3.2.5. Analysis#

The Skimming#

After data processing, the mDST files are finally available for analysis. While it’s possible to run directly on them, it’s however quite inconvenient. The mDST contain all the events that have been acquired, while usually an analysis needs only a very small fraction of them, not to mention that several analyses may share the need to reconstruct the same objects (countless analyses include a D or a J/ψ, for example).

The goal of the analysis skims (often just called skims) is to produce smaller datasets, each amounting to few percents of the total dataset, that can be shared among several analyses.

To produce a skim one has do define a rather simple selection, which is as inclusive as possible (or, in other words, uses cuts as loose as possible), while keeping the retention rate within reasonable boundaries.

Note

When you run your analysis, you should first check if there is a skim that suits it. Running on skimmed files is much faster and safer than running on the full dataset. If you cannot find a skims that suits your needs, talk to your working group convener first to figure out the best strategy for you.

Reconstructed and Combined particles#

The Belle II detectors can provide three kinds of information:

  • Momentum

  • Energy

  • PID probability.

Of course, not all of them are available for every particle. In fact in most cases only two of them are. However, for a very limited number of particles, you will have all three of them. Most of the particles in the e+e collision do not live long enough to leave any signal inside the detector, and must be reconstructed measuring their decay products. This introduces the very important distinction between measured particles, which leave a signal inside the detector and are reconstructed directly starting from those signals, and combined particles that are reconstructed as sum of measured particles.

Question

What is the average flight length of a 1 GeV muon and a 1 GeV D+ meson? Do they both reach the tracking system?

Hint

Go to https://pdglive.lbl.gov/Viewer.action and look up at the muon and D+ lifetime. Remember that the beampipe radius is 1 cm.

Solution

The average flight length of a particle of speed β and lifetime τ is L=γβτc. The Lorentz factor is γ=EMc2 while β=pc/E, therefore L=τp/M. From this: Lμ6234 m and LD+165 μm. Only the muon reaches the tracking system.

Question

Keeping in mind the result of the previous exercise, which particles do you think survive long enough to reach the active volume of the detector and leave signal there?

Hint

Think about the truly stable and very long lived particles you know, but remember that not all neutral particles are well reconstructed by the ECL or KLM!

Solution

Let’s start from the charged particles.

Let’s look now at the neutral particles.

Let’s see now how reconstructed and combined particles are handled, and what are the special cases. Reconstructed particles are also referred to as final state particles (FSP), as they are the very final products of any decay chain we may be interested in reconstructing. In making an analysis, one has three building blocks:

Reconstructed particle

Reconstructed particles are the basic building block for any analysis. They originate from two different reconstruction objects: charged particles are reconstructed from tracks, photons and KL from ECL or KLM clusters. Of course a charged track entering the ECL will leave a signal, so one can have a cluster attached to a charged tracks. The tracking can only measure either 3-momentum of a particle, so to calculate its 4-momentum one has to make an assumption on the mass. This is usually based on the response of the PID system. On the other hand clusters provide a measurement of the energy, but not of the momentum. To get it, we make both an assumption on the particle mass, and on its production point (all photons and KL are assumed to originate in the primary interaction point). Tracks and clusters are produced during the reconstruction step. The only operation that is left to the final user at the analysis level is the mass assignment.

Combined particles

Summing the 4-momenta of reconstructed particles one can reconstruct any resonance, at least as long as all its decay products are measured. One can then proceed further and combine combined particles to move upwards in a decay tree, until the desired step is reached. The creation of combined particles is done at the analysis level by the final user, using the tools provided by the basf2 analysis package.

V0

Finally, there’s a class of combined particle that require a special treatment, and are therefore provided to the user by the reconstruction procedure. So-called V0 are neutral particles decaying into two charged particles far from the interaction point, leaving a typical V-shaped signature. These particles can of course be reconstructed combining the four-momenta of their daughters, but if the decay has happened outside of the beam pipe it is better to re-run the tracking before doing it, since if a track originates not in the IP, it will cross less material than expected and the multiple scattering corrections must be updated.

Stuck? We can help!

If you get stuck or have any questions to the online book material, the #starterkit-workshop channel in our chat is full of nice people who will provide fast help.

Refer to Collaborative Tools. for other places to get help if you have specific or detailed questions about your own analysis.

Improving things!

If you know how to do it, we recommend you to report bugs and other requests with GitLab. Make sure to use the documentation-training label of the basf2 project.

If you just want to give very quick feedback, use the last box “Quick feedback”.

Please make sure to be as precise as possible to make it easier for us to fix things! So for example:

If you are familiar with git and want to create your first pull request for the software, take a look at How to contribute. We’d be happy to have you on the team!

Quick feedback!

Author(s) of this lesson

Umberto Tamponi, Martin Ritter, Oskar Hartbrich, Michael Eliachevitch, Sam Cunliffe