MPhys project: Mock Data Challenge for the LHCb Experiment

Supervisors:

Dr Franz Muheim E-mail: f.muheim@ed.ac.uk Tel: 0131 650 5235/5307
Please contact (or e-mail) me for more information if you might be interested in doing this project.

Project:

The Edinburgh PPE group is involved in the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, at CERN. The goal of the LHCb experiment is to measure precisely CP violating asymmetries in the decay of B mesons. The results can be compared to the predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Deviations from the predictions would signal the existence of new fundamental interactions and particles.

The LHC accelerator and the LHCb detector are currently under construction. The detector design has just been optimised by simulating its peformance for varying scenarios. These Monte Carlo techniques also allow to emulate the actual experiment by first generating events which are expected to occur according to theory and then simulating their passage through materials and the signals they produce in detectors. Subsequently, these events are reconstructed as if they were real data. We are currently producing about 50 million events for a Mock Data Challenge for the LHCb experiment. Computing centres from collaborating institutes in many countries participate in this production, including our own ScotGrid. For these Mock data challenges, e-science/Grid tools are being implemented and tested.

The project would use the software packages ``DaVinci'' and ``Brunel'' to analyse a benchmark B meson decay channel and its backgrounds on these Monte Carlo data. It will provide a very good opportunity to get involved in the current analysis techniques and in the computing software and e-science/Grid tools that are being used in particle physics.

References:


March 2003, f.muheim@ed.ac.uk