This week I’m attending an analysis Jamboree at Brookhaven National Lab. When I was little, the word Jamboree always conjured up images of country bears playing banjos (maybe that’s because my grandparents would take us to Disneyland…).
Country Bear Jamboree
Unfortunately this Jamboree doesn’t include singing bears, instead it’s a discussion of different analyses to do with the first data from the ATLAS. BNL is one of the major hubs in the US for ATLAS, so about twice a year they host analysis meetings. Different running conditions sometimes warrant different analyses and with data coming hopefully soon, we need unite our efforts and make sure all the things – like software – is standard.
A bit about calibration
I’m giving a presentation on a calibration study I’ve been doing. Calibration is one of the first things we’ll have to do with first data. Like any tool, we’ll need to make sure we understand what we’re getting out of the detector once the data starts rolling in. It’s not as glamorous as a search for an unknown particle, but it is definitely important. Particles like J/psi and Z have distinct mass peaks (at 3 GeV and 91 GeV respectively) when the energy from their decay products is reconstructed and combined. So we’ll take the reconstructed electrons, and look for a peak at around the Z mass and then tweak our algorithms so the peak lines up with the known peak. This type of calibration for example can be done using only one piece of the detector (like the calorimeter).
Another type is calibration between detector pieces. I’m looking at a study which compares what you read as the energy in the calorimeter and the momentum in the tracker. If you take the ratio, you should get about one, (since the mass of the electron is so small… you all remember E^2=(pc)^2+(mc^2)^2, right?)
But other than calibration
For lunch today we ventured off the BNL site to eat at a staple in American cuisine: Taco Bell. My friend and former roommate was back at BNL from CERN to participate in the Jamboree festivities, so we were celebrating America by getting refills on our super-sized drinks and cheesy Gorditas (sure I know what you’re thinking… Taco Bell is “Mexican” food… right). The culture shock is always a little surprising when going to CERN or coming back.
So now it’s after lunch, so back to work.
-Regina
