Central Higgs Production at LHC from Single-Pomeron-Exchange

Contrary to common perceptions about systems produced in Single-Pomeron-Exchange (SPE) pp interactions, the hard diffractive process discovered at the CERN SPS-Collider leads to dominant central production of Higgs bosons at the LHC. The rate for SPE production of Higgs bosons is calculated to be 7-9 % of the total inclusive Higgs rate. In addition, an SPE measurement program of dijet events is outlined for the early days of LHC running which should answer many fundamental questions about the Pomeron structure and its effective flux factor in the proton.Comment: 14 pages, 7 Encapsulated Postscript figures, LaTex, submitted to European Phisical Journal

Evidence for xi- and t-dependent damping of the Pomeron Flux in the proton

We show that a triple-Regge parametrization of inclusive single diffraction agrees with the data in the following two domains: (a) xi > 0.03 at all t, (b) |t| > 1 GeV^2 at all xi. Since the triple-Regge parametrization fails when applied to the full xi-t range of the total single-diffractive cross section, we conclude that damping occurs only at low-xi and low-|t|. We give a (``toy'') parametrization of the damping factor, D(xi), valid at low-|t|, which describes the diffractive differential cross-section (dsig/dt) data at the ISR and roughly accounts for the observed s-dependence of diffractive total cross-section up to Tevatron energies. However, an effective damping factor calculated for the CDF fitted function for dsig/dxidt at sqrt(s} = 1800 GeV and |t| = 0.05 GeV^2, suggests that, at fixed-xi, damping increases as s increases. We conjecture that, in the regions where the triple-Regge formalism describes the data and there is no evidence of damping, factorization is valid and the Pomeron-flux-factor may be universal. With the assumption that the observed damping is due to multi-Pomeron exchange, our results imply that the recent UA8 demonstration that the effective Pomeron trajectory flattens for |t| > 1 GeV$^2 is evidence for the onset of the perturbative 2-gluon pomeron. Our damping results may also shed some light on the self-consistency of recent measurements of hard-diffractive jet production cross sections in the UA8, CDF and ZEUS experiments.Comment: 19 pages, 7 Encapsulated Postscript figures, LaTex, Phys. Lett. B (in press - 1998

Forward physics with CMS

We describe several example analyses of the CMS forward physics program: A feasibility study for observing $W$ production in single diffractive dissociation, the analysis of exclusive $\mu\mu$ production and the measurement of very low-x parton distributions and search for evidence of BFKL dynamics with forward jets

CMS DAQ event builder based on Gigabit Ethernet

The CMS Data Acquisition System is designed to build and filter events originating from 476 detector data sources at a maximum trigger rate of 100 KHz. Different architectures and switch technologies have been evaluated to accomplish this purpose. Events will be built in two stages: the first stage will be a set of event builders called FED Builders. These will be based on Myrinet technology and will pre-assemble groups of about 8 data sources. The second stage will be a set of event builders called Readout Builders. These will perform the building of full events. A single Readout Builder will build events from 72 sources of 16 KB fragments at a rate of 12.5 KHz. In this paper we present the design of a Readout Builder based on TCP/IP over Gigabit Ethernet and the optimization that was required to achieve the design throughput. This optimization includes architecture of the Readout Builder, the setup of TCP/IP, and hardware selection

The run control and monitoring system of the CMS experiment

The CMS experiment at the LHC at CERN will start taking data in 2008. To configure, control and monitor the experiment during data-taking the Run Control and Monitoring System (RCMS) was developed. This paper describes the architecture and the technology used to implement the RCMS, as well as the deployment and commissioning strategy of this important component of the online software for the CMS experiment

Dynamic configuration of the CMS Data Acquisition cluster

The CMS Data Acquisition cluster, which runs around 10000 applications, is configured dynamically at run time. XML configuration documents determine what applications are executed on each node and over what networks these applications communicate. Through this mechanism the DAQ System may be adapted to the required performance, partitioned in order to perform (test-) runs in parallel, or re-structured in case of hardware faults. This paper presents the CMS DAQ Configurator tool, which is used to generate comprehensive configurations of the CMS DAQ system based on a high-level description given by the user. Using a database of configuration templates and a database containing a detailed model of hardware modules, data and control links, nodes and the network topology, the tool automatically determines which applications are needed, on which nodes they should run, and over which networks the event traffic will flow. The tool computes application parameters and generates the XML configuration documents as well as the configuration of the run-control system. The performance of the tool and operational experience during CMS commissioning and the first LHC runs are discussed