on March 14 - 16 our Technical Proposal (TP, see SPARC web page http://www.gsi.de/fair/experiments/sparc/) submitted to the GSI management of the International Accelerator Facility for Ions and Antiprotons (FAIR) has been evaluated by an international Program Advisory Committee (PAC).

Now we received the evaluation report and we are happy to tell you that it is very positive and encouraging (see pdf). In addition, a letter of the (new) STI chairman regarding the further procedure and the next steps is attached.

Although the TP evaluation went very well for SPARC, it is obvious that the part of the physics case for HCI at FLAIR as well as the plans for its technical realisation must be strengthened and improved.

Therefore, during the HITRAP workshop (May 26 -28 2005, Munich, http://www.ha.physik.uni-muenchen.de/ioncatcher/), we are planning to arrange a session devoted to this issue. All members of the SPARC collaboration interested in this topic of HCI at FLAIR are kindly invited to join this meeting. For further information please contact

Wolfgang Quint (w.quint@gsi.de) or Angela Bräuning-Demian (A.Braeuning-Demian@gsi.de).

We would also like to take this opportunity to announce a SPARC topical workshop "Atomic Physics in Strong Fields", September 6-11, 2005, organized as a Satellite Meeting to the XXIX Mazurian Lakes Conference on Physics (http://zfjavs.fuw.edu.pl/mazurian/mazurian.html).

Please reserve this date in your schedule. A detailed program and more practical information will be sent out within the next days.

With best regards

Reinhold Schuch and Thomas Stoehlker