Attendance: Amy T., Shaul H., Tim P., Jacques D., Alex vE., Dan G.

Notes by: Karl

• brief update on report/astro-ph posting
  • Good progress. ~one week to finish
  • Figure from Eleonora; FOM Data
• Talk + posters at USRA conference - Authorship?
  • First Author + “PICO Collaboration”?
  • First + All?
  • First + EC?

Report status

• SH: Good progress implementing various comments and condensing text. ~one week to finish
• Figure from Eleonora; FOM Data
  • SH: shows figure of merit proportional to 1/(vol of uncertainty in parameter space) for various LCDM plus extension models. COBE = 1 and scaled from there. Jump from Planck to PICO ~ 10^9
  • SH: Is this worth including? Difficult to decided because I haven't said what would be removed, probably ~1/2 page of some other section that isn't one of the key SOs. Some of the DM section for example, but no decision yet.
  • AT: neat and interesting, especially from CMB history viewpoint. Doesn't seem to be better than what we already have though. Doesn't answer what science is gained for $1B, or how we gain that science, or why we should pursue that science. Also needs some explanatory text, adding length. And we are fighting length limits.
    • SH: A text section explaining this calculation and argument exists. It's ~3/4 of a page. So additional text would only be 1-2 sentences. AT: that helps.
  • AT: plot shows PICO improves on past, also seems to suggest CMB work will continue forever!
  • TP: y-axis parameter needs explanation. not clear to me what it is so large, 10^20s
  • AT: there is a nice message of COBE–>Planck jump is ~ Planck–>PICO jump.
  • JD: there are people (at least in Europe, SH:and elsewhere!) that think Planck cleaned up everything so there is nothing left to do. This counters that sentiment.
  • AE: surprising that LCDM improves from Planck–>PICO. TP: I also don't understand this.
    • SH/JD: Because planck is cosmic variance (CV) limited in TT, but PICO is CV limited in TT, EE, BB.
    • SH: we'll add LCDM (6 parameters) to plot legend so it's clear that it is plain LCDM.
  • TP: slope is emphasized by lines, but really is a step function.
  • TP: where do ground experiments fall on this plot? Change it?
    • SH: a good (and natural) question. answering is tricky. ferreting out what assumption ground experiments have made is hard. and the discussion is more political.
    • JD: agree it is difficult. it's hard to say when / if ground experiments are CV limited on these parameters. due to foregrounds, systematics. Of course PICO may be limited by those as well, but it is likely to be less so.
    • SH: worth extending Tim's question to CMB ground + other experiments like LSST, Euclid, DESI, . . .
  • JD: response to 'CMB forever' comment. We can try to add some CV limited points. Since PICO is CV limited on TT, EE, BB (AE: but not lensing). example parameters: 0.1 uK arcmin and infinitely small beam.
    • SH: this would be very good. concerned about an infinitely small beam since that isn't feasible.
    • JD: the noise level is more important as noise + the CMB damping tail sets an l_max that isn't much less than arcmin scales. CORE calculations show beam size stops mattering for small beams. What noise level to choose is an open question.
    • AT: Being able to say “PICO is the final CMB mission” with supporting numbers would be valuable.
    • TP: This could also justify the current instrument choices for PICO. Showing that $1B gets X amount of science while $10B doesn't get even close to 10X science.
  • SH + JD + Eleonora to talk offline about how to add some CV limits.
  • JD: minor note, chose WMAP at 2013 which makes a big jump for Planck. Could choose an earlier WMAP and make the curve smoother. SH: true, but not too important. this is fine.

Talk + posters at USRA conference - Authorship?

• SH: posters at USRA in few months, abstracts due tomorrow. Also APS conference approaching. What authorship makes sense?
• AT: for USRA author list is part of abstract and counts against length. So list all ~60 authors is just not practical.
• SH: EC + first author doesn't make much sense anymore because the full EC doesn't well reflect who put significant work into the report.
• TP: could do, Present + PICO collab. Then put full author list on bottom of poster is small font.
• AT: citing the arxiv version of the report gives a route to people finding the full author list.
• JD: Some funding to support PICO came from Europe. Agencies like to see peoples' names. Even in tiny font on a poster is good.
  • SH: Also are funding acknowledgements in report. JD to send text to Shaul
• SH: For abstracts we'll do “first author, PICO collaboration”. Actual text on posters still TBD.
  • All: no objections.