Physical Science

The decay of the doubly charged Higgs is as follows: two quarks annihilate into a Z boson, which pair produces an H++ and H--, which both then decay into 4 final state leptons. We attempt to find more precise cuts to eliminate the most significant backgrounds – Drell-Yan, ZZ, ttbar, and QCD. We also calculate the significance. By predicting better ... Read More

We look through data generated from a Monte-Carlo simulation in order to analyze exotic interactions, meaning those outside of the standard model. Our analysis is divided into two primary searches, with one focused on the doubly-charged Higgs boson, and the other examining dark photon decay. This project focused primarily on the dark photons, specifically the lepton jets that result from ... Read More

Current models occasionally misinterpret particle charges due to high transverse momentum. To this end, we designed a module that, when implemented, matches generated particles to reconstructed ones and logs the number of incorrect signs in the reconstruction. We further divide these sign flips between high pT and low pT, based off a momentum cut specified in the module. Further, our ... Read More

Studies have been conducted to determine the role overlapping resonances have on the chaos within planetary systems, primarily our own. Most studies prove that overlapping resonances are the cause of chaotic orbits, as is evidenced by the Kirkwood gaps, however, it is not understood which resonances are primarily responsible for chaotic orbits. Our project investigates the relationships of overlapping first-order ... Read More

We are utilizing the program SOFTSUSY (based on the minimal supersymmetric standard model (mssm)) for dark sector analysis of dark photons. We have automated the external program with Python to give us cross-sections of dark photons while also automating the C++ graphing program to plot these data points. The two variables that are changed throughout automation are the m0 (unified ... Read More

Particle physics research involves processing up to millions of simulated particle collision events under a variety of conditions. These events are contained in Root files, and efficiently accessing these files is a crucial first step in the whole IMSA-CMS analysis. In our framework, the locations of the Root files corresponding to a condition are stored in text files, and the ... Read More

We present results of new selection cuts in doubly charged Higgs to WW events. This search is performed using data generated from Monte Carlo simulations using leading lepton transverse momentum, same-sign invariant mass, opposite-sign invariant mass, and missing transverse energy. Monte Carlo simulations about each of these properties were analyzed for each significant background of the doubly charged Higgs: QCD ... Read More

We present new selection cuts for doubly charged Higgs bosons decaying into tau particles. The variables of the data include the leading lepton transverse momentum, same-sign invariant mass, opposite-sign invariant mass, and missing transverse energy values of each interaction. We also collect these values from data on each of the significant background events for the doubly charged Higgs decaying into ... Read More

In a collider, particle collisions create around 2TB of data every second, with most of this data being useless to the actual study. To help sift through this data on the fly, “triggers” are used to quickly determine what events should be recreated and kept, based on several parameters. In the IMSA-CMS framework we used predetermined triggers alongside our own ... Read More

The existence of the dark photon is predicted by several theories beyond the standard model. In this study, we analyze particles in the dark photon’s decay pattern, specifically lepton jets, to prove or disprove the existence of the dark photon. The number of lepton jets found and the number of recognized jets that are matched to an underlying neutralino depend ... Read More

This talk will discuss a major overhaul of our data analysis architecture which permits the use of multiple file types. The code we use to work with particle physics datasets previously only worked when those datasets were written in MiniAOD format. After the overhaul, the code can be easily made to run on any file format, including DELPHES which was ... Read More

The doubly charged Higgs boson is a theoretical particle that coulexist but has never been found. The Higgs Combine Tool (HCT) is a tool that uses Bayesian statistics to calculate limits based on particle accelerator data. I used 3000 inverse femtobarns of data which is the expected amount for the HL-LHC upgrade. I created text files that I fed into ... Read More

One of the longest-standing fundamental questions in physics is the nature of dark matter. Galactic rotation curves, gravitational lensing, cosmic microwave background, and galaxy cluster collisions have all supported the existence of a large invisible matter component to the universe since 1933 and Zwicky's early observations of objects at the edge of the Coma cluster.

To address this problem, the ... Read More

We study lepton selection for dark photon events using simulated Monte Carlo events, for application in the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment. We find the optimal filters and cuts to limit background events while maintaining the amount of signal events. The types of background were QCD, Drell-Yan, tt̅, diboson, and triboson. The types of filters implemented were based on invariant mass, ... Read More

This analysis focuses on automating the generation of dark photon samples and generating background plots for dark photons. The current CRAB sample generation takes in a dataset name, generator fragment, the number of events, and the number of jobs to split the events up into. To generate the samples to be used in our analyses, the GEN, SIM, DIGIPremix, HLT, ... Read More