Reed College
A new paradigm for data-driven, model-agnostic new physics searches at colliders is emerging, and aims to leverage recent breakthroughs in anomaly detection and machine learning. In order to develop and benchmark new anomaly detection methods within this framework, it is essential to have standard datasets. To this end, we have created the LHC Olympics 2020, a community challenge accompanied by a set of simulated collider events. Participants in these Olympics have developed their methods using an R&D dataset and then tested them on black boxes: datasets with an unknown anomaly (or not). This paper will review the LHC Olympics 2020 challenge, including an overview of the competition, a description of methods deployed in the competition, lessons learned from the experience, and implications for data analyses with future datasets as well as future colliders.
We investigate how differences in the stellar feedback produce disks with different morphologies in Milky Way-like progenitors over 1 z5\leq z \leq 5, using eight state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamics simulation codes in the \textit{AGORA} project. In three of the participating codes, a distinct, rotation-dominated inner core emerges with a formation timescale of 300\lesssim 300 Myr, largely driven by a major merger event, while two other codes exhibit similar signs of wet compaction -- gaseous shrinkage into a compact starburst phase -- at earlier epochs. The remaining three codes show only weak evidence of wet compaction. Consequently, we divide the simulated galaxies into two groups: those with strong compaction signatures and those with weaker ones. Galaxies in these two groups differ in size, stellar age gradients, and disk-to-total mass ratios. Specifically, codes with strong wet compaction build their outer disks in an inside-out fashion, leading to negative age gradients, whereas codes with weaker compaction feature flat or positive age gradients caused primarily by outward stellar migration. Although the stellar half-mass radii of these two groups diverge at z3z \sim 3, the inclusion of dust extinction brings their sizes and shapes in mock observations closer to each other and to observed galaxies. We attribute the observed morphological differences primarily to variations in the stellar feedback implementations -- such as delayed cooling timescales, and feedback strengths -- that regulate both the onset and duration of compaction. Overall, our results suggest that disk assembly at high redshifts is highly sensitive to the details of the stellar feedback prescriptions in simulations.
YE Guo developed a relativistic field-theoretic framework to describe interacting two-particle tunneling through a static potential barrier. The work derives the Bethe-Salpeter equation for this system, identifies a path to analytical solutions in a 1+1D instantaneous regime, and computes the leading-order tunneling amplitude, revealing momentum-dependent correlated tunneling effects.
The astrophysical origin of the lanthanides is an open question in nuclear astrophysics. Besides the widely studied ss, ii, and rr processes in moderately-to-strongly neutron-rich environments, an intriguing alternative site for lanthanide production could in fact be robustly proton-rich\textit{proton-rich} matter outflows from core-collapse supernovae under specific conditions -- in particular, high-entropy winds with enhanced neutrino luminosity and fast dynamical timescales. In this environment, excess protons present after charged particle reactions have ceased can continue to be converted to neutrons by (anti-)neutrino interactions, producing a neutron capture reaction flow up to A~200. This scenario, christened the νi\nu i process in a recent paper, has previously been discussed as a possibility. Here, we examine the prospects for νi\nu i process through the lens of stellar abundance patterns, bolometric lightcurves, and galactic chemical evolution models, with a particular focus on hypernovae as candidate sites. We identify specific lanthanide signatures for which the νi\nu i process can provide a credible alternative to rr/ii processes.
We covariantize calculations over the manifold of phase space, establishing Stokes' theorem for differential cross sections and providing new definitions of familiar observable properties like infrared and collinear safety. Through the introduction of explicit coordinates and a metric we show phase space is isomorphic to the product space of a simplex and a hypersphere, and we identify geometric phenomena that occur when its dimensions are large. These results have implications for fixed order subtraction schemes, machine learning in particle physics and high-multiplicity heavy ion collisions.
Traditional statistical inference on ordinal comparison data results in an overall ranking of objects, e.g., from best to worst, with each object having a unique rank. However, ranks of some objects may not be statistically distinguishable. This could happen due to insufficient data or to the true underlying object qualities being equal. Because uncertainty communication in estimates of overall rankings is notoriously difficult, we take a different approach and allow groups of objects to have equal ranks or be rank-clustered\textit{rank-clustered} in our model. Existing models related to rank-clustering are limited by their inability to handle a variety of ordinal data types, to quantify uncertainty, or by the need to pre-specify the number and size of potential rank-clusters. We solve these limitations through our proposed Bayesian Rank-Clustered Bradley-Terry-Luce\textit{Rank-Clustered Bradley-Terry-Luce} model. We accommodate rank-clustering via parameter fusion by imposing a novel spike-and-slab prior on object-specific worth parameters in Bradley-Terry-Luce family of distributions for ordinal comparisons. We demonstrate rank-clustering on simulated and real datasets in surveys, elections, and sports analytics.
Modern society generates an incredible amount of data about individuals, and releasing summary statistics about this data in a manner that provably protects individual privacy would offer a valuable resource for researchers in many fields. We present the first algorithm for analysis of variance (ANOVA) that preserves differential privacy, allowing this important statistical test to be conducted (and the results released) on databases of sensitive information. In addition to our private algorithm for the F test statistic, we show a rigorous way to compute p-values that accounts for the added noise needed to preserve privacy. Finally, we present experimental results quantifying the statistical power of this differentially private version of the test, finding that a sample of several thousand observations is frequently enough to detect variation between groups. The differentially private ANOVA algorithm is a promising approach for releasing a common test statistic that is valuable in fields in the sciences and social sciences.
Isochronous mass spectrometry has been applied in the storage ring CSRe to measure the masses of the neutron-rich 52-54^{\operatorname{52-54}}Sc and 54,56^{54,56}Ti nuclei. The new mass excess values MEME(52^{52}Sc) == 40525(65)-40525(65) keV, MEME(53^{53}Sc) == 38910(80)-38910(80) keV, and MEME(54^{54}Sc) == 34485(360)-34485(360) keV, deviate from the Atomic Mass Evaluation 2012 by 2.3σ\sigma, 2.8σ\sigma, and 1.7σ\sigma, respectively. These large deviations significantly change the systematics of the two-neutron separation energies of scandium isotopes. The empirical shell gap extracted from our new experimental results shows a significant subshell closure at N=32N = 32 in scandium, with a similar magnitude as in calcium. Moreover, we present abab initioinitio calculations using the valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group based on two- and three-nucleon interactions from chiral effective field theory. The theoretical results confirm the existence of a substantial N=32N = 32 shell gap in Sc and Ca with a decreasing trend towards lighter isotones, thus providing a consistent picture of the evolution of the N=32N = 32 magic number from the pfpf into the sdsd shell.
We present detailed instructions for constructing and operating an apparatus to produce and detect polarization-entangled photons. The source operates by type-I spontaneous parametric downconversion in a two-crystal geometry. Photons are detected in coincidence by single-photon counting modules and show strong angular and polarization correlations. We observe more than 100 entangled photon pairs per second. A test of a Bell inequality can be performed in an afternoon.
We describe CPMC-Lab, a Matlab program for the constrained-path and phaseless auxiliary-field Monte Carlo methods. These methods have allowed applications ranging from the study of strongly correlated models, such as the Hubbard model, to ab initio calculations in molecules and solids. The present package implements the full ground-state constrained-path Monte Carlo (CPMC) method in Matlab with a graphical interface, using the Hubbard model as an example. The package can perform calculations in finite supercells in any dimensions, under periodic or twist boundary conditions. Importance sampling and all other algorithmic details of a total energy calculation are included and illustrated. This open-source tool allows users to experiment with various model and run parameters and visualize the results. It provides a direct and interactive environment to learn the method and study the code with minimal overhead for setup. Furthermore, the package can be easily generalized for auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) calculations in many other models for correlated electron systems, and can serve as a template for developing a production code for AFQMC total energy calculations in real materials. Several illustrative studies are carried out in one- and two-dimensional lattices on total energy, kinetic energy, potential energy, and charge- and spin-gaps.
These are lecture notes presented at the online 2020 Hadron Collider Physics Summer School hosted by Fermilab. These are an extension of lectures presented at the 2017 and 2018 CTEQ summer schools in arXiv:1709.06195 and still introduces perturbative QCD and its application to jet substructure from a bottom-up perspective based on the approximation of QCD as a weakly-coupled, conformal field theory. With machine learning becoming an increasingly important tool of particle physics, I discuss its utility exclusively from the biased view for increasing human knowledge. A simple argument that the likelihood for quark versus gluon discrimination is infrared and collinear safe is presented as an example of this approach. End-of-lecture exercises are also provided.
We explore the task of sentiment analysis on Hinglish (code-mixed Hindi-English) tweets as participants of Task 9 of the SemEval-2020 competition, known as the SentiMix task. We had two main approaches: 1) applying transfer learning by fine-tuning pre-trained BERT models and 2) training feedforward neural networks on bag-of-words representations. During the evaluation phase of the competition, we obtained an F-score of 71.3% with our best model, which placed 4th4^{th} out of 62 entries in the official system rankings.
The performance of today's in-memory indexes is bottlenecked by the memory latency/bandwidth wall. Processing-in-memory (PIM) is an emerging approach that potentially mitigates this bottleneck, by enabling low-latency memory access whose aggregate memory bandwidth scales with the number of PIM nodes. There is an inherent tension, however, between minimizing inter-node communication and achieving load balance in PIM systems, in the presence of workload skew. This paper presents PIM-tree, an ordered index for PIM systems that achieves both low communication and high load balance, regardless of the degree of skew in the data and the queries. Our skew-resistant index is based on a novel division of labor between the multi-core host CPU and the PIM nodes, which leverages the strengths of each. We introduce push-pull search, which dynamically decides whether to push queries to a PIM-tree node (CPU -> PIM-node) or pull the node's keys back to the CPU (PIM-node -> CPU) based on workload skew. Combined with other PIM-friendly optimizations (shadow subtrees and chunked skip lists), our PIM-tree provides high-throughput, (guaranteed) low communication, and (guaranteed) high load balance, for batches of point queries, updates, and range scans. We implement the PIM-tree structure, in addition to prior proposed PIM indexes, on the latest PIM system from UPMEM, with 32 CPU cores and 2048 PIM nodes. On workloads with 500 million keys and batches of one million queries, the throughput using PIM-trees is up to 69.7x and 59.1x higher than the two best prior methods. As far as we know these are the first implementations of an ordered index on a real PIM system.
Theoretical calculations suggest the presence of low-lying excited states in 25^{25}O. Previous experimental searches by means of proton knockout on 26^{26}F produced no evidence for such excitations. We search for excited states in 25^{25}O using the ${ {}^{24}\text{O} (d,p) {}^{25}\text{O} }$ reaction. The theoretical analysis of excited states in unbound 25,27^{25,27}O is based on the configuration interaction approach that accounts for couplings to the scattering continuum. We use invariant-mass spectroscopy to measure neutron-unbound states in 25^{25}O. For the theoretical approach, we use the complex-energy Gamow Shell Model and Density Matrix Renormalization Group method with a finite-range two-body interaction optimized to the bound states and resonances of 2326^{23-26}O, assuming a core of 22^{22}O. We predict energies, decay widths, and asymptotic normalization coefficients. Our calculations in a large spdfspdf space predict several low-lying excited states in 25^{25}O of positive and negative parity, and we obtain an experimental limit on the relative cross section of a possible ${ {J}^{\pi} = {1/2}^{+} }statewithrespecttothegroundstateof state with respect to the ground-state of ^{25}$O at σ1/2+/σg.s.=0.250.25+1.0\sigma_{1/2+}/\sigma_{g.s.} = 0.25_{-0.25}^{+1.0}. We also discuss how the observation of negative parity states in 25^{25}O could guide the search for the low-lying negative parity states in 27^{27}O. Previous experiments based on the proton knockout of 26^{26}F suffered from the low cross sections for the population of excited states in 25^{25}O because of low spectroscopic factors. In this respect, neutron transfer reactions carry more promise.
Bound charge is a useful construct for calculating the electrostatic field of polarized material, and it represents a perfectly genuine accumulation of charge. But is such a material in every respect equivalent to a particular configuration of bound charge? The answer is no, and the same goes for bound current and (in the time-dependent case) polarization current.
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Previous studies have demonstrated the utility and applicability of machine learning techniques to jet physics. In this paper, we construct new observables for the discrimination of jets from different originating particles exclusively from information identified by the machine. The approach we propose is to first organize information in the jet by resolved phase space and determine the effective NN-body phase space at which discrimination power saturates. This then allows for the construction of a discrimination observable from the NN-body phase space coordinates. A general form of this observable can be expressed with numerous parameters that are chosen so that the observable maximizes the signal vs.~background likelihood. Here, we illustrate this technique applied to discrimination of HbbˉH\to b\bar b decays from massive $g\to b\bar b$ splittings. We show that for a simple parametrization, we can construct an observable that has discrimination power comparable to, or better than, widely-used observables motivated from theory considerations. For the case of jets on which modified mass-drop tagger grooming is applied, the observable that the machine learns is essentially the angle of the dominant gluon emission off of the bbˉb\bar b pair.
Observables which distinguish boosted topologies from QCD jets are playing an increasingly important role at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These observables are often used in conjunction with jet grooming algorithms, which reduce contamination from both theoretical and experimental sources. In this paper we derive factorization formulae for groomed multi-prong substructure observables, focusing in particular on the groomed D2D_2 observable, which is used to identify boosted hadronic decays of electroweak bosons at the LHC. Our factorization formulae allow systematically improvable calculations of the perturbative D2D_2 distribution and the resummation of logarithmically enhanced terms in all regions of phase space using renormalization group evolution. They include a novel factorization for the production of a soft subjet in the presence of a grooming algorithm, in which clustering effects enter directly into the hard matching. We use these factorization formulae to draw robust conclusions of experimental relevance regarding the universality of the D2D_2 distribution in both e+ee^+e^- and pppp collisions. In particular, we show that the only process dependence is carried by the relative quark vs. gluon jet fraction in the sample, no non-global logarithms from event-wide correlations are present in the distribution, hadronization corrections are controlled by the perturbative mass of the jet, and all global color correlations are completely removed by grooming, making groomed D2D_2 a theoretically clean QCD observable even in the LHC environment. We compute all ingredients to one-loop accuracy, and present numerical results at next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy for e+ee^+e^- collisions, comparing with parton shower Monte Carlo simulations. Results for pppp collisions, as relevant for phenomenology at the LHC, are presented in a companion paper.
A scalar theory of gravity extending Newtonian gravity to include field energy as its source is developed. The physical implications of the theory are probed through its spherically symmetric (source) solutions. The aim is to demonstrate rational physical model building, together with physical and experimental checks of correctness. The theory discussed here was originally considered by Einstein prior to his introduction of general relativity.
We present predictions of the distribution of groomed heavy jet mass in electron-positron collisions at the next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy matched with the resummation of large logarithms to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. Resummation at this accuracy is possible through extraction of necessary two-loop constants and three-loop anomalous dimensions from fixed-order codes.
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