I've gone thru the final version of the paper
"NUCLEARITES SEARCH WITH THE MACRO DETECTOR AT GRAN SASSO"
made available by Laura Patrizii last Friday, April 23.
I have only a few comments related to the presentation of the different
monopole triggers and analyses for which I complained long ago.
Many changes have already been introduced. The few more I'd like to point
out for whatever they worth are:
1) p.6, 5th paragraph:
"The Time Over Half Maximum trigger (TOHM) recognizes wide ..."
I suggest that it is replaced by:
"The Slow Monopole Trigger comprised of the analog Time Over Half Maximum
(TOHM) electronics and the digital Leaky Integrator (LI) electronics
recognizes wide ..."
2) p.6, 6th paragraph:
"A second Slow Particle Trigger (SPT) is based on the time of flight
between two horizontal layers of scintillators.
<...>
This procedure was applied to the search for intermediate velocity
nuclearites (2.5x10^-3<beta<1.5x10^-2) [23]."
I think this is the first version of the now known FAST PARTICLE
TRIGGER (FMT) based on slow coincidence between scintillator planes
set at [1-~8]usec at that time (1991), set at [1-10]usec nowdays.
I suggest the term Slow Particle Trigger (SPT) is replaced by
the Fast Particle Trigger (FMT). This change is/will be consistent
with all of our bibliography.
3) p.6, 7th paragraph:
"The Fast Monopole Trigger (FMT). <...> This technique was applied
in the early analyses for high velocity nuclearites (1.5x10^-2<beta<1)"
Well, as I mentioned in item #2, FMT has been traditionally referred to
and used for particle velocities 2.5x10^-3<beta<1.5x10^-2.
The 1.5x10^-2<beta<1 velocity regime both in terms of hardware
and analyses was refered to as the "scintillator muon trigger"
This is the SPAM or cSPAM which I DON'T suggest to use here. Instead,
in the context of the paper, i propose to use:
"The scintillator muon trigger. <...> This technique was applied
in the early analyses for high velocity nuclearites (1.5x10^-2<beta<1)"
4) In all of the above I suggest a footnote to the above three systems stating
that:
"This includes present and earlier versions of the hardware electronics
with slightly different operating parameters and implementations but
with fundamentally the same principle of operation."
5) p.12, table 1:
Items #1,#2,#3 listed above, should be reflected in the method listings
in this table.
I also suggest that it is explicitly stated in the table caption that
" overlaps in both beta sensitivity and time do exist but they are taken
care of in the combination of limits " (e.g. TOHM A and TOHM B remain
a puzzle for the casual reader).
I remind you that in the nuclearites PRL'92, reference in made to the
"Spring 1989" data without any explicit mentioning of the running period.
Moreover, while for TYPE-II data (i.e. 2.5x10^-3<beta<1.5x10^-2) it is
explicitly mentioned that it includes SPRING 1989 *ONLY* data, it is
NOT clear how SPRING 1989 data were combined in the TYPE-I
(i.e. 2.5x10^-3<beta<1.5x10-2) and FAST (i.e. 1.5x10^-2<beta<1)
(BTW, i believe the SPRING 1989 running refers to Mar-May 1989).
Trying to be backwards-compatible, I thus suggest that the RUN PERIOD
listed under label A in table 1 is extended down to 03/89. This is not
going to be precise, but at least it will more precise that the present
(and it will make the TOHM A vs TOHM B less puzzling).
That's the final comments on this paper from my side. In order to expedite
the submission of this paper for publication, I suggest that if no other
comments exist to reschedule my earlier suggested deadline for comments
from Friday, April 30 to Wednesday, April 28.
--Erik Katsavounidis