From October 27th to 31st the Helmholtz Institute Jena and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena have been the hosts of the 10th SPARC Topical Workshop and Collaboration Meeting. After touring world-wide for many years, the SPARC community met again in Germany where ten years ago the collaboration started its journey towards FAIR. The meeting concentrated on scientific, financial and organizational aspects.
With more than 100 participants in more than 40 talks the status of the different SPARC subprojects has been discussed. Especially high interest was received by different reports related to the CRYRING@ESR and SPARC@HESR, two projects which will significantly enrich the SPARC research program in the FAIR Modular Start Version. The invited guests, Prof. Dr. Günther Rosner, scientific director of FAIR GmbH, Prof. Dr. Oliver Kester, GSI FAIR Project leader, and Dr. Lars Schmidt, technical coordinator of the PANDA collaboration, contributed with their reports on the status of the FAIR Project, the advances on the FAIR accelerator realization and PANDA physics to the highlights of the meeting. During the last day a special session dedicated to the new perspectives for the physics with decelerated antiprotons at FAIR have been presented by and discussed with members of the FLAIR collaboration which joined the SPARC meeting.
The two nice social events offered by the organizers did the rest for completing the targeted, fruitful and pleasant working atmosphere.
Last but not least the success of the 10th SPARC meeting was completed by the exceptional local organization which was taken care of by Mrs. Barbara Kirchner and Stefanie Lüttges. In the name of all participants we especially thank the local organizing committee for the nice time we had in Jena.
For the SPARC Collaboration: A. Braeuning-Demian, R. Schuch, and Th. Stöhlker