Physical Science

Schedule

Subscribe to RSS Feed

2021
Wednesday, April 21st
8:50 AM

Dark Photon Phenomenology

Eva Tuecke '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

8:50 AM - 9:05 AM

The dark photon, a non-Abelian U(1) gauge boson, is part of a system of dark matter particles called the dark sector. Dark photons can interact weakly with the Standard Model via kinetic mixing, allowing the dark photon to decay to an even multiplicity of leptons. Two possible production mechanisms exist: the SUSY portal or the Higgs portal. The generated SUSY ... Read More

The LRS vacuum expectation value and the H++->WW decay channel

Archan Das '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

8:50 AM - 9:05 AM

The doubly charged Higgs boson H++ may have a second decay channel that decays to two W bosons. Each of these bosons can decay into either lepton-neutrino pairs or quark-antiquark pairs. Using the all-lepton channel gives us a signature of four leptons and missing energy from the neutrinos, a very low-background signature. Doubly charged Higgs bosons’ decay into W bosons ... Read More

Using the Higgs Combine Tool to Calculate Limits of the Cross Section of Doubly Charged Higgs Bosons

Nate Graf '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Karrick McGinty '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

8:50 AM - 9:05 AM

The Higgs Combine Tool (HCT) is a tool to calculate limits and do statistical analysis on the data collected by particle detectors. We create and edit data cards and then calculate the limit on the cross-section of the production of a particle, given a background estimate, using a Bayesian technique. We then used the HCT to create graphs to show ... Read More

9:10 AM

Creating High-Eta Dark Photons

Hector Ibarra '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Nathan Kilmer '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

9:10 AM - 9:25 AM

We are using a Monte Carlo simulation to generate particle collision events which result in lepton jets. By observing the resulting lepton jets, we are able to observe the characteristics of the original collisions. The goal of these simulations is to observe evidence of a theoretical particle, the dark photon. The dark photon resides in the dark sector, and is ... Read More

Efficiencies for Dark Lepton Triggers

Ari Fishkin '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

9:10 AM - 9:25 AM

Since dark photons produce lepton jets with low muon energies, they are poorly accepted by the existing single muon and dimuon triggers because existing triggers fail to accept muons with low energies. To accept more dark photon events, two tri-muon triggers were created, one being a level one trigger and the other being a high-level trigger, with the level one ... Read More

Lepton-Jet Background

Brady Williams '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

9:10 AM - 9:25 AM

We analyzed the contribution of potential backgrounds for lepton-jets created from the decay of dark photons. Lepton-jets are identified by the presence of at least two collimated leptons, but these jets may have significant pion contamination. Therefore, the primary lepton-jet backgrounds come from Standard Model (SM) processes that happen to contain two leptons that are close enough to fake a ... Read More

9:30 AM

Expected production cross sections for doubly charged Higgs bosons in photon collisions

Balaji Balachandran '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Alexander Zhang '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

9:30 AM - 9:45 AM

We present the results of our analysis of the expected production cross sections for doubly charged Higgs bosons in photon-photon collisions. We use PYTHIA software to generate collision events and calculate cross sections under a variety of conditions. This analysis allows us to study the possible prospects of photon-photon colliders, which have been a topic of interest among physicists for ... Read More

Limit setting and coverage checks in a search for contact interactions

Ysabel Guan '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

9:30 AM - 9:45 AM

When analyzing data in particle physics there are two different statistical lenses that people use: Bayesian and frequentist. The core of Bayesian statistics is the subjective belief that a certain result is true or falls within a certain interval while the core of frequentist statistics is the frequency, or amount of times, that the experiments show a result to be ... Read More

Restructuring CIAnalysis Code

Sameer Komoravolu '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Liam Nelson '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

9:30 AM - 9:45 AM

Produce Efficient Histograms to display particle data.

We have restructured parts of a common code base to make it easier and more efficient for IMSA researchers to perform systematic studies. For one, the existing histogram pathing results in connection errors when the researcher tries to view the root file. We fixed this, and we continued to change the code to ... Read More

10:05 AM

A Comprehensive Look at Nucleon Decay Modes for the DUNE Experiment

Diego Michel '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:05 AM - 10:20 AM

In the past, nucleons (protons and bound neutrons) were thought to have been absolutely stable; however. Since the 1970s, there have been a variety of theories in the form of Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) suggesting that they are not stable. Since then, various experiments have tried and failed to find solid evidence for this proton or nucleon decay, but DUNE ... Read More

Estimating Acceptance for Multilepton Events as a Function of Invariant Mass

Reese Ramos '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Eric Shackelford '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:05 AM - 10:20 AM

This analysis focuses on genera ng a histogram which records the rate of acceptance as a function of invariant mass. This entails developing two distinct histograms: one which records the total number of generated events within certain invariant mass ranges and a second which only counts events which successfully reconstruct two leptons of transverse momentum at least 50 GeV. The ... Read More

Long-lived Dark Photons: Generation, Triggering, and Reconstruction

Ellyn Hu '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:05 AM - 10:20 AM

Long-lived dark photons decay away from the initial particle collision location; thus, they fail all regular triggers, which dismiss vertices a certain distance from the center of the beam pipe. Since the resulting lepton jets are grouped closely together, we cannot perform isolation cuts either. To trigger the displaced lepton jets, we wrote a missing transverse energy trigger module with ... Read More

10:25 AM

Categorizing Neutrino Detector Research and Development Efforts for Snowmass 2021

Alana Rock '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:25 AM - 10:40 AM

Within the broad field of particle physics in the United States, many decisions must be made about the collective goals of respective subfields in order for progress in findings and research to efficiently develop. The Snowmass 2021 process plays a significant role in such decisions. Hosting meetings regarding different interests within each field of particle physics to be covered, an ... Read More

Examination of extraneous leptons in simulated doubly charged Higgs events

Zoie Sloneker '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
James Tan '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:25 AM - 10:40 AM

This analysis examines the extraneous leptons that have been simulated in reconstructed doubly-charged Higgs events. When the code that simulates these events is run, some of the produced events have five leptons indicating an extra lepton. This is an issue because doubly charged Higgs bosons decay into two leptons each, which creates a total of four leptons per event. We ... Read More

Lepton Jet Generation and Reconstruction at Generator Level

Ming Huang '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:25 AM - 10:40 AM

I used PYTHIA 8, a Monte Carlo generator for particle physics, to simulate lepton-jet-producing events. These lepton jets are produced by squarks which produce neutralinos which create dark photons that undergo a dark sector cascade decay into detectable lepton jets.

These events were examined for information about the particles that were produced. Triggers, which determine whether an event is recorded ... Read More

10:45 AM

Cross Section Analysis for Doubly Charged Higgs Bosons from Muon-Muon Collisions

Robert Zhu '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Andy Tang '22, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:45 AM - 11:05 AM

We present our work on the analysis of the cross-section for doubly-charged Higgs production from muon-muon collisions. To facilitate this, the researchers have been utilizing PYTHIA software to simulate these collisions. This analysis allows us to study the predicted results that can be obtained from an experimental muon collider, which has been a topic of interest scientifically for some time. ... Read More

Doubly charged Higgs mass reconstruction efficiency and background estimate

Kodai Speich '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:45 AM - 11:05 AM

The doubly charged Higgs is a scalar boson with +2 or -2 charge, characteristic of the left-right symmetric model. These particles are pair-produced in a quark-antiquark annihilation, and decay to two leptons (electrons, positrons, muons, or anti-muons) of the same charge. In a search for these doubly-charged Higgs, which decay rapidly, and therefore cannot be easily found by the detector, ... Read More

Scintillation Light Data from the ProtoDUNE Dector

Smriti Shankar '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

10:45 AM - 11:05 AM

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a neutrino experiment where neutrino beams from Fermilab are to be sent to liquid argon particle detectors at Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, approximately 1,300 kilometers away. Before the DUNE detectors could be built, a prototype of a single-phase (SP) time projection chamber (TPC) called ProtoDUNE was built. This is currently ... Read More

11:25 AM

Lepton Jet Reconstruction, Matching, and Resolution in the SUSY Portal

Sreyansh Mamidi '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

11:25 AM - 11:50 AM

In the supersymmetry portal for dark photon productions, each lepton jet is associated with an underlying neutralino. To reconstruct these jets, we first gathered samples of the dilepton decay of dark photons from the Monte Carlo generator PYTHIA 8. For each event, we found leptons with the highest transverse momenta to consider additional leptons within ΔR < 0.5. After the ... Read More

11:55 AM

Doubly Charged Higgs Boson Generation

Teodor Tchalakov '21, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

11:55 AM - 12:20 PM

I present a detailed high-level analysis of previous searches for doubly charged Higgs bosons at lower energies and luminosities by CMS and ATLAS. I compare these analyses with simulation results of our own for the currently higher

137 fb-1LHC luminosity with a look at expectations from future higher-energy colliders. The four-lepton signal for doubly charged Higgs events is the chosen ... Read More