8948467
High-precision absolute distance and vibration measurement with frequency scanned interferometry.
We report high-precision absolute distance and vibration measurements performed with frequency scanned interferometry using a pair of single-mode optical fibers. Absolute distance was determined by counting the interference fringes produced while scanning the laser frequency. A high-finesse Fabry-Perot interferometer was used to determine frequency changes during scanning. Two multiple-distance-measurement analysis techniques were developed to improve distance precision and to extract the amplitude and frequency of vibrations. Under laboratory conditions, measurement precision of approximately 50 nm was achieved for absolute distances ranging from 0.1 to 0.7 m by use of the first multiple-distance-measurement technique. The second analysis technique has the capability to measure vibration frequencies ranging from 0.1 to 100 Hz with an amplitude as small as a few nanometers without a priori knowledge.
17983245
Boosted decision trees, a powerful event classifier
Consider the problem of classification of events between signal and background, given a number of particle identification (PID) variables. A decision tree is a sequence of binary splits of the data. To train the tree a set of known training events are used. The results are measured using a separate set of known testing events. Consider all of the data to be on one node. The best PID variable and best place on that variable to split the data into separate signal and background is found. There are then two nodes. The process is repeated on these new nodes and is continued until a given number of final nodes (called “leaves”) are obtained, or until all leaves are pure or until a node has too few events. There are several popular criteria to determine the best PID variable and best place on which to split a node. The gini criterion is used here. Suppose that event i has weight Wi. The purity P of a node is defined as the weight of signal events on the node divided by the total weight of events on that node. For a given node: gini = P (1 − P ) ∑ i Wi. gini is zero for P = 1 or P = 0. The best split is chosen as the one which minimizes gini. The next node to split is chosen by finding that node whose splitting maximizes the change in gini. In this way a decision tree is built. Leaves with P ≥ 0.5 are signal leaves and the rest are background leaves. Decision trees are powerful, but unstable. A small change in the training data can produce a large change in the tree. This is remedied by the use of boosting. For boosting, the training events which were misclassified (a signal event fell on a background leaf or vice versa) have their weights increased (boosted), and a new tree is formed. This procedure is then repeated for the new tree. In this way many trees are built up. The score from the mth individual tree Tm is taken as +1 if the event falls on a signal leaf and −1 if the event falls on a background leaf. The final score is taken as a weighted sum of the scores of the individual leaves. Two methods for boosting are considered here. The first is called AdaBoost. Define errm = weight misclassified/total weight for tree m. Let αm = β log [(1 − errm)/errm], where β is a constant. In the statistical literature β has been taken as one, but for the MiniBooNE experiment, β = 0.5 has been found to be the optimum value. The misclassified events have their weight multiplied by em . The weights are then renormalized so the sum of all of the training event weights is one. The final score is T = ∑Ntree m=1 αmTm. The second method of boosting considered here is called -boost or, sometimes, shrinkage. Misclassified events have their weight multiplied by e , where is a constant. For the MiniBooNE experiment, = 0.03 has been optimum. (The results vary only mildly as β or are changed a bit.) The final score is T = ∑Ntree m=1 Tm. -boost changes weights a little at a time, while AdaBoost can be shown to try to optimize each change in weights to minimize e where T is the score and y is +1 for a signal event and −1 for a background event. The optimum value is F = log prob/(1 − prob), where prob is the probability that y = 1, given the observed PID variables. In practice, for MiniBooNE, the two boosting methods have performed almost equally well. Boosting is described as using many weak classifiers to build a strong classifier. This is seen in Figure 1. After the first few trees, the misclassification fraction for an individual tree is above 40%. In the MiniBooNE experiment some hundreds of possible PID variables have been suggested. The most powerful of these have been selected by accepting those which are used most often as the splitting variable. Some care needs to be taken as some-
16647938
Searches for Gauge-Mediated SUSY Breaking Topologies with the L3 Detector at LEP
Searches for topologies predicted by gauge‐mediated SUSY breaking models were performed using data collected with the L3 detector at LEP. All possible lifetimes of the next‐to‐lightest SUSY particle (NLSP), neutralino or scalar tau, were considered. No evidence for these new phenomena was found and limits on the production cross sections and sparticle masses were derived. A scan over the parameters of the minimal GMSB model was performed, leading to lower limits of 62.2 GeV, 11 TeV, and 0.07 eV on the NLSP mass, the mass scale parameter Λ, and the gravitino mass, respectively. The status of the LEP combined searches is also discussed.
14942523
Studies of stability and robustness for artificial neural networks and boosted decision trees
In this paper, we compare the performance, stability and robustness of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Boosted Decision Trees (BDT) using MiniBooNE Monte Carlo samples. These methods attempt to classify events given a number of identification variables. The BDT algorithm has been discussed by us in previous publications. Testing is done in this paper by smearing and shifting the input variables of testing samples. Based on these studies, BDT has better particle identification performance than ANN. The degradation of the classifications obtained by shifting or smearing variables of testing results is smaller for BDT than for ANN.
6347081
Calibration of the ATLAS muon spectrometer precision chambers for initial LHC beam collisions
ATLAS is a general purpose experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN which began operation in September, 2009. ATLAS has a large muon spectrometer which is designed to measure muon momentum with a resolution ranging from 3% at 100 GeV/c to 10% at 1 TeV for a pseudorapidity range of 0-2.7. In this paper, we describe the derivation and validation of calibration constants for the Monitored Drift Tubes (MDTs) in the ATLAS muon spectrometer for use with initial LHC collisions. At LHC start-up, the luminosity was not sufficient for ordinary calibrations with collision muons, and so alternative methods were developed. The time-to-space (RT) functions were obtained from the University of Michigan gas monitor chamber and the ( t 0 s) were derived from LHC beamsplash events from 2009 and 2010. We have validated these calibration constants by performing muon track reconstruction using 900 GeV collision data from December, 2009 and 7 TeV data from 2010. We find that these calibration constants yield an MDT chamber hit resolution of 142 μ m and a residual width of 91 μ m.
18986664
Discovery Potential of the Standard Model Higgs Boson Through H -> WW Decay Mode with the ATLAS Detector at LHC
We report results of a study of the Standard Model Higgs boson discovery potential through the W-pair leptonic decay modes with the ATLAS detector at LHC at 14 TeV center-of-mass energy. We used MC samples with full detector simulation and reconstruction of the ATLAS experiment to estimate the ATLAS detection sensitivity for the reaction of pp -> H -> WW -> e\nu \mu\nu with no hard jet or two hard jets in the final states. The prospects for the Higgs boson searches at ATLAS are presented, including trigger efficiencies and data-driven methods to estimate the backgrounds using control samples in data. With 10/fb of integrated luminosity, one would expect to discover a Standard Model Higgs boson with ATLAS detector in Higgs boson mass range 135 < m_H < 190 GeV. If the Higgs boson does not exist, we will extend and confirm the exclusion produced by the Tevatron Higgs boson search result, which has ruled out the Higgs boson mass range of 160 < m_H < 170 GeV at 95% confidence level. If Higgs boson would be discovered, ATLAS could measure its mass with a precision of about 2 and 7 GeV for Higgs boson mass around 160 GeV and 130 GeV, respectively.
13902096
Dilaton deformations in closed string field theory
The dilaton theorem implies that the contribution to the dilaton potential from cubic interactions of all levels must be cancelled by the elementary quartic self-coupling of dilatons. We use this expectation to test the quartic structure of closed string field theory and to study the rules for level expansion. We explain how to use the results of Moeller to compute quartic interactions of states that, just like the dilaton, are neither primary nor have a simple ghost dependence. Our analysis of cancellations is made richer by discussing simultaneous dilaton and marginal deformations. We find evidence for two facts: as the level is increased quartic interactions become suppressed and closed string field theory may be able to describe arbitrarily large dilaton deformations.
15618734
Solving Witten's SFT by insertion of operators on projectors
Following Okawa, we insert operators at the boundary of regulated star algebra projectors to construct the leading order tachyon vacuum solution of open string field theory. We also calculate the energy density of the solution and the ratio between the kinetic and the cubic terms. A universal relationship between these two quantities is found. We show that for any twist invariant projector, the energy density can account for at most 68.46% of the D25-brane tension. The general results are then applied to regulated slivers and butterflies, and the next-to-leading order solution for regulated sliver states is constructed.
17081750
String Field Theory and Tachyon Dynamics
In this thesis we present some works done during my doctoral studies. These results focus on two directions. The first one is motivated by tachyon dynamics in open string theory. We calculate the stress tensors for the p-adic string model and for the pure tachyonic sector of open string field theory (OSFT). We give the energy density of lump solutions and attempt to evaluate the evolution of the pressure in rolling tachyon solutions. We discuss the relevance of the pressure calculation for the identification of the large time solution with a gas of closed strings. In the second direction, we give some results in closed string field theory (CSFT). We considered marginal deformations in CSFT. The marginal parameter, called a, is that associated with the dimension-zero primary operator cWcX&X. We use this marginal operator to test the quartic structure of CSFT and the feasibility of level expansion. We check the vanishing of the effective potential for a. In the level expansion the quartic terms generated by the cubic interactions must be cancelled by the elementary quartic interaction of four marginal operators. We confirm this prediction, thus giving evidence that the sign, normalization, and region of integration Vo, 4 for the quartic vertex are all correct. This is the first calculation of an elementary quartic amplitude for which there is an expectation that can be checked. We also extend the calculation to the case of the four marginal operators associated with two space coordinates. We then try to search a critical point of the tachyon potential in CSFT. We include the tachyon, the dilaton, and massive fields in the computation. Some evidence is found for the existence of a closed string tachyon vacuum. It seems that this critical point becomes more shallow when higher level contributions are considered. We also relate fields in the sigma model and those in CSFT. Moreover, large dilaton deformations are studied numerically. Finally, we use the low-energy effective field equations that couple gravity, the dilaton, and the bulk closed string tachyon to study the end result of the physical decay process associated with the instability of closed string tachyon. We establish that whenever the tachyon induces the rolling process, the Einstein metric undergoes collapse while the dilaton rolls to strong coupling. Some more general potentials and the possible cosmological application are discussed. Thesis Supervisor: Barton Zwiebach Title: Professor of Physics
15090356
Dark Energy and Emergent Spacetime
A natural geometric framework of noncommutative spacetime is symplectic geometry rather than Riemannian geometry. The Darboux theorem in symplectic geometry then admits a novel form of the equivalence principle such that the electromagnetism in noncommutative spacetime can be regarded as a theory of gravity. Remarkably the emergent gravity reveals a noble picture about the origin of spacetime, dubbed as emergent spacetime, which is radically different from any previous physical theory all of which describe what happens in a given spacetime. In particular, the emergent gravity naturally explains the dynamical origin of flat spacetime, which is absent in Einstein gravity: A flat spacetime is not free gratis but a result of Planck energy condensation in a vacuum. This emergent spacetime picture, if it is correct anyway, turns out to be essential to resolve the cosmological constant problem, to understand the nature of dark energy and to explain why gravity is so weak compared to other forces.
117777796
SO(2N) (0,2) SCFT and M theory on AdS(7) x RP**4
We study M theory on ${\mathrm{AdS}}_{7}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbf{RP}}^{4}$ corresponding to six-dimensional $\mathrm{SO}(2N)(0,2)$ superconformal field theory on a circle which becomes five-dimensional super Yang-Mills theory at low energies. For $\mathrm{SU}(N)(0,2)$ theory, a wrapped D4-brane on ${\mathbf{S}}^{4}$ which is connected to a D4-brane on the boundary of ${\mathrm{AdS}}_{7}$ by N fundamental strings can be interpreted as a baryon vertex. For $\mathrm{SO}(2N)(0,2)$ theory, by using the property of homology of ${\mathbf{RP}}^{4},$ we classify various wrapping branes. Then we consider particles, strings, two-branes, domain walls and the baryon vertex in type IIA string theory.