Performance of the CDF Calorimeter Simulation in Tevatron Run II

The CDF experiment is successfully collecting data from ppbar collisions at the Tevatron in Run II. As the data samples are getting larger, systematic uncertainties due to the measurement of the jet energy scale assessed using the calorimeter simulation have become increasingly important. In many years of operation, the collaboration has gained experience with GFLASH, a fast parametrization of electromagnetic and hadronic showers used for the calorimeter simulation. We present the performance of the calorimeter simulation and report on recent improvements based on a refined in situ tuning technique. The central calorimeter response is reproduced with a precision of 1-2%.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; LaTeX2e, 10 .eps files, uses aipproc.cls, aipxfm.sty and aip-6s.clo (included). Contribution to the Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Calorimetry in High Energy Physics (CALOR06), June 5-9, 2006, Chicago (IL), USA. To be published by American Institute of Physics (AIP

Reheating Metastable O'Raifeartaigh Models

In theories with multiple vacua, reheating to a temperature greater than the height of a barrier can stimulate transitions from a desirable metastable vacuum to a lower energy state. We discuss the constraints this places on various theories and demonstrate that in a class of supersymmetric models this transition does not occur even for arbitrarily high reheating temperature.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure. Typos corrected and some references adde

Breit-Wigner Enhancement of Dark Matter Annihilation

We point out that annihilation of dark matter in the galactic halo can be enhanced relative to that in the early universe due to a Breit-Wigner tail, if the dark matter annihilates through a pole just below the threshold. This provides a new explanation to the "boost factor" which is suggested by the recent data of the PAMELA, ATIC and PPB-BETS cosmic-ray experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Seeking supernovae in the clouds: a performance study,”

ABSTRACT Today, our picture of the Universe radically differs from that of just over a decade ago. We now know that the Universe is not only expanding as Hubble discovered in 1929, but that the rate of expansion is accelerating, propelled by mysterious new physics dubbed "Dark Energy." This revolutionary discovery was made by comparing the brightness of nearby Type Ia supernovae (which exploded in the past billion years) to that of much more distant ones (from up to seven billion years ago). The reliability of this comparison hinges upon a very detailed understanding of the physics of the nearby events. As part of its effort to further this understanding, the Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory) relies upon a complex pipeline of serial processes that execute various image processing algorithms in parallel on ~10TBs of data. This pipeline has traditionally been run on a local cluster. Cloud computing offers many features that make it an attractive alternative. The ability to completely control the software environment in a Cloud is appealing when dealing with a community developed science pipeline with many unique library and platform requirements. In this context we study the feasibility of porting the SNfactory pipeline to the Amazon Web Services environment. Specifically we: describe the tool set we developed to manage a virtual cluster on Amazon EC2, explore the various design options available for application data placement, and offer detailed performance results and lessons learned from each of the above design options

SPS Ecloud Instabilities - Analysis of machine studies and implications for ecloud feedback

The SPS at high intensities exhibits transverse singlebunch instabilities with signatures consistent with an Ecloud driven instability.[1] We present recent MD data from the SPS, details of the instrument technique and spectral analysis methods which help reveal complex vertical motion that develops within a subset of the injected bunch trains. The beam motion is detected via wideband exponential taper striplines and delta-sigma hybrids. The raw sum and difference data is sampled at 50 GHz with 1.8 GHz bandwidth. Sliding window FFT techniques and RMS motion techniques show the development of large vertical tune shifts on portions of the bunch of nearly 0.025 from the base tune of 0.185. Results are presented via spectrograms and bunch slice trajectories to illustrate development of the unstable beam and time scale of development along the injected bunch train. The study shows that the growing unstable motion occupies a very broad frequency band of 1.2 GHz. These measurements are compared to numerical simulation results, and the system parameter implications for an Ecloud feedback system are outlined

Precision measurement of the top quark mass in the lepton + jets channel using a matrix element method with Quasi-Monte Carlo integration

This thesis presents a measurement of the top quark mass obtained from p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron using the CDF II detector. The measurement uses a matrix element integration method to calculate a t{bar t} likelihood, employing a Quasi-Monte Carlo integration, which enables us to take into account effects due to finite detector angular resolution and quark mass effects. We calculate a t{bar t} likelihood as a 2-D function of the top pole mass m{sub t} and {Delta}{sub JES}, where {Delta}{sub JES} parameterizes the uncertainty in our knowledge of the jet energy scale; it is a shift applied to all jet energies in units of the jet-dependent systematic error. By introducing {Delta}{sub JES} into the likelihood, we can use the information contained in W boson decays to constrain {Delta}{sub JES} and reduce error due to this uncertainty. We use a neural network discriminant to identify events likely to be background, and apply a cut on the peak value of individual event likelihoods to reduce the effect of badly reconstructed events. This measurement uses a total of 4.3 fb{sup -1} of integrated luminosity, requiring events with a lepton, large E{sub T}, and exactly four high-energy jets in the pseudorapidity range |{eta}| < 2.0, of which at least one must be tagged as coming from a b quark. In total, we observe 738 events before and 630 events after applying the likelihood cut, and measure m{sub t} = 172.6 {+-} 0.9 (stat.) {+-} 0.7 (JES) {+-} 1.1 (syst.) GeV/c{sup 2}, or m{sub t} = 172.6 {+-} 1.6 (tot.) GeV/c{sup 2}

Achieving Large Dynamic Aperture in the ILC Damping Rings

The Damping Rings for the International Linear Collider have challenging requirements for the acceptance, because of the high average injected beam power and the large beam produced from the positron source. At the same time, the luminosity goals mean that the natural emittance must be very small, and this makes it particularly difficult to achieve a good dynamic aperture. We describe design approaches and lattice designs that meet the emittance specification and have very promising dynamic aperture

R-axion detection at LHC

Supersymmetric models with spontaneously broken approximate R-symmetry contains a light spin 0 particle, the R-axion. The properties of the particle can be a powerful probe of the structure of the new physics. In this paper, we discuss the possibilities of the R-axion detection at the LHC experiments. It is challenge to observe this light particle in the LHC environment. However, for typical values in which the mass of the R-axion is a few hundred MeV, we show that those particles can be detected by searching for displaced vertices from R-axion decay

Analysis of Slice Transverse Emittance Evolution ina Photocathode RF Gun

The slice transverse emittance of an electron beam is of critical significance for an x-ray FEL. In a photocathode RF gun, the slice transverse emittance is not only determined by the emission process, but also influenced strongly by the non-linear space charge effect. In this paper, we study the slice transverse emittance evolution in a photocathode RF gun using a simple model that includes effects of RF acceleration, focusing, and space charge force. The results are compared with IMPACT-T space charge simulations and may be used to understand the development of the slice emittance in an RF gun

A Lattice with Larger Momentum Compaction for the NLC Main Damping Rings

Previous lattice designs for the Next Linear Collider Main Damping Rings [1] have met the specifications for equilibrium emittance, damping rate and dynamic aperture. Concerns about the effects of the damping wiggler on the beam dynamics [2] led to the aim of reducing the total length of the wiggler to a minimum consistent with the required damping rate, so high-field dipoles were used to provide a significant energy loss in the arcs. However, recent work has shown that the wiggler effects may not be as bad as previously feared. Furthermore, other studies have suggested the need for an increased momentum compaction (by roughly a factor of four) to raise the thresholds of various collective effects. We have therefore developed a new lattice design in which we increase the momentum compaction by reducing the field strength in the arc dipoles, compensating the loss in damping rate by increasing the length of the wiggler. The new lattice again meets the specifications for emittance, damping rate and dynamic aperture, while having the benefit of significantly higher thresholds for a number of instabilities