The Search for Charged Massive Stable Particles at D: A

dE dx

Study of p20 Data

Miriam Klein May 8, 2009

Chapter 1 Abstract
This analysis contributed to the search for charged massive stable particles (CMSPs) through a study of the energy loss per path length in the silicon microstrip tracker. The data sample was Fermilab p20 data of protonantiproton (pp) collisions with center-of-mass energy 2 TeV. The potential type of new particle used in comparison with the data was the stau, or scalar super-symmetric partner of the tau particle as described in gauge-mediated supersymmetry theory and the standard model. Particles such as these staus would be detected as muons, but because of their larger mass have a greater energy loss and a lower velocity. Staus and many other CMSPs are predicted to be produced in pairs, but the data included in this study consisted of both single muon events and double muon events, as the detector is not perfectly ecient and physicists still consider the possibility that CMSPs could be produced singly.

Contents

1 Abstract 2 Introduction 3 Theory 3.1 The Standard Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 5 8 8

3.2 Supersymmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4 Apparatus 18

4.1 The Tevatron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4.2 The D Detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 The Central Tracking System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 The Calorimeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Muon System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.3 Triggering and Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 4.3.1 4.3.2 Triggering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

5 Data Cuts and Pre-Analysis

32

5.1 Preselection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 5.2 Analysis Cuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 5.3 Monte Carlo Simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3 Staus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Z Boson Decay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 W Boson Decay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5.4 Data Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 5.5 Further Analysis Cuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 6 Results 7 Conclusion 46 56

Acknowledgments
First, a thank you to my advisor Professor Dave Cutts, for all of his help with this thesis and his aid with my research this past year. I am very grateful to his graduate student Yunhe Xie for her extensive programming and physics knowledge and patience. I would also like to thank Erin Teich for providing some of the Monte Carlo samples, and the Brown University HEP faculty.

Chapter 2 Introduction
This research concerns the search for charged stable massive particles (CMSPs) using both run-by-run studies and plots of the energy loss per path length. CMSPs are dened as particles that escape the D detector prior to decay (which requires they have a lifetime of at least 100 ns), are electrically charged, and have a mass of at least 60 GeV. All particles with masses in the CMSP range that have been observed and veried as of this writing have lifetimes far too short to escape the detector. CMSPs, however, are a prediction of certain forms of supersymmetry (SUSY) models and the standard model. The standard model has been a mainstay of particle physics research since the middle of the 20th century, and all but one of the non supersymmetric particles has been detected since its inception. However, while the standard model predicts the types of particles, it does not oer many explanations

for mass discrepancies or the relative rarity of certain types of particles. Supersymmetry was proposed to resolve many of these phenomena. The basic tenet of SUSY is that each particle has a partner particle with a spin diering by
1 2

but which has otherwise the same quantum numbers.

SUSY not only answers many of the questions raised by the Standard Model, but is also a key component of many modern physics theories, such as string theory, as well as of other explanations of theories, such as dark matter (although SUSY is not dependent on these theories or explanations). Showing that one of the predicted SUSY models is true would have astounding implications for physics, opening up a new set of subatomic particles and providing further evidence for theories in elds beyond high energy physics. One way of searching for evidence for SUSY is by looking for the nal particle, known as the LSP (lightest supersymmetric particle) or the end result of particle decays under a supersymmetric model. CMSPs are not the LSP because the LSP is predicted by SUSY to be the particle which makes up dark matter. Dark matter is neutral, so the LSP cannot be a CMSP. CMSPs, however, may be the NLSP (next lightest supersymmetric particle)which decays into the LSP and if so, would be easier to detect due to their much greater mass and their charge. The particles created by accelerator collisions that are studied in this analysis were all identied as muons by the detector. CMSPs, however, are much heavier than muons, which have a mass of 105.7 MeV, and because of this are slower-moving. This in turn means they lose more energy as they 6

move through the detector. CMSPs are thought to be produced in pairs, as are many subatomic particles. SUSY particles are predicted to carry a quantum number known as G-parity. G-parity requires that particles be produced in pairs of positive and negative parity. It also provides the basis for a stable LSP due to quantum number conservation. Because the D detector has some ineciencies, and could fail to detect one of the particles, and because there is still a small possibility that CMSPs do not come in pairs, this study included single and double-muon events. This paper will rst present a more thorough explanation of the Standard Model, SUSY, and related theory. It will then give a summary of the workings of the apparatus: the Tevatron particle collider, the D detector, and some of the software used in data collection from the detector. After that there is a section about the analysis, including the preselection of events, the cuts made in this data, and the Monte Carlo samples used in determining some of these analysis cuts in order to nd events likely to have a CMSP signal as opposed to a true muon signal. Finally, we will discuss the results of the analysis and possible implications and ways to continue the search for CMSPs.

Chapter 3 Theory
3.1 The Standard Model

To understand CMSPs it is rst necessary to understand the basics of the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model is a theory of the known particles associated with three of the four fundamental forces (electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear) and their interactions. All particles outlined in the Standard Model theory, excluding the Higgs boson, have been observed, and their masses and spin numbers have been as predicted. In addition, these particles all have a corresponding anti-particle. All these particles fall into one of two groups: the rst is the bosons, with integer spin. Bosons are force carriers; interchange of bosons determines the nature of force between objects. The force carrier for the electromagnetic force is the photon (), the carrier for the strong nuclear force is the gluon

(g), and the carriers for the weak nuclear force are W + , W , and Z bosons. The second group of particles, the fermions, have half-integer spins and are the basis for matter. The twelve kinds of fermions can be further broken up into two more groups. While all fermions interact via the weak nuclear forces, half also carry a color charge and have strong-force mediated interactions, while the other half do not. Fermions that interact under the strong force are called quarks, and those that do not are leptons. Additionally, all quarks have an electronic charge and so can interact via the electromagnetic force, but only three of the six leptons carry a charge. The remaining three, the electron, muon, and tau neutrinos, only interact via the weak force, and as such are very dicult to detect. Just as there are six leptons, there are six types, or avors, of quarks. The upper quarks: the up, charm, and top quarks each have an electrical charge of +2/3 and the lower quarks: down, strange, and bottom quarks each have a charge of -1/3. Quarks and leptons are each grouped into pairs. There are three pairs and we refer to these pairs as generations. The specic generations are shown in the below gure, , along with the force carriers. The below model of elementary particles is arranged not merely by quarks and leptons, but also by mass. The rst generation is lighter than the second, which is lighter than the third. Longevity is determined dierently. The electron, for example, is stable and has an innite lifespan. Of the elementary particles which undergo decay, the longest-lived is the muon, which has a lifespan on the order of 2 microseconds (106 s), which is why muons are one 9

of the easier particles to detect.

Because quark interactions are often mediated by the strong force, they behave according to the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Under QCD, quarks have a trait other than spin and charge, known as color (no relation to the conventional, optical denition of color). Quarks can come in red, blue, or yellow, and anti-quarks come in anti-blue, anti-red, and antiyellow. When we include both color and avor, we nd there are eighteen quarks and eighteen anti-quarks. It is the quarks and their colors which determine the nature of the symmetry associated with QCD. Gluons are made from one quark and one antiquark. For any one avor of quark, there are nine possible combinations: 10

yy by

yb yr bb br

ry rb rr These can be further divided into those with dierently-colored quarks and antiquarks (all the combinations in the table excluding the diagonal) and those pairs along the diagonal. These groups are the explicitly-colored pairs and the hidden-color pairs, respectively. The hidden-color pairs have an equivalence such that there are eectively two dierent kinds of hiddencolor pairs, making eight gluons in all. The three colors give QCD group symmetry of special unitary group 3, which is written as SU(3) and means that it is the group of 3 3 unitary matrices, each with a real (1) determinant. Because of the eight gluons, the SU(3) group in QCD has eight generators, all of which are linearly independent of each other. Another element of supersymmetric theory is that the fundamental forces, at the early stages of the universe, were unied. Forces are often described in terms of their elds, so this theory is called Unied Field Theory. The so-called Theory of Everything, the unication of all force elds, predicts that gravity split o rst; however, physicists have not yet been able to prove the existence of the predicted gravitational force carriers, the gravitons. Grand Unied theory concerns the remaining three fundamental forces. The strong force, mediated by gluons, was the second force to specialize. The electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces can be united in the electroweak force. This unication requires that two new quantum numbers, the weak isospin and weak 11

hypercharge, be included. The weak isospin is (I 3weak ) and has SU(2) group supersymmetry. The weak hypercharge, Y weak , has U(1). The weak and electromagnetic currents each couple to a combination or component of one of these quantum numbers. Together, electroweak theory has SU(2) U(1) symmetry, and by combining these further with the SU(3) group symmetry from the strong force, we nd that the Standard Model has group symmetry of SU(3) SU(2) U(1). This creates a problem: gluons and photons, the carriers that mediate the strong and electromagnetic forces respectively, are both massless, but the W and Z bosons are not. To reconcile the transformations provided for by the Standard Model, we must introduce several further concepts. These will be explained in more detail in the following section; the ultimate conclusion is that in order to give the W and Z bosons mass, there must exist a new particle, called the Higgs particle or more specically, the Higgs boson, a particle with zero spin and a minimum mass of 114 GeV, which is its own antiparticle. The Higgs boson has not yet been detected and has been nicknamed the God Particle, referring to its central but as of yet unconrmed place in Unied Field Theory. Physicists hope that when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) becomes fully operational it will be able to detect the particle. The Tevatron may also be capable of Higgs Boson detection. Like the Higgs Boson, CMSPs are also massive compared to other particles, and therefore share some of the same challenges in detection apply such as the necessity of a collider capable of reaching very high energies. In addi12

tion to the requirement that CMSPs have a mass of at least 60 GeV (although many are predicted to be much more massive), charged stable massive particles, as their name suggests, all carry an electronic charge and can escape the D detector before they decay. The long life time is what is meant by stable; it does not refer to particles that due to quantum number conservation do not decay at all, and so some physicists refer to CMSP as charged massive long-lived particles instead, to denote the dierence. There are several means of detecting these particles. The greater mass means a longer time-of-ight, and the charge means that energy loss is very likely through interactions with other charged particles such as electrons. However, the greater mass and consequently lower speed mean that despite this energy loss, CMSPs will still have a greater energy than faster particles. Their large mass also means that their collisions are elastic, so CMSP collisions do not create showers of hadrons and deposit all of their energy in the calorimeter, unlike all other particles with the exception of muons and neutrinos.

3.2

Supersymmetry

Why must supersymmetry (SUSY) exist in the rst place? Inclusion of the Higgs Boson in order to reconcile the group symmetry gives rise to what is known as the hierarchy problem. The experimental and theoretical values of the Hamiltonian equation for dierent particles, especially as-of-yet undiscovered massive particles, when the Higgs boson is included, vary considerably

13

and so the correction term must be very large due to quantum eects. The Hamiltonian in this case is complex, but has the scalar vector potential:

V = m2 |H|2 + |H|4 , H

where mH is related to the Higgs mass, H has a nonzero expectation value, and is a coupling constant for the Higgs eld. More generally, supersymmetry attempts to explain in terms of mass and energy why we have not yet found the particle which mediates gravity and reconcile various inconsistencies in experimental data versus theoretical predictions of elementary particles. At this time, concerns about a large correction term may seem absurdthe Higgs boson has not even been detected, let alone its mass determined. However, attempts to nd the Higgs may result in discoveries of new particles and once the Higgs mass has been measured, physicists want a theory that will be consistent with the new data, regardless. Should a new massive particle which couples to the Higgs eld be discovered, it alone would require an even greater correction term of unacceptable magnitude. It is possible to assume that the Higgs boson does not exist, or that if it does, no massive particles couple to the Higgs eld, but this leaves us back with the unication of gravity problem and is not a safe assumption. SUSY allows the Standard Model, including the Higgs, and without any ne-tuning of the Lagrangian required. A dening requirement of supersymmetry is that each particle has a su-

14

perpartner, a corresponding particle with a spin one-half apart; that is, each boson is paired with a fermion. The supersymmetric particles are called sparticles. The supersymmetric partners of fermions are similarly named: selectron, stau, sneutrino, and so on; the partners of bosons acquire an ino sux (zino, wino, higgsino, etc.) All quantum numbers other than the aforementioned spin, such as color, charge, and isospin, are identical for particles and their sparticles. SUSYs introduction of the superpartner groups, known as supermultiplets, cancels the Higgs mass normalization, as shown in the below Feynman diagram.

While this explains the hierarchy problem and oers some possible answer regarding the huge dierences in particle size for dierent force carriers, SUSY comes with its own questions. If a massless particle, such as the pho-

15

ton, has a counterpart which diers only in spin, why has this other massless particle never been detected? It is well within the range of our current detectors. The lack of sparticles indicates that while the symmetry did exist in earlier stages of the universe, it has since been broken (become asymmetric) and the sparticles now have masses on the TeV scale at least. There are several ways in which SUSY may have been broken, but the most relevant to this paper is gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB). GMSB results from normal gauge interactions and works with the introduction of a new chiral supermultiplet in addition to those predicted by the Standard Model and SUSY: the messengers. Messengers can couple to either the SUSY particles or to whatever caused the breaking of SUSY. In GMSB, the lightest supersymmetric particle (often abbreviated LSP) is the gravitino, the superpartner of the undiscovered and likely very massive graviton. The gravitino has a predicted mass in the 1 keV range, far below the energies reached by modern colliders. This gravitino would be produced by a series of particle decays: rst, a superpartner pair would be created. Each particle of this pair would decay one of the next lightest supersymmetric particles (NLSP), which may be either a neutralino or a slepton. If they decay into a neutralino, the neutralino will then further decay into a gravitino and a photon, and the gravitino could be detected indirectly as an event with the appropriate amount of missing energy. The predicted detector signature would therefore need to have two photons and a large value for the missing energy, corresponding to the multiple decays and their byproducts. Should 16

the pair of particles decay into sleptons, they would decay into the lightest slepton, as marked by the term NLSP(next lightest supersymmetric particle, ie: the particle that decays into the LSP). This slepton is the stau, the superpartner of the tau particle. The stability of the gravitino means that the NLSP is also most likely fairly stable, even in the case of staus, which decay into gravitinos very gradually. This means that a CMSP may very well exist: stability is accounted for; the superpartners, according to GMSB, are massive; and the charges of a particle and its superpartner are still predicted to be equal, so it would be charged.

17

Chapter 4 Apparatus
4.1 The Tevatron

18

The Tevatron is a circular particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. At this time, it is the highest energy particle collider in the world. The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is a new collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Once it is turned on at the end of 2009, the LHC will replace the Tevatron as the most powerful collider, although the Tevatron will remain in operation until at least 2010, until the LHC and its detectors are fully running. The Tevatron derives its name from its proton accelerators, which accelerate proton and anti-proton beams to an energy of approximately 1 TeV (Teraelectron volt). There are several accelerators that bring the beams to their full speed. First, a preaccelerator ionizes hydrogen gas to create H- ions, which are made of a single proton and two electrons. The Cockcroft-Walton accelerator then uses a positive voltage to accelerate these ions to energies of 750 keV. The ions go down a transfer line (named the 750 keV line for obvious reasons), also considered part of the preaccelerator, to the LINAC. The LINAC, or linear accelerator, is actually made of a two separate linear accelerators: a drift tube, which starts with the lower energy ions, and a side-coupled cavity which accelerates the particles that have gone through the drift tube to an energy of 400 MeV. The ions then pass through a carbon foil layer which strips o the electrons, leaving only the proton to go ahead. The protons enter the Booster, a synchotron, or circular acceleratorthe rst of several in the Tevatron. The Booster uses a series of magnets spaced around a circle of radius 75 m to collect the protons into a beam and then 19

accelerates this beam to 8 GeV, into the Main injector. The Main Injector is also a synchotron with a circumference approximately seven times longer than that of the Booster. The Main Injector rst accelerates the proton beam to 120 GeV. If the beam is to be used in antiproton stacking, the Main Injector does not accelerate it any further; if it is to be injected through the Tevatron, it is accelerated up to 150 GeV. The antiprotons mentioned come from the Antiproton source, a series of three parts: the 120 GeV proton beam is shot at a nickel target. For every 105 106 protons that strike the target, approximately one antiproton is obtained. These are focused through a lens made of lithium and selected for energies of approximately 8 GeV before they are collected in the Debuncher. The Debuncher, as its name indicates, decelerates the faster antiprotons so that the particles are closer in momentum, and spreads out the particles linearly so that they are not all bunched together. The antiprotons are released in groups, or pulses, and stored in the Accumulator, where the range of momenta is further decreased, and accumulated until there is a sucient number to create an antiproton beam, which then moves on to the Recycler, a storage ring that also saves up antiprotons until needed, at which point they go through the Main Injector again to be accelerated to 150 GeV. In the meantime, the 150 GeV beam, proton or antiproton is injected to the Tevatron, a synchotron nearly 4 miles in circumference. Each beam is accelerated with RF carriers from 150 GeV to 980 GeV; the energy of the collision is therefore 1.96 TeV. The proton and anti-proton bunches move in 20

opposite directions around the ring so that they may collide, with the D and CDF detectors at two of the major points of collision. The beams are steered around the rings through the Tevatron by cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets. Another set of magnets serves to focus the beams, narrow their cross-sectional area, and steer them through the center of the appropriate detector to maximize the rate of collision. The proton and antiproton beams are equal in mass and opposite in charge, so they reach the exact same energies while traveling in opposite directions around the ring. The Tevatron, during a run, has ppcollisions every 396 ns.

21

The above gure shows a schematic of the Tevatron apparatus.

4.2

The D Detector

The D detector is one of the two main detectors along the Tevatron ring, and has three main parts: a central tracking system, a liquid argon and uranium calorimeter, and a muon system. The central muon tracking system and a forward muon system comprise the total muon system. The D detector uses a right-handed coordinate system in which the z-axis is along the line of the proton beam. The y-axis points up, and the x-axis points out from the center. However, for most purposes it makes more sense to use cylindrical coordinates. In addition, instead of the polar angle it is often more helpful to refer to the , when referring to the direction of the particle relative to the z-axis. This term is called the pseudorapidity and is equal to 2

= ln tan

The pseudorapidity is an approximation of the actual rapidity, which takes into account relativistic particles. The actual rapidity is also Lorenz invariant and is given by the equation 1 E + pL ln 2 E pL

y=

22

4.2.1

The Central Tracking System

The D detector central tracking system measures interactions with || < 1 and consists of two trackers: the silicon microstrip tracker (SMT) and the central ber tracker (CFT). Both are surrounded by a solenoid. In order for detectors to be nearly perpendicular to the surfaces for all values of , the SMT is surrounded by six barrels in four layers, which measure the r coordinate for lower absolute values of . The term forward is used to refer to the areas of the detector where the pseudorapidity is large 1 < || < 4; || > 4 is too close to the beam line for the detector to measure. Distributed

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between the barrels are sixteen disks which also surround the track. The front disks measure both the r and r z coordinates for higher values of . The SMT uses both single- and double-sided silicon sensors for muon detection. The SMT displays a signal to noise ratio of between 12:1 and 18:1, depending on several factors including time since the previous shutdown and charge-up time. The CFT consists of eight concentric supporting barrels which hold the many scintillating bers. Each barrel has two doublets (two-layered systems) of bers. The rst doublet is parallel to the z-axis and therefore the proton beam. The second doublets alternate between 3 in relation to the z-axis, with the innermost barrels angled doublet at +3 . When charged particles pass these layers of bers, they excite electrons in the bers, which transmit a light signal down through a waveguide ber to the visible light photon counters (VLPC). The forward muon system covers the region 1 < || < 2, but the drift tube tracking and detectors work in approximately the same manner as in the central tracking system.

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4.2.2

The Calorimeter

The calorimeter provides the primary measurement of the energy of electrons, photons, and jets. A solenoid, added to the detector between Run I and Run II, provides a momentum measurement but at high energies the calorimeter is more accurate. The calorimeter is in fact three smaller separate uranium and liquid argon calorimeters, one of which is central (CC) and the other 25

two of which are the end calorimeters, and an intercryostat detector. The CC spans the region of approximately (|| 1). The end calorimeters, ECN (end calorimeter north) and ECS (south) cover the remaining range, up to (|| 4). In order to more eectively detect dierent types of particles, the calorimeters are constructed in four layers. The acceleration (scattering) of electromagnetic particles produces brehmmstrahlung radiation, the emission of photons. These photons then create electron-positron pairs, which further radiate photons. These interactions continue until all the nal products have energies below a threshold of approximately 10 MeV and can therefore be measured by summing all of the ionization energies. The electromagnetic sections of the calorimeters are made of 3-4 mm plates of depleted uranium with liquid argon between the plates and the interactions are measured by the ionization deposited in the liquid argon and collected by cells of multilayered circuit boards which can detect the electromagnetic charges of the ions. The other type of particle the calorimeter can measure is the hadron. Hadrons are particles made of quarks bound together by the strong force, and therefore behave rather dierently than electromagnetic particles. Like electrons and photons, hadrons lose energy by producing secondary particles which in turn make additional particles, until the original energy is collected into a shower of particles which are measured by their ionization energies generated in the liquid argon. Through interactions with atomic nuclei, hadrons can also create emissions of particles such as pions, which then decay into muons; 26

but these particles travel much further into the calorimeter. The hadronic sections of the calorimeter are split into two levels in order to cover a wide range of particle energies. The ne hadronic sections are made of a uranium niobium alloy and are 6 mm thick, and the coarse hadronic sections are much thicker, at 46.5 mm. In the CC, this layer is made of copper, and in ECN and ECS it is made of stainless steel. The signal detectors here are also high-voltage electrodes, collecting ions generated in the liquid argon between the plates, by the secondary particles in the shower.

4.2.3

The Muon System

The muon system is made of three layers, called A, B, and C. The A-layer is surrounded by a 1.8 Tesla (T) toroid and is the innermost layer; the B and C layers both reside outside the toroid. All the muon system layers include drift tubes and scintillator counters. The drift tubes are used to track muons, and the scintillator counters measure the time and position of a muon moving through the detector. This information can be used to determine the speed of the detected particle. The drift tubes contain gas and a positively charged wire, so when a charged particle enters, it ionizes the gas and the released electrons move towards the wire. This interaction further ionizes the gas and therefore amplies the signal. Muons not only can penetrate deep into the calorimeter, but also carry a charge. The lack of brehmmstrahlung radiation makes it dicult to measure their energy in the calorimeter, which is why a special muon system was created. 27

4.3
4.3.1

Triggering and Reconstruction

Triggering

Even considering the time it takes between bunches of injected proton or antiproton beams, as well as shutdowns, the high luminosity of the D detector means that data collected in Tevatron runs amount to over one million Terabytes per year (each event is about 1 MB). This does not even include every run; only about 100 events can be written every second, but approximately 2.5 million collisions occur every second. Therefore, something must be done to determine which events should be written and which should be discarded. Many events are in fact nothing more than particle scattering with no new particles created from the collision, and are therefore unimportant from a modern particle physics perspective; these scatterings have been thoroughly studied over the past few decades. In order to select events, the detector includes a triggering system. The triggering system does record some events that do not t the specied criteria as its rst few runs, as a test, but these make up only a small fraction of the saved data. There are three levels to the trigger system, named L1, L2, and L3. The rst level (L1) is hardware based and accepts events at a rate of approximately 2 kHz. L2 includes hardware parts and simple microprocessors corresponding to each section of the detector, and has an accept rate of 1Hz. L3 is a more advanced farm of microprocessors, consisting of hundreds of separate, rack-mounted high end PCs which reduce the accept rate to 10 Hz, and sends events which pass 28

the nal selection to systems which buer the events and rewrite them to an oine location to be written. Writing the events also includes some reconstructed information so that the data will be more easily accessible for physical analysis.

4.3.2

Reconstruction

After passing through several systems for data acquisition and storage, the remaining events that have passed through L3 are reconstructed using the DRECO program. Raw information, either from the detector or from a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, is input into DRECO. DRECO, in turn, outputs each event with all the reconstructed data associated with it. The process of reconstruction takes several steps. First, detector unpackers organize and decode the raw information, which may also involve calibration of the data based on factors specic to each run. This information can be used to locate the general regions in which hits or showers occurred. Next, data from the tracking system, along with SMT and CFT hits, are used to reconstruct the full track of a particle from this system and the nal scintillator hits. Vertexing is the third step: the program nds primary vertices, or points at which proton-antiproton interactions likely occurred. Vertex information is necessary to reconstruct certain physical. kinematic quantities such as the transverse energy of a particle. Next, secondary vertices are also predicted; these points are more important in reconstructing the decay of short-lived 29

particles. DRECO is not fully feed-forward and once these vertices are calculated, they run through multiple algorithms along with information from the previous steps in order to predict the type of physics object the event contains. While there are many types of physics objects, we will talk about muon reconstruction here as it is the most relevant. Muon reconstruction has three parts. First, the program locates the hits. By using the tracking system drift tubes and the scintillators, the muon trajectory can be calculated. The second step is segment nding, which works by a process known as a linked list. Hits within a maximum distance of each other, in this case 20 cm, are matched together if they are not in the same plane or the same drift-tube wire hit. This match is called a link. If two links also match in the same way, they are linked together until the link segments are all put together to make a straight line. Judgment of which links should be put together is based on chi-squared values and the scintillator hits themselves. In the nal step, track tting, segments from the dierent muon system layers are then put together to create local tracks, although this requires some attention paid to layer-specic quantities. Finally, the reconstructed local track is matched to one of the tracks found in the central tracking system (that is, the CFT and SMT) to create a global track. This process includes consideration of the solenoid and toroid magnets and their elds, energy loss in various parts of the detector, and multiple scattering. Once all of this information has been reconstructed, it must be compared with the ever-present background signals in order to distinguish events 30

from regular noise. This comparison is made with MC simulations of background and of signals. The PYTHIA event generator is the one used for these events and for the majority of events at D. PYTHIA is based

on the Python programming language and is widely used in simulation of high-energy physics events, including those at D. The model approximates the Tevatrons proton-antiproton collisions, including both the current model of particle physics and quantum eects. PYTHIA simulations are sent to DGSTAR(D0 GEANT Simulation of the Total Apparatus Response. GEANT is a program developed at CERN and stands for GEometry ANd Tracking), a program which simulates the D0 detectors response to the particles generated by PYTHIA. DGSTAR then determines the trajectories of the simulated particles as well as many trajectory-dependent variables: hits and their location, particle interactions, and energy loss during those events. DSIM approximates the digitization of the real events, complete with any detector program glitches so as to make the simulation as close to reality as possible. The DSIM output then goes to DRECO to reconstruct the MC data in the same manner as the raw data is reconstructed.

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Chapter 5 Data Cuts and Pre-Analysis

5.1 Preselection

In order to reduce the reconstructed data to a more manageable level, preselection cuts were implemented. This meant that only events that contained certain characteristics were written to a subset of les which would be processed and analyzed, as the other events, while important from a physical standpoint, were not important to the goals of this analysis. Most of the preselection consisted of cuts: rejecting certain sections of the data which could be unreliable or unhelpful in the research. Cosmic rays, for example, are a source of muons that can penetrate the detector. The detector is enclosed, which can cut down on some of the background radiation, but the enclosure is meant more to prevent high levels of radiation from escaping and, like the calorimeter, provides an appropriate shield against particles

32

with the exception of neutrinos and muons, which are rarely produced in the Tevatron. There is a certain part of the detector known as the bottom hole and detection in this area is unreliable, so muon events in that area were rejected. Also, in order to eliminate possible cosmic rays, muons had to be at least .02 cm from the beams in events for which there had been SMT hits. This minimum distance is called the distance of closest approach (DCA). For tracks in which there were no SMT hits, the DCA had to be less than .2 cm to pass the preselection. The SMT is used because it is closest to the line of the proton or antiproton beams, so hits detected in the SMT give the highest accuracy in determining the position of an event. There are also other criteria imposed, more concerned with creating a data set that would include only relevant events. Muons had to have a pT (transverse momentum) of at least 20 GeV, and each event had to have at least one good muon. The one muon and two muon events were each selected to have the correct number of good muons, and further cuts specic to the type of event will be discussed later. Some of the other cuts had to do with the eects of the data reconstruction; muons were analyzed in relation to the primary vertex (ie, the reconstructed position of the collision) in order to match it to a central track, but if there was no suciently close vertex, they were still included in the preselected data. Finally, the muons had to have segments for both the A and the BC layers of the track; these types of muons are called Medium Nseg 3 muons, or muons of medium quality (having a certain number of hits and other characteristics) and segments for 33

all three layers, with BC included together. In addition, several minor preselection processors were included in the conguration le. The rst eliminated any duplicate events which could potentially skew the data. While it was unlikely any events were duplicated, the amount of reconstruction, preprocessing, and transfer of the raw data can lead to multiple copies of a single le as it is preferable to losing the only copy of a le. The data also passed through a data quality processor which eliminated any bad runs; that is, runs during which there was excessive noise, a partial shutdown or malfunction of some part of the detector. It also excluded special runs during which the specications of the detector, for some reason or another, were deliberately dierent than they are normally. Such runs are useful in some types of analysis, but not in a general survey such as this one. Finally, partial detector reads (events in which, for some reason, not all the information was read out from the reconstructed le) were eliminated in the preselection.

5.2

Analysis Cuts

Once the events have been preselected, the analysis can begin. However, it can be helpful to look at dierent parts of the data, depending on what we are searching for. In this case, we are looking for CMSPs. As we have said before, the energy loss of CMSPs over a certain distance should be greater

34

than that of faster moving particles, due to the lower velocity. The value dE/dx, energy loss per unit length, is inversely proportional to the square of the velocity. However, CMSPs do not lose as much energy than some smaller particles, as CMSPs do not have inelastic interactions that produce showers of secondary particles. CMSPs must be distinguished from mesondecay events which can also produce muons. To do so, isolation cuts were applied. In one, the total transverse energy across all tracks inside a cone of radius 0.5 around the muon in the event had to be less than 2.5 GeV, where the radius is dened as

R=

()2 + ()2

The other cut was a halo cut: the sum transverse energy in the calorimeter cells in the ring of radius 0.1 < R < 0.4 around the muon track must also be less than 2.5 GeV. When looking at the single muon events, muons had to pass both of these selection cuts. When looking at double muon events, each muon had to pass at least one of these cuts or one muon had to pass both.

5.3

Monte Carlo Simulations

Signal samples for staus (stable scalar tau particles), W-produced muon events, and for Z-produced muon events were created using PYTHIA, as

35

discussed above. All data was saved in Common Analysis Format (CAF) trees. CAF is based in ROOT, an object-oriented framework for physical and statistical analysis. These CAF trees include the trigger and reconstructed object information that is used in the analysis of high-energy physics events.

5.3.1

Staus

The stau events for p20 data lacked correctly simulated dE/dx information, so p17 stau simulations had to be used. The stau events were produced at mass points of 60, 80, 100, 150, 200, and 250 GeV and reconstructed in the same manner as the actual detector data. The masses given are all within the predicted stau mass range of 60 GeV to 300 GeV and should therefore all show some deviation from muon events. While staus are generally thought to be produced in pairs, this does not eliminate staus as a potential particle match. The detector is not perfectly ecient and therefore may miss some particles, or one of the staus produced may not penetrate the detector suciently to be written to the eventual reconstructed data. Also, while it is less likely, it is still possible that the prediction that staus are created in pairs is false. The stau events were split into two-muon and one-muon events, depending on whether the staus, as the new particle signal simulation sample, were to be compared with two-muon events (Z decay) or single muon events (W decay). The data itself was selected to have both single and double muon events, and was later divided into the two categories. The tables on page 45 shows the distribution of single and double muon events for the various data 36

and MC samples.

5.3.2

Z Boson Decay

The Z boson (mass 91 GeV) can decay in several dierent ways. One of the possible branches in the Z particle life time is Z + . The detector signature for this type of decay is distinctive, showing two high-energy isolated muons. The Z-produced muon event MC exists for comparison purposes. Staus are also predicted to be pair-produced, but would dier from known Z decay events resulting in two muons, as the stau particles are far more massive that the muon, whose mass is approximately 0.1 GeV. Therefore, data which matches stau patterns and not Z-produced muon patterns may in fact be CMSPs instead of muons. The Z + events were created using the p20 MC production parameters.

5.3.3

W Boson Decay

The W boson can also decay in several dierent ways, either into an up and a down quark, or into a neutrino and a lepton, in our case a muon. The W lifetime is very short, so detectors usually detect the products; however, neutrinos are very dicult to detect because they are chargeless, so the detector signature is a single isolated high-energy muon and missing energy (of the neutrino). The W + events are used as comparison to single-muon events in the data; if a single muon event is inconsistent with both Z and

37

W decay, it is possible that the signal is from a CMSP. The W events used here are from the p17 MC production parameters for the same reason that we used p17 staus.

5.4

Data Sample

The data sample used for this research was from the p20 data set, where p20 refers to the release of the software packages used for reconstruction and analysis. This corresponds to dates after June of 2008, well into Run II, which began in March 2001. Integrated luminosity for the runs analyzed was approximately 3 fb, as shown in the below graph.

38

All data in the graphs have also passed through the preselection criteria and one of the two isolation cuts, or both, as discussed in the sections on preselection and Monte Carlo samples. As a cross check, the data sample with transverse momentum under a cut of 50 GeV was run against the Z events, if it had two muons, or the W events, if it had one. This momentum is too low for most stau events, and so the data should appear to have a distribution much like the background MC, as shown here.

5.5

Further Analysis Cuts

Following the processing of the Monte Carlo simulations through the halo and cone cuts, the MC samples were compared. The kinematics of standard muon events (the Z boson decay sample) dier from those of possible CMSP events (the stau samples). As said before, CMSPs are much heavier and have both a greater ionization energy loss and a lower velocity. The transverse momentum graph for muons, given by

pT = p sin

displays a much narrower peak at lower momentum values; in contrast, for CMSPs with large enough mass, the lower velocity is counteracted by the much greater mass in momentum calculations. Staus, for example, display a much wider peak, with a much greater proportion of high-momentum events.

39

The following plots show the pT and

dE dx

of both the single and double muon

events after processing but prior to any other analysis cuts.

Graph 2: 1D plot of pT for single muon events.

40

Graph 3: 1D plot of

dE dx

for single muon events.

41

Graph 4: 1D plot of pT for double muon events.

42

Graph 5: 1D plot of

dE dx

for double muon events.

To separate as many muon (background) events from stau (signal) events, a hyperbolic cut along a two-dimensional plot of the
dE dx

vs the transverse

momentum was applied. The cut was placed at an optimal position that retained as many stau events as possible while at the same time maximizing the ratio of signal to background plus signal,
S . S+B

The below graph shows

this cut with the Z + background sample.

43

Graph 2: Graph of overlaid

dE dx

vs pT for Z + events with the hyperbolic cut

For double muon events, the hyperbolic curve which optimized the stau data and minimized the fraction of background events for all of the mass points had the equation y = formula y = .005 for b. This was obviously less than ideal and a smaller step size over a greater range would provide a better curve, but the hyperbola given gave to at least 98% in all cases, as shown in the below table:
S S+B 1 x+a 1 x+50

+ .06. The parameters of the curve (of

+ b were varied with a step size of 5 for parameter a and of

equal

44

Table of Double Muon Events Stau Mass (GeV) Signal to Signal + Background 60 80 100 150 200 .9820 .9908 .9921 .9942 .9944

250 .9945 The same hyperbola was used for the single muon selection, with the exception of the 60 GeV mass point, which was optimized by y =
1 + .055. x+50

The below table shows the signal to signal plus background ratio for the optimal cut. Table of Single Muon Events Stau Mass (GeV) Signal to Signal + Background 60 80 100 150 200 250 .9914 .9952 .9962 .9976 .9952 .9977

45

Chapter 6 Results
The most striking nding in the data before any cuts were made was a sharp drop in the mean value of
dE dx

at run 240665, found in a run-by-run study

intended to search for any dependence of dE/dx on run number. Runs before this one have a very consistent but with a mean
dE dx dE dx

of .08848, and runs after are also consistent,

of .07452.

46

Graph 1: Mean value of the The shift in mean

dE dx

dE dx

vs the run number

was corrected for in the nal data. As the plot of the

mean dE/dx showed that aside from the drop, the data was very consistent, the correction was made by simply adding a constant value to the
dE dx

of any

runs after 240665. This value was .01396, the dierence between the mean of the runs before run 240665 and the mean of the runs after. The below graphs show the results of the hyperbolic cut on the data for the muon pair sample, the single muon sample, and the dierent cut for the 60 GeV single muon sample.

47

Graph 3: Graph of cut overlaid.

dE dx

vs pT for single muon events with the hyperbolic

48

Graph 4: Graph of

dE dx

for single muon events passing the hyperbolic cut.

49

Graph 5: Graph of

dE dx

vs pT for single muon events with the hyperbolic

cut for 60 GeV overlaid.

50

Graph 6: Graph of cut for 60 GeV.

dE dx

vs pT for single muon events passing the hyperbolic

51

Graph 7: Graph of cut overlaid.

dE dx

vs pT for double muon events with the hyperbolic

52

Graph 8: Graph of cut.

dE dx

vs pT for double muon events passing the hyperbolic

The below table shows the number of events in a sample of data or MC which passed the analysis cuts and single or double muon requirement nd the number of which passed the hyperbolic cut for each muon requirement, as well as the initial sample size that passed the preselection.

53

Table of Stau Samples Stau Mass (GeV) Initial Sample Size After Single Muon Selection After Double Muon Selection Hyperbolic Cut for Single Muons Hyperbolic Cut for Double Muons 60 100000 33561 66746 11125 6377 80 100000 35253 62574 17371 12661 100 100000 34697 74314 21682 14795 150 100000 37380 66153 33990 20055 200 50000 18367 34559 17253 20686 250 100000 37341 67824 36336 21136

54

Table of Data and MC Background Samples Sample Type Initial Sample Size After Single Muon Selection After Double Muon Selection Hyperbolic Cut for Single Muons Hyperbolic Cut for Single Muons, 60 GeV cut Hyperbolic Cut for Double Muons W 513500 69220 83 Z 51155 21605 117 Data 5999509 1852694 209963 16676 19492 2562

55

Chapter 7 Conclusion
The
dE dx

run study and post-hyperbolic cut data both will contribute to the

search for CMSPs in Run II p20 data; while similar analysis has been carried out, it has not been conducted with a data set of this size. The cut was not very specic, and in further studies the parameters could be varied along a wider range with a smaller step size in order to truly optimize the position of the cuts and the amount of possible CMSP data passing the cut. An Articial Neural Network or similar system which could make an even more tted boundary between background and signal events would be ideal, and given more time could provide a much more accurate and precise selection. Finally, the dE/dx information and other variables would be best studied if the MC sample was from the same version as the data; that is, from p20. In particular, a supersymmetric particle other than the stau, such as the chargino, could be implemented in further studies to expand the range of

56

types of CMSPs. The study demonstrates the value of using a muon candidates
dE dx

in

the silicon detector to distinguish actual muons from potential CMSPs. An earlier study used the time-of-ight to separate the events, and using both variables together in an analysis will be a powerful tool for a possible discovery.

57

References
V. M. Abazov et al. [D Collaboration], submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Methods, arXiv:hep-ph/0507191, Fermilab-Pub-05/341-E. M. Drees, http://arxiv.org/PS cache/hep-ph/pdf/9611/9611409v1.pdf B. P. Roe, Particle Physics at the New Millenium, (Springer, New York, 1996). L.B. Okun, A Primer in Particle Physics (Harwood Academic Publishers, 1987). Y. Xie, T. Bose, D. Cutts, S. Banerjee, and M. Eads. D Internal Note #5653. The D Collaboration, Search for GMSB SUSY in Diphoton Events with Large Missing ET with D detector, http://www-d0.fnal.gov/Run2Physics/WWW/results/prelim/NP/N39/N39.pdf V. M. Abazov et al. [D Collaboration], Search for Long-Lived Charged Massive Particles with the D Detector, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 161802 (2009).

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