Reconstruction of Chirp Mass in the Search of Compact Binaries

Excess energy method is used in searches of gravitational waves (GWs) produced from sources with poorly modeled characteristics. It identifies GW events by searching for a coincidence appearance of excess energy in a GW detector network. While it is sensitive to a wide range of signal morphologies, the energy outliers can be populated by background noise events (background), thereby reducing the statistical confidence of a true signal. However, if the physics of the source is partially understood, weak model dependent constraints can be imposed to suppress the background. This letter presents a novel idea of using the reconstructed chirp mass along with two goodness of fit parameters for suppressing background when search is focused on GW produced from the compact binary coalescence

Fast algorithm for track segment and hit reconstruction in the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers

In this note, we propose an algorithm for fast and efficient track segment reconstruction in Cathode Strip Chambers used by CMS experiment for muon detection in the forward direction. The algorithm is designed to be CPU-efficient and is targeted for High Level Trigger (HLT, online reconstructed events pre-selection) purposes. The segment finding efficiency and the spatial resolution attainable with the proposed algorithm as well as the required CPU time are benchmarked using the MTCC data and found to surpass the HLT requirements

Measuring Muon Reconstruction Efficiency from Data

We suggest a method of measuring the global muon reconstruction efficiency epsilon directly from data, which largely alleviates uncertainties associated with our ability to monitor and reproduce in Monte Carlo simulation all details of the underlying detector performance. With the data corresponding to an integrated luminosity L = 10 fb^-1, the precision of measuring epsilon for muons in the P_T range of 10-100~GeV will be better than 1%

The role of interference in unraveling the ZZ-couplings of the newly discovered boson at the LHC

We present a general procedure for measuring the tensor structure of the coupling of the scalar Higgs-like boson recently discovered at the LHC to two Z bosons, including the effects of interference among different operators. To motivate our concern with this interference, we explore the parameter space of the couplings in the effective theory describing these interactions and illustrate the effects of interference on the differential dilepton mass distributions. Kinematic discriminants for performing coupling measurements that utilize the effects of interference are developed and described. We present projections for the sensitivity of coupling measurements that use these discriminants in future LHC operation in a variety of physics scenarios.Comment: 29 pages, 9 Figure

Regression of Environmental Noise in LIGO Data

We address the problem of noise regression in the output of gravitational-wave (GW) interferometers, using data from the physical environmental monitors (PEM). The objective of the regression analysis is to predict environmental noise in the gravitational-wave channel from the PEM measurements. One of the most promising regression method is based on the construction of Wiener-Kolmogorov filters. Using this method, the seismic noise cancellation from the LIGO GW channel has already been performed. In the presented approach the Wiener-Kolmogorov method has been extended, incorporating banks of Wiener filters in the time-frequency domain, multi-channel analysis and regulation schemes, which greatly enhance the versatility of the regression analysis. Also we presents the first results on regression of the bi-coherent noise in the LIGO data

Precision studies of the Higgs boson decay channel H -> ZZ -> 4l with MEKD

The importance of the H -> ZZ -> 4l "golden" channel was shown by its major role in the discovery, by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, of a Higgs-like boson with mass near 125 GeV. We analyze the discrimination power of the matrix element method both for separating the signal from the irreducible ZZ background and for distinguishing various spin and parity hypotheses describing a signal in this channel. We show that the proper treatment of interference effects associated with permutations of identical leptons in the four electron and four muon final states plays an important role in achieving the best sensitivity in measuring the properties of the newly discovered boson. We provide a code, MEKD, that calculates kinematic discriminants based on the full leading order matrix elements and which will aid experimentalists and phenomenologists in their continuing studies of the H -> ZZ -> 4l channel.Comment: Major revision: added new sections discussing spin/ parity determination and the importance of using the full matrix element for the same flavor final state (involving both pairings of the leptons). Also added new functionality, including the most general couplings of a spin-0 or spin-2 boson to gluons and Zs, to the publicly-available code, MEKD, presented in this paper. 43 pages, 15 figure

A Proposed Search for the Detection of Gravitational Waves from Eccentric Binary Black Holes

Most of compact binary systems are expected to circularize before the frequency of emitted gravitational waves (GWs) enters the sensitivity band of the ground based interferometric detectors. However, several mechanisms have been proposed for the formation of binary systems, which retain eccentricity throughout their lifetimes. Since no matched-filtering algorithm has been developed to extract continuous GW signals from compact binaries on orbits with low to moderate values of eccentricity, and available algorithms to detect binaries on quasi-circular orbits are sub-optimal to recover these events, in this paper we propose a search method for detection of gravitational waves produced from the coalescences of eccentric binary black holes (eBBH). We study the search sensitivity and the false alarm rates on a segment of data from the second joint science run of LIGO and Virgo detectors, and discuss the implications of the eccentric binary search for the advanced GW detectors

Potential to Discover Supersymmetry in Events with Muons, Jets and Missing Energy in pp Collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 14 TeV with the CMS Detector

Generic signatures of supersymmetry with R-Parity conservation include those of single isolated muons or like-sign isolated dimuon pairs, accompanied with energetic jets and missing transverse energy. The ability of CMS to discover supersymmetry with these signals is estimated for 10 fb^-1 of collected data with the inclusive single- and di-muon High Level Trigger paths. The selection criteria are optimized and the systematic effects are studied for a single low-mass benchmark point of the constrained MSSM with m_0 = 60 GeV/c^2, m_1/2 = 250 GeV/c^2, tan beta = 10, A_0 = 0, and mu > 0. Discovery contours in the (m_0, m_1/2) plane are presented for integrated luminosities ranging from 1 to 100 fb^-1

Observing an intermediate-mass black hole GW190521 with minimal assumptions

On May 21, 2019 the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors observed a gravitationalwave transient GW190521, the heaviest binary black-hole merger detected to date with remnant mass of 142 M⊙ that was published recently. This observation is the first strong evidence for the existence of intermediate-mass black holes. The significance of this observation was determined by the coherent WAVEBURST (cWB) search algorithm, which identified GW190521 with minimal assumptions of its source model. In this paper, we show the performance of cWB for the detection of the binary black-hole mergers without use of the signal templates, describe the details of the GW190521 detection, and establish the consistency of the model-agnostic reconstruction of GW190521 by cWB with the theoretical waveform model of a binary black hole