This note is to those of you who are planning to submit proposals for detector R&D for future energy frontier lepton ( e+e- or µ+µ+) colliders in response to the DOE's recent Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA).

We wrote to you earlier about our intention to organize a consortium proposal for Physics & Detectors at future lepton colliders, called the Lepton Collider Framework Proposal (LCFP). LCFP is broader in scope than just detector R&D and it is actively being worked on. In this note we will only address detector R&D at future lepton colliders, in order to be able to meet the FOA deadline of March 18, 2011. In the future we expect detector R&D to become part of the larger LCFP, but for now we will concentrate on the Lepton Collider Detector R&D (LCDRD) proposal. You can read the LoI we submitted for LCDRD here: http://physics.uoregon.edu/~lc/lcdrd_fy11  .  Many of you responded to our earlier request to forward your LoI's to us, so we would know who is submitting proposals and who might join our consortium. We hope more of you will join us.

We are writing now to explain in more detail how the LCDRD consortium proposal will work, and to enlist your participation in this consortium. If you are interested in joining, we hope you will send us a draft of your proposal by March 11, 2011, and your final proposal by March 16, before the FOA due date.  We need the draft proposals early for our first round assessments and the final proposals in time to be referenced  in the consortium proposal.

We plan to bundle the proposals sent to us, along with an assessment of the priority of each proposal and the level of suggested funding, and to request funding from DOE for the consortium as a whole. We will develop two funding scenarios, one assuming that we receive $1.0M, the other that we get $1.5M for the consortium in year one. This amount will increase in subsequent years. This means that a consortium proposal ( 25 page limit) will be written, which outlines in general the challenges at each lepton collider, provides a 0.5-1 page summary of your proposal and explains how it fits into the overall picture. All proposals submitted to LCDRD will be linked via a WEB page in order to be available for reviewers from DOE. Criteria for setting priorities and some management details are given below. LCDRD will manage the proposals in the future, including dispensing funds as they are provided by DOE, annually reviewing progress and actively soliciting future proposals, and providing whatever materials DOE needs for review of the consortium and the proposals. In some sense, LCDRD is an expansion and an extension of the University Detector R&D project, which included SiD R&D administered by Jim Brau out of the University of Oregon, ILD R&D administered by Graham Wilson, and 4th R&D administered by John Hauptman. It extends that program, which is in its final year, over the next 5 years, FY2011-FY2015. Most importantly, it expands that program to include generic detector R&D driven by detector concepts at all possible future Lepton Colliders, and it will support projects for all the future lepton collider options, ILC, CLIC, and the Muon Collider.
 
Joining a consortium proposal is advantageous for several reasons. This proposal will represent the interests of the Lepton Collider Community, and give the LC community a unified voice in seeking detector R&D funding from DOE.  LCDRD garners strength from the number of proponents it represents; it's a cliché, but there is strength in numbers.   Having a single proposal is desirable because it is efficient and much easier to review a consortium proposal; its existence demonstrates some consensus and self-organization within the community; and the proponents provide management and direction. It also guarantees that internal review and prioritization of the proposals is being done by those in the community most qualified and knowledgeable about lepton collider physics and detectors.

Management of LCDRD will extend the methods used to manage the University Detector R&D proposal mentioned above. Jim Brau, Marcel Demarteau, and John Jaros will serve as co-PIs for LCDRD. They will work with a review board, initially consisting of Ron Lipton, Adam Para, Dan Peterson, and Harry Weerts, to read, prioritize, and suggest funding levels for all the proposals in the consortium. The review board will have representation from those working on ILC detectors, SiD and ILD, those working on CLIC detectors, and those working on Muon Collider Detectors. The board will also serve to decide how funds are to be dispensed, following the guidelines from DOE, which is likely to provide additional review, especially in year one. LCDRD will review progress each year, update proposals, and solicit and bundle new proposals in future years.

There will be several criteria for prioritizing proposals which are based broadly on the desire to understand the challenges of future lepton collider detectors, judge their feasibility and timelines, and initiate R&D critical for their realization.  For detectors at the Muon Collider, it will initially be very important to characterize the experimental environment and the critical physics motivations, and to identify the detector challenges.  Supporting the development of the overall detector concepts for future lepton colliders will be given high priority as will supporting the computing/simulation infrastructure to enable such studies. Last and not least, proceeding with the most critical R&D to establish the various lepton collider detector concepts is judged very important. Completing the R&D that has been identified by the ILC detectors is certainly in this category; beginning this process for CLIC and Muon Collider has very high priority.

We hope you will help make this effort successful by being part of the LCDRD consortium, and that you will submit your proposal to us for bundling into the LCDRD Consortium proposal. We ask you to do the following:

1.	Notify us of your intention to join LCDRD as soon as possible.
2.	Submit a draft of your proposal by March 11, including its suggesting funding level, for our review. Your proposal
      should address the guidelines given in the FOA.
3.	Submit your final proposal to us for bundling by March 16, 2011.

Contacts for LCDRD are Jim Brau ([log in to unmask]), Marcel Demarteau ([log in to unmask]) , John Jaros ([log in to unmask]), and Ron Lipton ([log in to unmask]) .