Sorry for the hiatus, blog enthusiasts! I’m taking some time to catch-up while watching the fireworks out of my window on July 4th. Tis the season for summer conferences. The one in particular that I’m involved in is ICHEP (International Conference on High Energy Physics) is coming up at the end of July, which means all the papers have to be approved by ATLAS by the end of June (which just so happened to be last week – hooray independence ;)). This year the conference is in Paris and there we’ll show the first physics results from the LHC. ATLAS alone has over 40 papers submitted. In particular I’ve been looking at material mapping using photons.
So what is material mapping?… sounds like something cartographers do.
We have lots of computer simulations of the ATLAS detector. To double check to make sure we’ve taken into account every cable we look to see that the particles interact the way we expect them to. Photons, for example, when they to through material convert predictably into an electron/positron pair. When I say predictably, I mean based on the amount of material they go through. We find these electron/positron pairs because they have a displaced vertex (an electron/positron which are close to each other and when you draw a line back from their tracks the origin isn’t the main interaction point). The more material in the way, the faster they convert. So we make sure our Monte Carlo simulations predict where most of the conversions occur to make sure we understand the detector.
I’ll try to provide a link to show a picture of the material map once they have been approved for public viewing.
Until then, Happy July 4th!
Fireworks
Regina
