Primary Vertex Research Articles

Vertex finding by sparse model-based clustering

The application of sparse model-based clustering to the problem of primary vertex finding is discussed. The observed z-positions of the charged primary tracks in a bunch crossing are modeled by a Gaussian mixture. The mixture parameters are estimated via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Sparsity is achieved by an appropriate prior on the mixture weights. The results are shown and compared to clustering by the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm.

A hardware fast tracker for the ATLAS trigger

The trigger system of the ATLAS experiment is designed to reduce the event rate from the LHC nominal bunch crossing at 40 MHz to about 1 kHz, at the design luminosity of 1034 cm–2 s–1. After a successful period of data taking from 2010 to early 2013, the LHC already started with much higher instantaneous luminosity. This will increase the load on High Level Trigger system, the second stage of the selection based on software algorithms. More sophisticated algorithms will be needed to achieve higher background rejection while maintaining good efficiency for interesting physics signals. The Fast TracKer (FTK) is part of the ATLAS trigger upgrade project. It is a hardware processor that will provide, at every Level-1 accepted event (100 kHz) and within 100 microseconds, full tracking information for tracks with momentum as low as 1 GeV. Providing fast, extensive access to tracking information, with resolution comparable to the offline reconstruction, FTK will help in precise detection of the primary and secondary vertices to ensure robust selections and improve the trigger performance. FTK exploits hardware technologies with massive parallelism, combining Associative Memory ASICs, FPGAs and high-speed communication links.

Investigating Emotional Top Down Modulation of Ambiguous Faces by Single Pulse TMS on Early Visual Cortices.

Top-down processing is a mechanism in which memory, context and expectation are used to perceive stimuli. For this study we investigated how emotion content, induced by music mood, influences perception of happy and sad emoticons. Using single pulse TMS we stimulated right occipital face area (rOFA), primary visual cortex (V1) and vertex while subjects performed a face-detection task and listened to happy and sad music. At baseline, incongruent audio-visual pairings decreased performance, demonstrating dependence of emotion while perceiving ambiguous faces. However, performance of face identification decreased during rOFA stimulation regardless of emotional content. No effects were found between Cz and V1 stimulation. These results suggest that while rOFA is important for processing faces regardless of emotion, V1 stimulation had no effect. Our findings suggest that early visual cortex activity may not integrate emotional auditory information with visual information during emotion top-down modulation of faces.

Exploring the hadronic axion window via delayed neutralino decay to axinos at the LHC

The addition of the QCD axion to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) not only solves the strong CP problem but also modifies the dark sector with new dark matter candidates. While SUSY axion phenomenology is usually restricted to searches for the axion itself or searches for the ordinary SUSY particles, this work focuses on scenarios where the axion's superpartner, the axino, may be detectable at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the decays of neutralinos displaced from the primary vertex. In particular, we focus on the KSVZ axino within the hadronic axion window. The decay length of neutralinos in this scenario easily fits the ATLAS detector for SUSY spectra expected to be testable at the 14 TeV LHC. We compare this signature of displaced decays to axinos to other well motivated scenarios containing a long lived neutralino which decays inside the detector. These alternative scenarios can in some cases very closely mimic the expected axino signature, and the degree to which they are distinguishable is discussed. We also briefly comment on the cosmological viability of such a scenario.

Track reconstruction in CMS high luminosity environment

The CMS tracker is the largest silicon detector ever built, covering 200 square meters and providing an average of 14 high-precision measurements per track. Tracking is essential for the reconstruction of objects like jets, muons, electrons and tau leptons starting from the raw data from the silicon pixel and strip detectors. Track reconstruction is widely used also at trigger level as it improves objects tagging and resolution. The CMS tracking code is organized in several levels, known as 'iterative steps', each optimized to reconstruct a class of particle trajectories, as the ones of particles originating from the primary vertex or displaced tracks from particles resulting from secondary vertices. Each iterative step consists of seeding, pattern recognition and fitting by a Kalman filter, and a final filtering and cleaning. Each subsequent step works on hits not yet associated to a reconstructed particle trajectory. The CMS tracking code is continuously evolving to make the reconstruction computing load compatible with the increasing instantaneous luminosity of LHC, resulting in a large number of primary vertices and tracks per bunch crossing. This is achieved by optimizing the iterative steps and by using new software techniques. Tracking algorithms used in CMS are described; physics and computing performances are discussed with respect to Run I and Run II physics program and within CMS future upgrades.

The ATLAS FTK system: how to improve the physics potential with a tracking trigger

After a very successful data taking run, the ATLAS experiment is being upgraded to cope with the higher luminosity and higher center of mass energy that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will provide in the next years. The Fast Tracker (FTK) trigger system, part of the ATLAS trigger upgrade program, is a highly parallel hardware device processor based on a mixture of advanced technologies. FTK provides global track reconstruction in the full inner silicon detector, with resolution comparable to the offline algorithms, in approximately 100 microseconds, allowing a fast and precise detection of the primary and secondary vertex information. The track and vertex information is then used by the high-level trigger algorithms, allowing highly improved trigger performance for the most difficult signatures, such as b-jets. The expected physics performance of FTK in the harsh environment at high pile-up and high luminosities at LHC Run2 are presented.

Tracking at High Level Trigger in CMS

The trigger systems of the LHC detectors play a crucial role in determining the physics capabilities of experiments. A reduction of several orders of magnitude of the event rate is needed to reach values compatible with detector readout, offline storage and analysis capability. The CMS experiment has been designed with a two-level trigger system: the Level-1 Trigger (L1T), implemented on custom-designed electronics, and the High Level Trigger (HLT), a streamlined version of the CMS offline reconstruction software running on a computer farm. A software trigger system requires a trade-off between the complexity of the algorithms, the sustainable output rate, and the selection efficiency. With the computing power available during the 2012 data taking the maximum reconstruction time at HLT was about 200 ms per event, at the nominal L1T rate of 100 kHz. Track reconstruction algorithms are widely used in the HLT, for the reconstruction of the physics objects as well as in the identification of b-jets and lepton isolation. Reconstructed tracks are also used to distinguish the primary vertex, which identifies the hard interaction process, from the pileup ones. This task is particularly important in the LHC environment given the large number of interactions per bunch crossing: on average 25 in 2012, and expected to be around 40 in Run II. We will present the performance of HLT tracking algorithms, discussing its impact on CMS physics program, as well as new developments done towards the next data taking in 2015.

Design of a hardware track finder (Fast Tracker) for the ATLAS trigger

The use of tracking information at the trigger level in the LHC Run II period is crucial for the trigger and data acquisition system and will be even more so as contemporary collisions that occur at every bunch crossing will increase in Run III. The Fast TracKer is part of the ATLAS trigger upgrade project; it is a hardware processor that will provide every Level-1 accepted event (100 kHz) and within 100μs, full tracking information for tracks with momentum as low as 1 GeV . Providing fast, extensive access to tracking information, with resolution comparable to the offline reconstruction, FTK will help in precise detection of the primary and secondary vertices to ensure robust selections and improve the trigger performance.

New Approaches for Data Reconstruction and Analysis in the CBM Experiment

The future heavy-ion experiment CBM (FAIR/GSI, Darmstadt, Germany) will focus on measurement of very rare probes at interaction rates up to 10 MHz with data flow of up to 1 TB/s. The beam will provide free stream of beam particles without bunch structure. That requires full online event reconstruction and selection not only in space, but also in time, so-called 4D event building and selection.The FLES (First-Level Event Selection) reconstruction and selection package consists of several modules: track finding, track fitting, short-lived particles finding, event building and event selection. A time-slice is reconstructed in parallel between cores within a same CPU, thus minimizing the communication between CPUs. After all tracks are found and fitted in 4D, they are collected into clusters of tracks originated from common primary vertices, which then are fitted, thus identifying 4D interaction points registered within the time-slice. Secondary tracks are associated with primary vertices according to their estimated production time. After that, short-lived particles are found and the full event building process is finished. The last stage of the FLES package is the selection of events according to the requested trigger signatures.

Non prompt D-meson measurements with ALICE at the LHC

The production of hadrons with open heavy flavour (charm and beauty) in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions is a powerful tool to study the properties of the deconfined phase of strongly interacting matter known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The production of charm and beauty quarks occurs in hard partonic scattering processes in the early stage of the collisions. ALICE is the LHC experiment devoted to the study of heavy-ion physics. It is able to reconstruct charmed mesons in exclusive decays (e.g. D0 →K− π + ) and beauty hadrons in semi-inclusive decays (e.g. B→eX, B→J/ψ X) . At LHC energies a significant component of the inclusive D-meson yield originates from the decay of beauty-flavoured hadrons, whose knowledge is essential to determine the production of prompt D mesons coming from charm quarks. A precise determination of the non-prompt fraction combined with the determination of the inclusive D-meson yield would allow a measurement of beauty production. A data-driven method that exploits the different shapes of the distributions of the transverse-plane impact parameter to the primary vertex of prompt and feed-down D mesons in p-Pb collisions is used in ALICE. An alternative approach based on the D-meson decay length for Pb–Pb collisions is under study.

ATLAS results on heavy flavour production and its relation to quark matter

We present measurements of J/ψ and ψ (2S) production in proton-lead collisions at a centre of mass energy per nucleon-nucleon interaction of √sNN = 5.02 TeV and in proton- proton collisions at √s = 2.76 TeV, with integrated luminosities of 28.1 nb-1 and 4.0 pb-1, respectively. Both measurements are based on data recorded by the ATLAS detector in 2013 and are performed in the dimuon decay channel. Prompt components of J/ψ and ψ(2S) are separated from the nonprompt components resulting from b-hadron decays through an analysis of the distance between the J/ψ and ψ(2S) decay vertexes and the event primary vertex. The measurements of nuclear modification factors and self-normalized yields for the J/ψ and ψ(2S) are performed in the following ranges: 8.5 < pTµµ < 30 GeV in transverse momentum, -1.5 <y*µµ 1.5 in centre-of-mass rapidity and 0 — 90% in centrality. The differential cross section for production of nonprompt J/ψ is compared to a FONLL calculation which does not include nuclear effects for the ranges of 8 < pTµµ < 30 GeV in transverse momentum, and for |y*| µµ < 1.94 in centre-of-mass rapidity. Forward-backward production ratios are presented and compared to theoretical predictions.

Dark photons from charm mesons at LHCb

We propose a search for dark photons $A^{\prime}$ at the LHCb experiment using the charm meson decay $D^*(2007)^0 \!\to D^0 A^{\prime}$. At nominal luminosity, $D^{*0} \!\to D^0 \gamma$ decays will be produced at about 700kHz within the LHCb acceptance, yielding over 5 trillion such decays during Run 3 of the LHC. Replacing the photon with a kinetically-mixed dark photon, LHCb is then sensitive to dark photons that decay as $A^{\prime}\!\to e^+e^-$. We pursue two search strategies in this paper. The displaced strategy takes advantage of the large Lorentz boost of the dark photon and the excellent vertex resolution of LHCb, yielding a nearly background-free search when the $A^{\prime}$ decay vertex is significantly displaced from the proton-proton primary vertex. The resonant strategy takes advantage of the large event rate for $D^{*0} \!\to D^0 A^{\prime}$ and the excellent invariant mass resolution of LHCb, yielding a background-limited search that nevertheless covers a significant portion of the $A^{\prime}$ parameter space. Both search strategies rely on the planned upgrade to a triggerless-readout system at LHCb in Run 3, which will permit identification of low-momentum electron-positron pairs online during data taking. For dark photon masses below about 100MeV, LHCb can explore nearly all of the dark photon parameter space between existing prompt-$A^{\prime}$ and beam-dump limits.

CMS reconstruction improvements for the tracking in large pileup events

The CMS tracking code is organized in several levels, known as iterative steps, each optimized to reconstruct a class of particle trajectories, as the ones of particles originating from the primary vertex or displaced tracks from particles resulting from secondary vertices. Each iterative step consists of seeding, pattern recognition and fitting by a kalman filter, and a final filtering and cleaning. Each subsequent step works on hits not yet associated to a reconstructed particle trajectory.The CMS tracking code is continuously evolving to make the reconstruction computing load compatible with the increasing instantaneous luminosity of LHC, resulting in a large number of primary vertices and tracks per bunch crossing.The major upgrade put in place during the present LHC Long Shutdown will allow the tracking code to comply with the conditions expected during RunII and the much larger pileup. In particular, new algorithms that are intrinsically more robust in high occupancy conditions were developed, iterations were re-designed (including new ones, dedicated to specific physics objects), code optimizations were deployed and new software techniques were used. The speed improvement has been achieved without significant reduction in term of physics performance.The methods and the results are presented and the prospects for future applications are discussed.

Performance of Tracking, b-tagging and Jet/MET reconstruction at the CMS High Level Trigger

The trigger systems of the LHC detectors play a crucial role in determining the physics capabilities of experiments. In 2015, the center-of-mass energy of proton-proton collisions will reach 13 TeV up to an unprecedented luminosity of 1 × 1034 cm−2s−1. A reduction of several orders of magnitude of the event rate is needed to reach values compatible with detector readout, offline storage and analysis capabilities. The CMS experiment has been designed with a two-level trigger system: the Level-1 Trigger (L1T), implemented on custom-designed electronics, and the High Level Trigger (HLT), a streamlined version of the offline reconstruction software running on a computer farm. A software trigger system requires a trade-off between the complexity of the algorithms, the sustainable output rate, and the selection efficiency. With the computing power available during the 2012 data taking the maximum reconstruction time at HLT was about 200 ms per event, at the nominal L1T rate of 100 kHz. Tracking algorithms are widely used in the HLT in the object reconstruction through particle-flow techniques as well as in the identification of b-jets and lepton isolation. Reconstructed tracks are also used to distinguish the primary vertex, which identifies the hard interaction process, from the pileup ones. This task is particularly important in the LHC environment given the large number of interactions per bunch crossing: on average 25 in 2012, and expected to be around 40 in Run II with a large contribution from out-of-time particles. In order to cope with tougher conditions the tracking and vertexing techniques used in 2012 have been largely improved in terms of timing and efficiency in order to keep the physics reach at the level of Run I conditions. We will present the performance of these newly developed algorithms, discussing their impact on the b-tagging performances as well as on the jet and missing transverse energy reconstruction.

ATLAS strategy for primary vertex reconstruction during Run-2 of the LHC

The reconstruction of vertices corresponding to proton-proton collisions in ATLAS is an essential element of event reconstruction used in many performance studies and physics analyses. During Run-1 of the LHC, ATLAS has employed an iterative approach to vertex finding. In order to improve the flexibility of the algorithm and ensure continued performance for very high numbers of simultaneous collisions in Run-2 of the LHC and beyond, a new approach to seeding vertex finding has been developed inspired by image reconstruction techniques. This note provides a brief outline of how reconstructed tracks are used to create an image of likely vertex collisions in an event, describes the implementation in the ATLAS software, and presents some preliminary results of the performance of the algorithm in simulation approximating early Run-2 conditions.

D+→K−π+π+: The weak vector current

Studies of D and B meson decays into hadrons have been used to test the standard model in the last 15 years. A heavy meson decay involves the combined effects of a primary weak vertex and subsequent hadronic final-state interactions, which determine the shapes of Dalitz plots. The fact that final products involve light mesons indicates that the QCD vacuum is an active part of the problem. This makes the description of these processes rather involved and, in spite of its importance, phenomenological analyses tend to rely on crude models. Our group produced, some time ago, a schematic calculation of the decay ${D}^{+}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{K}^{\ensuremath{-}}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}$, which provided a reasonable description of data. Its main assumption was the dominance of the weak vector current, which yields a nonfactorizable interaction. Here we refine that calculation by including the correct momentum dependence of the weak vertex and extending the energy ranges of $\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\pi}$ and $K\ensuremath{\pi}$ subamplitudes present into the problem. These new features make the present treatment more realistic and bring theory closer to data.

PYTHIA hadronization process tuning in the GENIE neutrino interaction generator

Next-generation neutrino oscillation experiments utilize details of hadronic final states to improve the precision of neutrino interaction measurements. The hadronic system was often neglected or poorly modeled in the past, but they have significant effects on high precision neutrino oscillation and cross-section measurements. Among the physics of hadronic systems in neutrino interactions, the hadronization model controls multiplicities and kinematics of final state hadrons from the primary interaction vertex. For relatively high invariant mass events, many neutrino experiments rely on the PYTHIA program. Here, we show a possible improvement of this process in neutrino event generators, by utilizing expertise from the HERMES experiment. Finally, we estimate the impact on the systematics of hadronization models for neutrino mass hierarchy analysis using atmospheric neutrinos such as the PINGU experiment.

Level-1 pixel based tracking trigger algorithm for LHC upgrade

The Pixel Detector is the innermost detector of the tracking system of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) . It precisely determines the interaction point (primary vertex) of the events and the possible secondary vertexes due to heavy flavours (b and c quarks); it is part of the overall tracking system that allows reconstructing the tracks of the charged particles in the events and combined with the magnetic field to measure their momentum. The pixel detector allows measuring the tracks in the region closest to the interaction point. The Level-1 (real-time) pixel based tracking trigger is a novel trigger system that is currently being studied for the LHC upgrade. An important goal is developing real-time track reconstruction algorithms able to cope with very high rates and high flux of data in a very harsh environment. The pixel detector has an especially crucial role in precisely identifying the primary vertex of the rare physics events from the large pile-up (PU) of events. The goal of adding the pixel information already at the real-time level of the selection is to help reducing the total level-1 trigger rate while keeping an high selection capability. This is quite an innovative and challenging objective for the experiments upgrade for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) . The special case here addressed is the CMS experiment. This document describes exercises focusing on the development of a fast pixel track reconstruction where the pixel track matches with a Level-1 electron object using a ROOT-based simulation framework.

Measurement of differentialJ/ψproduction cross sections and forward-backward ratios inp + Pbcollisions with the ATLAS detector

Measurements of differential cross-sections for $J/\psi$ production in p+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV at the LHC with the ATLAS detector are presented. The data set used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 28.1 nb$^{-1}$. The $J/\psi$ mesons are reconstructed in the dimuon decay channel over the transverse momentum range $8<p_{\mathrm{T}}<30$ GeV and over the center-of-mass rapidity range $-2.87<y^{*}<1.94$. Prompt $J/\psi$ are separated from $J/\psi$ resulting from $b$-hadron decays through an analysis of the distance between the $J/\psi$ decay vertex and the event primary vertex. The differential cross-section for production of nonprompt $J/\psi$ is compared to a FONLL calculation that does not include nuclear effects. Forward-backward production ratios are presented and compared to theoretical predictions. These results constrain the kinematic dependence of nuclear modifications of charmonium and $b$-quark production in p+Pb collisions.

A primary influence vertex approach to identify driving factors in complex integrated agri-industrial systems – an example from sugarcane supply and processing systems

Integrated agri-industrial systems (IAISs), such as sugarcane supply and processing systems, are complex systems and hence generally difficult to understand and manage. The large number factors in IAISs coupled with the complex interrelationships among the factors make it challenging to identify the points of intervention for improving their overall performance. Several approaches, such as the network theory and the Theory of Constraints have been used to identify important factors in systems with variations in success. This paper demonstrates a primary influence vertex approach for identifying and ranking the factors that drive the performance of IAISs. The approach is based on comprehensive causal network analyses and was tested in four relatively diverse large-scale sugarcane milling operations in South Africa. Results from the analyses were found to be consistent with the literature and external knowledge of the milling areas as at the time of the study. It is concluded that the approach can proffer a sound basis from which deeper rooted problems in systems can be identified on an ongoing basis. It is, however, recommended that the approach should be systematically compared with other relevant methods that are used to analyse complex systems.