Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2019
Volume 64, Number 3
Saturday–Tuesday, April 13–16, 2019; Denver, Colorado
Session C12: Undergraduate Research IIUndergraduate
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Sponsoring Units: APS SPS Chair: Crystal Bailey, American Physical Society Room: Sheraton Plaza Court 1 |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 1:30PM - 1:42PM |
C12.00001: Study of the feasibility of identifying the process H0 → gg via g → bb̅ at the Large Hadron Collider Rebecca Moore, Stephen J. Sekula The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is embarked on a 20-year study of the Higgs boson (denoted H0), discovered in 2012 and the primogenitor of mass in the universe. The Higgs boson is also known to have complex interactions leading to the production of particles without mass. By one such interaction the Higgs boson produces two photons, the process which helped us to discover the Higgs boson. The Standard Model predicts the Higgs boson will also decay to a pair of gluons, represented by H0 → gg, with a large branching fraction (about 8%). However, H0 → gg is unlikely to be directly observable at the LHC. We explore some basic ideas about this process that might allow for LHC experiments to study this process, especially during the high-luminosity phase of the LHC. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 1:42PM - 1:54PM |
C12.00002: Upgrades for The Fast Interaction Trigger Detector of ALICE at the LHC Dominique N Newell, Mackenzie Stewart, Austin Guard, Yuri Melikyan, Austin V Harton, Edmundo J Garcia-Solis CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) is a global laboratory that studies proton and heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is one of four major experiments at the LHC. ALICE is dedicated to the study of the transition of matter to Quark-Gluon Plasma in heavy ion collisions. In Run 1 and 2, ALICE had two sub-detectors, the T0, and V0, that provided minimum bias and multiplicity trigger, beam-gas rejection, collision time, online multiplicity, and event plane determination. For Run 3 both detectors will be replaced by the Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT) system. This upgrade will produce a more precise and accurate location and time of collision at the interaction point. In this talk we describe the FIT upgrade; show the proposed characteristics of the FIT detectors and present test performance results. The detector tests were done at CERN by running six different tasks for validating the trends and parameters of the MCPs. Further analysis and interpretation of the module characteristics are underway at Chicago State University. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 1:54PM - 2:06PM |
C12.00003: Edge detection and Deep Learning Algorithm Performance Studies for the ATLAS Trigger System. Adrian G Gutierrez, Stephanie A Majewski, Walter Hopkins, Jacob Searcy The upcoming ATLAS Phase-I upgrade at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) planned for 2019-2020 will incorporate the Global Feature Extractor (gFEX), a component of the Level-1 Calorimeter trigger that is intended for the detection and selection of energy coming from hadronic decays emerging from proton-proton collisions at √13TeV in the ATLAS detector. As the luminosity at the LHC increases, the acquisition of data in the ATLAS trigger system becomes very challenging and rejecting background events in this high pileup environment (up to 80 interactions per bunch crossing) will require more sophisticated techniques. To achieve this goal, edge-detection and deep learning techniques that could be adapted for the gFEX’s Field Programable Gate Array (FPGA) architecture are being investigated. The focus of this study is to analyze the performance of these algorithms using Monte Carlo simulations of Lorentz-boosted top quark decays in order to increase the efficiency of signal detection given a fixed background rejection in our trigger system. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 2:06PM - 2:18PM |
C12.00004: Redesign and Assembly of Improved PMT Bases for Fermilab E1039/SpinQuest Nathaniel T Rowlands SpinQuest, Experiment 1039 at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is trying to understand the spin structure of the nucleon sea using the Main Injector 120 GeV beam and a polarized NH3 and ND3 targets. This is done via the Drell-Yan process of quark-antiquark annihilation, which produces two muons. SeaQuest/E906, the predecessor to SpinQuest had thermal management issues with the PMT bases for the first two hodoscope stations. Daughter cards on these PMT bases would overheat due to being enclosed with no cooling possible. These front hodoscopes constitute a critical component of the SpinQuest trigger. New daughter cards were designed to improve heat dispersion by using a 4-layer board with two ground planes and a gold plated solder pad connected to these planes. This refurbishment of the PMT bases and physical aspects of the new boards will be discussed, as well as the successful significant reduction of component operating temperatures. SpinQuest should begin engineering runs in June 2019 with the expectation to start taking data in the fall of 2019. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 2:18PM - 2:30PM |
C12.00005: Evaluating Performance of Improved SpinQuest/E1039 Trigger Hodoscopes Thomas Fitch SpinQuest/E1039 will use the Fermilab 120 GeV Main Injector to measure the antiquark distributions of the nucleon sea using polarized solid NH3 and ND3 targets. This will be the first time such measurements will have been done and will complement the valence polarized antiquark measurements that have been done by COMPASS II at CERN. By using a polarized target and dimuon production via the Drell-Yan process we can increase our knowledge of the contribution of sea-quarks to the spin of the proton. SpinQuest has made multiple improvements of the four hodoscope stations. These include an improved PMT base circuit board, improved clip lines used to reduce the pulse width from 20 to 10 ns without pulse distortion, and adding a horizontal gap in the first station to lower background events. The methods used to evaluate and optimize the new designs, such as testing with a pulsing violet LED to select the best PMTs for the bend plane hodoscopes and stability studies will be discussed. The hodoscope system will be tested using cosmic rays to be prepared for a planned commissioning with beam in June 2019. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 2:30PM - 2:42PM |
C12.00006: A low energy track reconstruction algorithm to be applied to the MiniBooNE Low Energy Excess Search in MicroBooNE Elizabeth W Hall The MicroBooNE experiment is an 85 ton Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) located on the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. A primary goal of the experiment is to investigate the low energy excess of electron neutrino like events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment. I will present a brief overview of MicroBooNE and its searches for the low energy excess. I will focus on the track reconstruction algorithm, to which I contributed by calibrating the response to protons and minimum ionizing particles. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 2:42PM - 2:54PM |
C12.00007: Boosted Decision Tree Based Single Electron Selection in MicroBooNE Keng Lin MicroBooNE is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber with an active volume of 85 metric tons located on the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab and has been collecting data since fall 2015. One of the primary physics goals of MicroBooNE is to investigate the "Low Energy Excess" of neutrino events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment. Two general candidate interpretations have been suggested as explanations to the MiniBooNE signal: the first is electron neutrino charged current quasi-elastic-like events, which could be identified by MicroBooNE with an event signature of one electron shower along with a number of proton tracks; the second interpretation is neutral current neutrino interactions that result in single photon production, which could be identified with an event signature of one detached photon shower along with a number of proton tracks associated with the interaction vertex. A Boosted Decision Tree (BDT) based event selection has been developed by MicroBooNE in the search for single photon events. This talk presents a variation of the selection that is instead optimized for the electron interpretation and the current performance of the electron selection BDT. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 2:54PM - 3:06PM |
C12.00008: Study of the KL0 → KS0 Regeneration Process with the KOTO Detector Kristin Marie Dona The KOTO experiment at the J-PARC research facility in Tokai, Japan is designed to measure the branching ratio of a neutral kaon (KL 0) decaying into a neutral pion and two neutrinos. This decay is extremely rare with the Standard Model (SM) predicted branching ratio to be less than 1 per 30 billion. Due to the rarity of this decay and the experimental difficulty, it has yet to be observed. Measuring the branching ratio is one of the best methods to probe for additional contributions to CP violation. An experimental branching ratio measurement will either confirm SM predictions or point towards new physics.
As this process is very rare, a clear understanding of possible background sources is crucial. Thus, we need to be able to distinguish the decay of interest among all other events. A potential background source can originate from KL0 to KS0 regeneration. This presentation will discuss the methods and results of the cross section measurement of the coherent regeneration of the KL0 into the KS0 on an aluminum target with the KOTO detector. |
Saturday, April 13, 2019 3:06PM - 3:18PM |
C12.00009: Radon Emanation Measurements for The LZ Dark Matter Experiment Marcus A Hall LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a liquid xenon dark matter experiment being built to search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The expected dominate background of LZ is from daughters of radon that emanate from materials touching the liquid xenon. To measure and help minimize this background, materials are left to emanate in chambers and the radon is then collected and assayed. Gas panels are used to flow the radon sample from the emanation chambers to the alpha detector. A new mobile gas panel was built in order to harvest radon from detector components being assembled and tested at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, SD. The new panel has an increased flow capacity to be used for larger items such as the LZ Inner Cryostat Vessel (ICV) and uses a portable trap so that radon collected can be moved with ease between the SURF and the radon counter housed at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Results from radon emanation measurements will be presented. |
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