Unfortunately I don't have time to read the papers extremely carefully
but here are some comments. I will not comment on english since I
believe Nat is already doing this.
Most of my comments relate to the MACRO/pub memo.
- In the introduction you note that for mass >= 10^17 Gev all
particles cross the earth. However, there must still be some beta
cutoff.
- In the liquid scintillator section(e.g. section 2.2) I think
that the very early searches by people like Ficenec were only one face
scin. monopole searches. I think this should be pointed out.
- In the streamer tube section in the first paragraph you say "The
presence of helium n-pentane mixture allows [should be an us] to
detect with essentially 100% eff.... " In fact this is a theoretical
calculation. I don't think we have ever actually done a test to
demonstrate this with our tubes. Have we or others demonstrated this?
- I liked the detail in the scintillator section about the analysis
techniques and the number of events etc. I think there should be
the same level of detail in the ST section.
- The combination of limits section:
o As I said in the last meeting I am not convinced this can or should
be done. But aside from this I think you can only combine different
times. You say we combined if " they are taken at different times or
with different parts of the detector." If you means different SMs then
maybe this is OK but if you mean different parts of the same SM you
can't do this since they are in the same place and they share the same
acq electronics.
o I don't understand at all the sentence: " The situation is in practice
facilitated by the fact that we have no candidate events and that the
lowest limits are dominant." Let me point out in general however that
I think we should do everything just like we would if we had real
events. We can't rely on the fact that we didn't see anything to be
sloppy.
o Please explain or provide a reference for the formula you use to
combine limits. A one sentence explanation would be fine.
I hope this is useful,
-Chris