Measurement of sin² 2[theta]₁₃ using delayed neutron capture on hydrogen in Double CHOOZ

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 2013.In title on title-page, "[theta]" appears as the lower-case Greek letter. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-204).Double CHOOZ is a reactor antineutrino experiment built to measure [theta]13. The experiment is designed to use two detectors at different baselines (400 m and 1 km) to precisely measure the disappearance of ve from the Chooz reactor cores in Ardenne, France. Our inverse beta decay (IBD) signal is a two-fold coincidence of a prompt positron followed by a delayed neutron capture on gadolinium. The delayed neutron capture releases 8 MeV of energy from multiple gamma rays and is easily distinguished from natural radioactive backgrounds. While delayed neutron capture on gadolinium is used in all the reactor-based [theta]13 measurements [1, 2, 3], it is also possible to detect IBD via delayed neutron capture on hydrogen. In Double CHOOZ the Hydrogen detection channel has twice the signal statistics as the gadolinium detection channel, and provides an independent data sample with which to cross-check the gadolinium analysis result. The first result [4] is found to be sin² 2[theta]₁₃ = 0.097 ± 0.034 (stat) ± 0.034 (syst). The author lead the collaboration to make this measurement possible, and the detail of the work is presented in this document.by Kazuhiro Terao.Ph.D

Snowmass 2021 Computational Frontier CompF03 Topical Group Report: Machine Learning

The rapidly-developing intersection of machine learning (ML) with high-energy physics (HEP) presents both opportunities and challenges to our community. Far beyond applications of standard ML tools to HEP problems, genuinely new and potentially revolutionary approaches are being developed by a generation of talent literate in both fields. There is an urgent need to support the needs of the interdisciplinary community driving these developments, including funding dedicated research at the intersection of the two fields, investing in high-performance computing at universities and tailoring allocation policies to support this work, developing of community tools and standards, and providing education and career paths for young researchers attracted by the intellectual vitality of machine learning for high energy physics.Comment: Contribution to Snowmass 202

Precision muon reconstruction in Double Chooz

We describe a muon track reconstruction algorithm for the reactor anti-neutrino experiment Double Chooz. The Double Chooz detector consists of two optically isolated volumes of liquid scintillator viewed by PMTs, and an Outer Veto above these made of crossed scintillator strips. Muons are reconstructed by their Outer Veto hit positions along with timing information from the other two detector volumes. All muons are fit under the hypothesis that they are through-going and ultrarelativistic. If the energy depositions suggest that the muon may have stopped, the reconstruction fits also for this hypothesis and chooses between the two via the relative goodness-of-fit. In the ideal case of a through-going muon intersecting the center of the detector, the resolution is ∼40 mm in each transverse dimension. High quality muon reconstruction is an important tool for reducing the impact of the cosmogenic isotope background in Double Chooz.National Science Foundation (U.S.)United States. Department of Energ

Differentiable Simulation of a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber

Liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs) are widely used in particle detection for their tracking and calorimetric capabilities. The particle physics community actively builds and improves high-quality simulators for such detectors in order to develop physics analyses in a realistic setting. The fidelity of these simulators relative to real, measured data is limited by the modeling of the physical detectors used for data collection. This modeling can be improved by performing dedicated calibration measurements. Conventional approaches calibrate individual detector parameters or processes one at a time. However, the impact of detector processes is entangled, making this a poor description of the underlying physics. We introduce a differentiable simulator that enables a gradient-based optimization, allowing for the first time a simultaneous calibration of all detector parameters. We describe the procedure of making a differentiable simulator, highlighting the challenges of retaining the physics quality of the standard, non-differentiable version while providing meaningful gradient information. We further discuss the advantages and drawbacks of using our differentiable simulator for calibration. Finally, we provide a starting point for extensions to our approach, including applications of the differentiable simulator to physics analysis pipelines

Implicit Neural Representation as a Differentiable Surrogate for Photon Propagation in a Monolithic Neutrino Detector

Optical photons are used as signal in a wide variety of particle detectors. Modern neutrino experiments employ hundreds to tens of thousands of photon detectors to observe signal from millions to billions of scintillation photons produced from energy deposition of charged particles. These neutrino detectors are typically large, containing kilotons of target volume, with different optical properties. Modeling individual photon propagation in form of look-up table requires huge computational resources. As the size of a table increases with detector volume for a fixed resolution, this method scales poorly for future larger detectors. Alternative approaches such as fitting a polynomial to the model could address the memory issue, but results in poorer performance. Both look-up table and fitting approaches are prone to discrepancies between the detector simulation and the data collected. We propose a new approach using SIREN, an implicit neural representation with periodic activation functions, to model the look-up table as a 3D scene and reproduces the acceptance map with high accuracy. The number of parameters in our SIREN model is orders of magnitude smaller than the number of voxels in the look-up table. As it models an underlying functional shape, SIREN is scalable to a larger detector. Furthermore, SIREN can successfully learn the spatial gradients of the photon library, providing additional information for downstream applications. Finally, as SIREN is a neural network representation, it is differentiable with respect to its parameters, and therefore tunable via gradient descent. We demonstrate the potential of optimizing SIREN directly on real data, which mitigates the concern of data vs. simulation discrepancies. We further present an application for data reconstruction where SIREN is used to form a likelihood function for photon statistics

Graph Neural Networks for Particle Reconstruction in High Energy Physics detectors

Pattern recognition problems in high energy physics are notably different from traditional machine learning applications in computer vision. Reconstruction algorithms identify and measure the kinematic properties of particles produced in high energy collisions and recorded with complex detector systems. Two critical applications are the reconstruction of charged particle trajectories in tracking detectors and the reconstruction of particle showers in calorimeters. These two problems have unique challenges and characteristics, but both have high dimensionality, high degree of sparsity, and complex geometric layouts. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are a relatively new class of deep learning architectures which can deal with such data effectively, allowing scientists to incorporate domain knowledge in a graph structure and learn powerful representations leveraging that structure to identify patterns of interest. In this work we demonstrate the applicability of GNNs to these two diverse particle reconstruction problems

Graph Neural Networks for Particle Reconstruction in High Energy Physics detectors

Pattern recognition problems in high energy physics are notably different from traditional machine learning applications in computer vision. Reconstruction algorithms identify and measure the kinematic properties of particles produced in high energy collisions and recorded with complex detector systems. Two critical applications are the reconstruction of charged particle trajectories in tracking detectors and the reconstruction of particle showers in calorimeters. These two problems have unique challenges and characteristics, but both have high dimensionality, high degree of sparsity, and complex geometric layouts. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are a relatively new class of deep learning architectures which can deal with such data effectively, allowing scientists to incorporate domain knowledge in a graph structure and learn powerful representations leveraging that structure to identify patterns of interest. In this work we demonstrate the applicability of GNNs to these two diverse particle reconstruction problems.Comment: Presented at NeurIPS 2019 Workshop "Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences

Attenuation of HOIL-1L ligase activity promotes systemic autoimmune disorders by augmenting linear ubiquitin signaling

自己免疫疾患の発症メカニズムの一端を解明 --自己免疫疾患の新規治療ターゲットへ--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2024-02-09.Linear ubiquitin chains, which are generated specifically by the linear ubiquitin assembly complex (LUBAC) ubiquitin ligase, play crucial roles in immune signaling, including NF-κB activation. LUBAC comprises catalytic large isoform of heme-oxidized iron regulatory protein 2 ubiquitin ligase 1 (HOIL-1L) interacting protein (HOIP), accessory HOIL-1L, and SHANK-associated RH domain-interacting protein (SHARPIN). Deletion of the ubiquitin ligase activity of HOIL-1L, an accessory ligase of LUBAC, augments LUBAC functions by enhancing LUBAC-mediated linear ubiquitination, which is catalyzed by HOIP. Here, we show that HOIL-1L ΔRING1 mice, which exhibit augmented LUBAC functions upon loss of the HOIL-1L ligase, developed systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Sjögren's syndrome in a female-dominant fashion. Augmented LUBAC activity led to hyperactivation of both lymphoid and myeloid cells. In line with the findings in mice, we sought to identify missense single nucleotide polymorphisms/variations of the RBCK1/HOIL-1L gene in humans that attenuate HOIL-1L ligase activity. We found that the R464H variant, which is encoded by rs774507518 within the RBCK1/HOIL-1L gene, attenuated HOIL-1L ligase activity and augmented LUBAC-mediated immune signaling, including that mediated by Toll-like receptors. We also found that rs774507518 was enriched significantly in patients with SLE, strongly suggesting that RBCK1/HOIL-1L is an SLE susceptibility gene and that augmented linear ubiquitin signaling generated specifically by LUBAC underlies the pathogenesis of this prototype systemic autoimmune disease