R&D for a Dedicated Fast Timing Layer in the CMS Endcap Upgrade

The PhaseII Upgrades of CMS are being planned for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) era when the mean number of interactions per beam crossing (in-time pileup) is expected to reach ~140-200. The potential backgrounds arising from mis-associated jets and photon showers, for example, during event reconstruction could be reduced if physics objects are tagged with an event time. This tag is fully complementary to the event vertex which is already commonly used to reduce mis-reconstruction. Since the tracking vertex resolution is typically ~10^{-3} (50 micron/4.8cm) of the rms vertex distribution, whereas only ~10^{-1} (i.e. 20 vs.170 picoseconds (psec)) is demonstrated for timing, it is often assumed that only photon (i.e. EM calorimeter or shower-max) timing is of interest. We show that the optimal solution will likely be a single timing layer which measures both charged particle and photon time (a pre-shower layer).

Experimental Challenges of the European Strategy for Particle Physics

In planning for the Phase II upgrades of CMS and ATLAS major considerations are: 1)being able to deal with degradation of tracking and calorimetry up to the radiation doses to be expected with an integrated luminosity of 3000 $fb^{-1}$ and 2)maintaining physics performance at a pileup level of ~140. Here I report on work started within the context of the CMS Forward Calorimetry Task Force and continuing in an expanded CERN RD52 R$&$D program integrating timing (i.e. measuring the time-of-arrival of physics objects) as a potential tool for pileup mitigation and ideas for Forward Calorimetry. For the past 4 years our group has focused on precision timing at the level of 10-20 picoseconds in an environment with rates of $~10^6-10^7$ Hz/$cm^2 $ as is appropriate for the future running of the LHC (HL-LHC era). A time resolution of 10-20 picoseconds is one of the few clear criteria for pileup mitigation at the LHC, since the interaction time of a bunch crossing has an rms of 170 picosec. While work on charged particle timing in other contexts (i.e. ALICE R$&$D) is starting to approach this precision, there have been essentially no technologies that can sustain performance at these rates. I will present results on a tracker we developed within the DOE Advanced Detector R$&$D program which is now meeting these requirements. I will also review some results from Calorimeter Projects developed within our group (PHENIX EMCAL and ATLAS ZDC) which achieved calorimeter timing precision< 100 picoseconds.

ATLAS Results from the first Pb-Pb Collisions

The ATLAS detector is capable of resolving the highest energy pp collisions at luminosities sufficient to yield 10s of simultaneous interactions within a bunch collision lasting <0.5 nsec. Already in 2011 a mean occupancy of 20 is often found in pp running. In 2004 studies by ATLAS showed that the detector would have excellent performance also for the foreseeable particle multiplicities in the highest energy p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions that the LHC will produce. These studies resulted in a letter of intent to the LHC committee by ATLAS to do physics with these beams also. In the past 2 years of data taking, ATLAS detector performance studies have confirmed these expectations at the actual multiplicities presented below. The ATLAS program removes an artificial specialization that arose about 30 years ago in high energy physics when the energy and intensity frontier moved to colliders. Before that time, for example, the same experiment that discovered the $Upsilon$ (CFS and E605 at Fermilab) also measured the nuclear modification factor in the production of high $p_T$ identified charged hadrons using nuclear targets from Beryllium through Tungsten.

Mathematica with ROOT

We present an open-source Mathematica importer for CERN ROOT files. Taking advantage of Mathematicas import/export plug-in mechanism, the importer offers a simple, unified interface that cleanly wraps around its MathLink-based core that links the ROOT libraries with Mathematica. Among other tests for accuracy and efficiency, the importer has also been tested on a large (~5 Gbyte) file structure, D3PD, used by the ATLAS experiment for offline analysis without problems. In addition to describing the installation and usage of the importer, we discuss how the importer may be further improved and customized. A link to the package can be found at: http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/Articles/7793/ and a related presentation is at: http://cd-docdb.fnal.gov/cgi-bin/DisplayMeeting?conferenceid=522

Very Forward Calorimetry at the LHC - Recent results from ATLAS

We present first results from the ATLAS Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) based on 7~TeV pp collision data recorded in 2010. The ZDC coverage of +/-~350 microradians about the forward direction makes possible the measurement of neutral particles (primarily pi0s and neutrons) over the kinematic region x_F >~0.1 and out to p_T<~ 1.2 GeV/c at large x_F. The ATLAS ZDC is unique in that it provides a complete image of both electromagnetic and hadronic showers.This is illustrated with the reconstruction of pi0s with energies of 0.7-3.5 TeV. We also discuss the waveform reconstruction algorithm which has allowed good time-of-flight resolution on leading neutrons emerging from the collisions despite the sparse (40 MHz) sampling of the calorimeter signals used.

Energy Calibration of Underground Neutrino Detectors using a 100 MeV electron accelerator

An electron accelerator in the 100 MeV range, similar to the one used at BNLs Accelerator test Facility, for example, would have some advantages as a calibration tool for water cerenkov or Liquid Argon neutrino detectors. We describe a compact secondary beam design that could be used for this application.

Diffraction at the LHC: a non-technical Introduction

In diffractive interactions of protons or nuclei a violent collision can occur that leaves the forward going particle completely intact -with probability determined by the structure of the proton or nucleus. At very high energies these collisions also occur with both incident particles remaining intact. This is called central exclusive production. If a new particle, such as the Higgs boson, were produced exclusively this process would give a precise measurement of its mass and test for expected properties of the Higgs. Because of its unusual features this process is also a promising discovery tool. In this paper I focus on analogous electromagnetic processes because many aspects apply to both- particularly the role of coherence. Also, topics in diffraction with nuclear beams are based on electromagnetic interactions. I also discuss two proposed measurements in ATLAS with Pb beams and with proton beams (diffractive Higgs production).

On the Correlation of Subevents in the ATLAS and CMS/Totem Experiments

We analyze the problem of correlating pp interaction data from the central detectors with a subevent measured in an independent system of leading proton detectors using FP420 as an example. FP420 is an R&D project conducted by a collaboration formed by members of ATLAS and CMS to investigate the possibility of detecting new physics in the central exclusive channel, PP -> P + X + P,where the central system X may be a single particle, for example a Standard Model Higgs boson. With standard LHC optics, the protons emerge from the beam at a distance of 420m from the Interaction Point, for M_X ~ 120 GeV. The mass of the central system can be measured from the outgoing protons alone, with a resolution of order 2 GeV irrespective of the decay products of the central system. In addition, to a very good approximation, only central systems with 0^++ quantum numbers can be produced, meaning that observation of a SM or MSSM Higgs Boson in this channel would lead to a direct determination of the quantum numbers.