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.
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-
10348258
Studies of boosted decision trees for MiniBooNE particle identification
Boosted decision trees are applied to particle identification in the MiniBooNE experiment operated at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) for neutrino oscillations. Numerous attempts are made to tune the boosted decision trees, to compare performance of various boosting algorithms, and to select input variables for optimal performance.
17682877
Impact of Tracker Design on Higgs and Slepton Measurements
We have studied the impact of charged track resolution on Higgs mass and production cross section measurement in the process e+e− → Z0H,Z0 → + −,H → X for Higgs masses between 120 and 160 GeV, and on smuon mass measurement using smuon pair production for three different mass pairs, assuming the International Linear Collider(ILC) is operated at 500 GeV center of mass energies (CME) with integrated luminosities of 500 fb−1. The effect of initial state radiation (ISR), beamstrahlung and beam energy spread on Higgs and smuon mass measurement are also estimated. Using fast Monte Carlo simulations of the 2001 North American baseline detector designs (LD and SD), we find that the ISR and beamstrahlung have significant impact on Higgs and smuon mass measurement; Charged track momentum resolution affect Higgs mass significantly with better track performance yielding better Higgs mass resolution and precision for the track momentum resolution improvement up to a factor of about 5; Track momentum resolution has little effect on the measurement precision of the Higgsstrahlung cross section, the branching ratio of H → CC, the smuon and neutralino masses; Beam energy spread better than about 0.2% has little effect on Higgs, smuon and neutralino masses; The SD detector provides a more accurate measurement than the LD of the Higgs mass.
16109424
Frequency scanned interferometry for ILC tracker alignment
In this paper, we report high-precision absolute distance and vibration measurements performed with frequency scanned interferometry using a pair of single-mode optical b ers. Absolute distance was determined by counting the interference fringes produced while scanning the laser frequency. A high-nesse Fabry-Perot interferometer was used to determine frequency changes during scanning. A dual-laser scanning technique was used to cancel drift errors to improve the absolute distance measurement presicion. Under realistic conditions, a precision of 0.16 microns was achieved for absolute distance of 0.41 meters. Numerical simulation of an optical alignment system for a single silicon ladder, cylinder is also presented. The motivation for this project is to design a novel optical system for quasi-real time alignment of tracker detector elements used in High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments. A.F. Fox-Murphy et.al. from Oxford University reported their design of a frequency scanned interferometer (FSI) for precise alignment of the ATLAS Inner Detector [1, 2]. Given the demonstrated need for improvements in detector performance, we plan to design and prototype an enhanced FSI system to be used for the alignment of tracker elements in the next generation of electron-positron Linear Collider detectors. Current plans for future detectors require a spatial resolution for signals from a tracker detector, such as a silicon microstrip or silicon drift detector, to be approximately 7-10 m [3]. To achieve this required spatial resolution, the measurement precision of absolute distance changes of tracker elements in one dimension should be on the order of 1 m . Simultaneous measurements from hundreds of interferometers will be used to determine the 3-dimensional positions of the tracker elements. The University of Michigan group has constructed several demonstration Frequency Scanned Interferometer (FSI) systems with the laser light transported by air or single-mode optical b er, using single-b er and dual-laser scanning techniques for initial feasibility studies. Absolute distance was determined by counting the interference fringes produced while scanning the laser frequency. The main goal of the demonstration systems was to determine the potential accuracy of absolute distance measurements that could be achieved under both controlled and realistic conditions. Secondary goals included estimating the eects of vibrations and studying error sources crucial to the absolute distance accuracy. Two multiple-distance-measurement analysis techniques were developed to improve distance precision and to extract the amplitude and frequency of vibrations. Under laboratory conditions, a measurement precision of 50 nm was achieved for absolute distances ranging from 0.1 meters to 0.7 meters by using the rst multipledistance-measurement technique. The second analysis technique has the capability to measure vibration frequencies ranging from 0.1 Hz to 100 Hz with amplitude as small as a few nanometers, without a priori knowledge[4]. The multiple-distance-measurement analysis techniques are well suited for reducing vibration eects and uncertainties from fringe & frequency determination, but do not handle well the drift errors such as from thermal eects. In this paper, we describe a dual-laser system intended to reduce the drift errors and show some results under realistic conditions. Numerical simulation of an optical alignment system for a single silicon ladder and for cylinders is also presented.
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.
18351847
Topological Z(n + 1) charges on fuzzy sphere
We study the topological properties of fuzzy sphere. We show that the topological charge is only defined modulo N+1, that is finite integer quotient Z_{N+1}, where N is a cut-off spin of fuzzy sphere. This periodic structure on topological charges is shown based on the boson realizations of SU(2) algebra, Schwinger vs. Holstein-Primakoff. We argue that this result can have a natural K-theory interpretation and the topological charges on fuzzy sphere can be classified by the twisted K-theory. We also outline how solitons on fuzzy sphere can realize D-brane solitons in the presence of Neveu-Schwarz fivebranes proposed by Harvey and Moore.
15273018
Testing closed string field theory with marginal fields
We study the feasibility of level expansion and test the quartic vertex of closed string field theory by checking the flatness of the potential in marginal directions. The tests, which work out correctly, require the cancellation of two contributions: one from an infinite-level computation with the cubic vertex and the other from a finite-level computation with the quartic vertex. The numerical results suggest that the quartic vertex contributions are comparable or smaller than those of level four fields.
118454134
BRST Cohomology and Its Application to QED
We construct the BRST cohomology under a positive definite inner product and obtain the Hodge decomposition theorem at a non-degenerate state vector space $V$. The harmonic states isomorphic with a BRST cohomology class correspond to the physical Hilbert space with positive norm as long as the completeness of $Q_{BRST}$ is satisfied. We explicitly define ``co-BRST'' operator and analyze the quartet mechanism in QED.
16912746
Towards an Efficient Prototype of a RPC Detector Readout System for the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment
The Daya Bay RPC (Resistive Plate Chamber) readout system is responsible for collecting event data created by muons entering the detector systems from above. The readout system should be capable of converting analog signals from the RPC detectors into digital signals, which are buffered and uploaded for readout by the online DAQ (Data Acquisition) system. The RPC readout system will report trigger information to a master trigger system. The numerous and relatively minute pulses from the RPC detectors require accurate signal discriminating and reliable data transmission. This article provides a brief overview of the Daya Bay RPC detector and then outlines the design and performance of the prototype RPC readout system.
119289762
Quantum gravity effects on compact star cores
Abstract Using the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff equation and the equation of state of zero temperature ultra-relativistic Fermi gas based on generalized uncertainty principle (GUP), the quantum gravitational effects on the cores of compact stars are discussed. Our results show that 2 m ( r ) / r varies with r. Quantum gravity plays an important role in the region r ∼ 10 3 r 0 , where r 0 ∼ β 0 l p , l p is the Planck length and β 0 is a dimensionless parameter accounting for quantum gravity effects. Furthermore, near the center of compact stars, we find that the metric components are g t t ∼ r 4 and g r r = [ 1 − r 2 / ( 6 r 0 2 ) ] − 1 . All these effects are different from those obtained from classical gravity. These results can be applied to neutron stars or denser ones like quark stars. The observed masses of neutron stars ( ⩽ 2 M ⊙ ) indicate that β 0 can not exceed 1037, not as good as the upper bound β 0 10 34 from simple electroweak consideration. This means that incorporating either quantum gravity effects or nuclear interactions, one obtains almost the same mass limits of neutron stars.