, Barrel Hadronic calorimeter, Calorimeter trigger, DAQ, calorimeter read-out etc... It should give an estimate of the money needed for the construction over the period 1997-2003 and R&D money for 1995-1996. It should also include a description of the local US-CMS management structure.
2) Detailed separate proposals by subdetector group can then follow as soon as they are ready. These proposals should make it clear that they are part of the overall US plan.
3) As the CMS management and many of our californian colleagues cannot attend the March 23 meeting in FNAL, we propose a common meeting with ALL the US groups and representatives of the CMS management for 6-7 April at FNAL, where the LOI could be finalized.
M. Della Negra / CMS spokesman