NASA-CNSA Collaboration

Due to the Public Law 112-55, Sec. 539 passed by the 112th United States Congress in April 2011, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is prohibited from using funds to host Chinese visitors at NASA facilities. This law restricts NASA scientists from engaging with China’s recent developments in aerospace technology, resulting in the loss of a potential ally and a mutually beneficial partnership. This law stems from a multitude of reasons, including concern for the security of research centers and distrust that the Chinese will only steal American information. NASA and CNSA (China National Space Administration) have both expressed interest in working together despite US law constraining bilateral cooperation. Thus, in order to encourage collaboration to further advance the US’s space program while protecting national security and information, we propose modifying the Public Law 112-55, Sec. 539 to explicitly allow Chinese visitors to attend conferences in the US without the need for Congress to certify each collaboration incident individually. NASA scientists and national security experts, instead of Congress, should evaluate the benefits of the knowledge that may be exchanged. The US economy will not be impacted and national security will remain strong

Lepton Jet Generation and Reconstruction at Generator Level

I used PYTHIA 8, a Monte Carlo generator for particle physics, to simulate lepton-jet-producing events. These lepton jets are produced by squarks which produce neutralinos which create dark photons that undergo a dark sector cascade decay into detectable lepton jets. These events were examined for information about the particles that were produced. Triggers, which determine whether an event is recorded or not in the particle accelerator, were simulated. The number of events passing the trigger and the total number of events were compared, resulting in a trigger acceptance that will inform future studies. Number of jets produced based on information about the leptons was calculated. This was then compared with the actual number of jets there were, giving the reconstruction efficiency. Exact properties of theoretical particles are unknown, so I generated samples with varying conditions, to gain knowledge of what the events may be like. Notably, reconstruction efficiency is ~70% for all samples and triggers. The three-muon trigger, which we hope to have running on the real particle accelerator next year, shows much higher trigger acceptance over other triggers which are being used