The spatial resolution achieved by recent synchrotron radiation microtomographs should be estimated from the modulation transfer function (MTF) on the micrometer scale. Step response functions of a synchrotron radiation microtomograph were determined by the slanted edge method by using high-precision surfaces of diamond crystal and ion-milled aluminum wire. Tilted reconstruction was introduced to enable any edge to be used as the slanted edge by defining the reconstruction pixel matrix in an arbitrary orientation. MTFs were estimated from the step response functions of the slanted edges. The obtained MTFs coincided with MTF values estimated from square-wave patterns milled on the aluminum surface. Although x-ray refraction influences should be taken into account to evaluate MTFs, any flat surfaces with nanometer roughness can be used to determine the spatial resolutions of microtomographs.
We present a Bayesian estimation analysis for a particular trace gas detection technique with species separation provided by differential diffusion. The proposed method collects a sample containing multiple gas species into a common volume, and then allows it to diffuse across a linear array of optical absorption detectors, using, for example, high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities. The estimation procedure assumes that all gas parameters (e.g. diffusion constants, optical cross sections) are known except for the number population of each species, which are determined from the time-of-flight absorption profiles in each detector.
For experiments with high arrival rates, reliable identification of nearly-coincident events can be crucial. For calorimetric measurements to directly measure the neutrino mass such as HOLMES, unidentified pulse pile-ups are expected to be a leading source of experimental error. Although Wiener filtering can be used to recognize pile-up, it suffers errors due to pulse-shape variation from detector nonlinearity, readout dependence on sub-sample arrival times, and stability issues from the ill-posed deconvolution problem of recovering Dirac delta-functions from smooth data. Due to these factors, we have developed a processing method that exploits singular value decomposition to (1) separate single-pulse records from piled-up records in training data and (2) construct a model of single-pulse records that accounts for varying pulse shape with amplitude, arrival time, and baseline level, suitable for detecting nearly-coincident events. We show that the resulting processing advances can reduce the required performance specifications of the detectors and readout system or, equivalently, enable larger sensor arrays and better constraints on the neutrino mass.
I re-examine a recent work by G. Landi and G. E. Landi. [arXiv:1808.06708 [physics.ins-det]], in which the authors claim that the resolution of a tracker ca vary linearly with the number of detection layers, $N$, that is, faster than the commonly known $sqrt{N}$ variation, for a tracker of fixed length, in case the precision of the position measurement is allowed to vary from layer to layer, i.e. heteroscedasticity, and an appropriate analysis method, a weighted least squares fit, is used.
A principal component analysis (PCA) of clean microcalorimeter pulse records can be a first step beyond statistically optimal linear filtering of pulses towards a fully non-linear analysis. For PCA to be practical on spectrometers with hundreds of sensors, an automated identification of clean pulses is required. Robust forms of PCA are the subject of active research in machine learning. We examine a version known as coherence pursuit that is simple, fast, and well matched to the automatic identification of outlier records, as needed for microcalorimeter pulse analysis.
The GlueX forward calorimeter is an array of 2800 lead glass modules that was constructed to detect photons produced in the decays of hadrons. A background to this process originates from hadronic interactions in the calorimeter, which, in some instances, can be difficult to distinguish from low energy photon interactions. Machine learning techniques were applied to the classification of particle interactions in the GlueX forward calorimeter. The algorithms were trained on data using decays of the $omega$ meson, which contain both true photons and charged particles that interact with the calorimeter. Algorithms were evaluated on efficiency, rate of false positives, run time, and implementation complexity. An algorithm that utilizes a multi-layer perceptron neural net was deployed in the GlueX software stack and provides a signal efficiency of 85% with a background rejection of 60% for an inclusive $pi^0$ data sample for an intermediate quality constraint.