Minutes POLAR-2 meeting 16-09-2019:

Attendance:
- IHEP: Jianchao
- NCBJ: Agnieszka + Jacek + Adam + Dominik
- MPE: Jochen
- Geneva: Nicolas, Xin, Merlin, Nicolas dA

- Xin: Update from Geneva
    - Prodex funding now approved in Switzerland, so money will come. Last step is that ESA has to allow for it to be released which means export issues have to be solved and we need to get some kind endorsement letter from Poland.
    - Currently applying with Poland for the Alphorn project, Geneva side is for science, Polish side is for hardware.
    - Proposal will be submitted tomorrow, Merlin just has to transform the Polish budget into the proper format.
    - Signing ceremony now almost fixed. Rectorat of Unige has 2 free dates: 18 or 20th of November. CSU will make the final decision which day it will be. The signing ceremony will be followed by a POLAR-2 workshop of ~2 days. 
    - Merlin will fix a place for the meeting, either confucious centre (if we have ~30 people) if we have more we need to find a bigger place.
    - Final decision will be taken in the coming 2 weeks.

- Agnieszka: Updates NCBJ:
    - For Aphorn things are done
    - For Polish prodex proposal a budget is needed from Jacek's side
    - Things are more complicated due to elections in Poland in the coming weeks so difficult to get more information on things from higher up.
    
- LVPS discussion with Jacek:
    - Nicolas can answer all the questions in Jacek's document with preliminary design for the LVPS, however he stresses that it is based on his original design, Jacek can of course take different decision on everything
    - Merlin stresses that all the constraints are there, Jacek can do whatever he wants within those constraints and has to decide this
    - constraints regarding the Central Computer should be directly discussed with Dominik
    - Dominik requests to be kept more up to date on the LVPS technical discussion so he can contribute more easily
    - Good news is that 28V is available for switching this makes things easier
    - Jacek will work on this when he is back from Moscow and will have the preliminary budget end of next week
    - Nicolas clarifies that components sent by Jacek before are not workable for us since they will for sure have export restrictions
    - We need components that can sustain upto 1 kRad, also POLAR LVPS worked fine, should be used as an inspiriation for the POLAR-2 one (also component wise)
    
- Jochen has no real news from Germany

- Updates from IHEP:
  - GECAM people will be very busy when Nicolas and Merlin will be at IHEP, so difficult to have a technical discussion then
  - IHEP is helping Geneva with the export control isses by ordering some components to see if there are any issues with buying them in China
  - Purchasing worked, however, Jianchao is trying to get a document from the manufacturer which states IHEP can use these components either for whatver they want, or can use them specifically for use on the CSS

- GECAM presentation by Jianchao:
  - Power consumption of GECAM is 0.1-0.2 Watts per module, mass is 0.667 kg
  - Size is slightly too large for the top spectrometers
  - For the bottom ones we can either increase the size or simply use more of them
  - If the top ones have to be redesigned mechanically we might also design them completely from scratch using the polarimeter FEE design, or go for a fully different design from MPE
  - Large remaining question is how the data from the different units is processed, do we add it to the POLAR-2 BEE, or does IHEP need to provide a separate back-end for the spectrometers.
  - If we use GECAM design GECAM collaboration wishes to add members to POLAR-2 collaborator list
  
 Jianchao will send his slides around to everyone, Merlin will setup an indico system to keep all minutes and the slides in an accessible place.