Time reconstruction and performance of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter

The resolution and the linearity of time measurements made with the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter are studied with samples of data from test beam electrons, cosmic rays, and beam-produced muons. The resulting time resolution measured by lead tungstate crystals is better than 100 ps for energy deposits larger than 10 GeV. Crystal-to-crystal synchronization with a precision of 500 ps is performed using muons produced with the first LHC beams in 2008. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Performance of the CMS hadron calorimeter with cosmic ray muons and LHC beam data

The CMS Hadron Calorimeter in the barrel, endcap and forward regions is fully commissioned. Cosmic ray data were taken with and without magnetic field at the surface hall and after installation in the experimental hall, hundred meters underground. Various measurements were also performed during the few days of beam in the LHC in September 2008. Calibration parameters were extracted, and the energy response of the HCAL determined from test beam data has been checked. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Performance of CMS hadron calorimeter timing and synchronization using test beam, cosmic ray, and LHC beam data

This paper discusses the design and performance of the time measurement technique and of the synchronization systems of the CMS hadron calorimeter. Time measurement performance results are presented from test beam data taken in the years 2004 and 2006. For hadronic showers of energy greater than 100 GeV, the timing resolution is measured to be about 1.2 ns. Time synchronization and out-of-time background rejection results are presented from the Cosmic Run At Four Tesla and LHC beam runs taken in the Autumn of 2008. The inter-channel synchronization is measured to be within 2 ns. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Identification and filtering of uncharacteristic noise in the CMS hadron calorimeter

Commissioning studies of the CMS hadron calorimeter have identified sporadic uncharacteristic noise and a small number of malfunctioning calorimeter channels. Algorithms have been developed to identify and address these problems in the data. The methods have been tested on cosmic ray muon data, calorimeter noise data, and single beam data collected with CMS in 2008. The noise rejection algorithms can be applied to LHC collision data at the trigger level or in the offline analysis. The application of the algorithms at the trigger level is shown to remove 90% of noise events with fake missing transverse energy above 100 GeV, which is sufficient for the CMS physics trigger operation. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Performance of the CMS drift tube chambers with cosmic rays

Studies of the performance of the CMS drift tube barrel muon system are described, with results based on data collected during the CMS Cosmic Run at Four Tesla. For most of these data, the solenoidal magnet was operated with a central field of 3.8 T. The analysis of data from 246 out of a total of 250 chambers indicates a very good muon reconstruction capability, with a coordinate resolution for a single hit of about 260 μm, and a nearly 100% efficiency for the drift tube cells. The resolution of the track direction measured in the bending plane is about 1.8 mrad, and the efficiency to reconstruct a segment in a single chamber is higher than 99%. The CMS simulation of cosmic rays reproduces well the performance of the barrel muon detector. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Performance study of the CMS barrel resistive plate chambers with cosmic rays

In October and November 2008, the CMS collaboration conducted a programme of cosmic ray data taking, which has recorded about 270 million events. The Resistive Plate Chamber system, which is part of the CMS muon detection system, was successfully operated in the full barrel. More than 98% of the channels were operational during the exercise with typical detection efficiency of 90%. In this paper, the performance of the detector during these dedicated runs is reported. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Performance of the CMS cathode strip chambers with cosmic rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47μm to 243μm. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Aligning the CMS muon chambers with the muon alignment system during an extended cosmic ray run

The alignment system for the muon spectrometer of the CMS detector comprises three independent subsystems of optical and analog position sensors. It aligns muon chambers with respect to each other and to the central silicon tracker. System commissioning at full magnetic field began in 2008 during an extended cosmic ray run. The system succeeded in tracking muon detector movements of up to 18 mm and rotations of several milliradians under magnetic forces. Depending on coordinate and subsystem, the system achieved chamber alignment precisions of 140-350 μm and 30-200 μrad, close to the precision requirements of the experiment. Systematic errors on absolute positions are estimated to be 340-590 μm based on comparisons with independent photogrammetry measurements. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Precise mapping of the magnetic field in the CMS barrel yoke using cosmic rays

The CMS detector is designed around a large 4 T superconducting solenoid, enclosed in a 12 000-tonne steel return yoke. A detailed map of the magnetic field is required for the accurate simulation and reconstruction of physics events in the CMS detector, not only in the inner tracking region inside the solenoid but also in the large and complex structure of the steel yoke, which is instrumented with muon chambers. Using a large sample of cosmic muon events collected by CMS in 2008, the field in the steel of the barrel yoke has been determined with a precision of 3 to 8% depending on the location. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in cosmic-ray events

The performance of muon reconstruction in CMS is evaluated using a large data sample of cosmic-ray muons recorded in 2008. Efficiencies of various high-level trigger, identification, and reconstruction algorithms have been measured for a broad range of muon momenta, and were found to be in good agreement with expectations from Monte Carlo simulation. The relative momentum resolution for muons crossing the barrel part of the detector is better than 1% at 10 GeV/c and is about 8% at 500 GeV/c, the latter being only a factor of two worse than expected with ideal alignment conditions. Muon charge misassignment ranges from less than 0.01% at 10GeV/c to about 1% at 500 GeV/c. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.

First measurement of the underlying event activity at the LHC with √ = 0.9 TeV

A measurement of the underlying activity in scattering processes with pT scale in the GeV region is performed in proton-proton collisions at √ = 0.9 TeV, using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Charged particle production is studied with reference to the direction of a leading object, either a charged particle or a set of charged particles forming a jet. Predictions of several QCD-inspired models as implemented in PYTHIA are compared, after full detector simulation, to the data. The models generally predict too little production of charged particles with pseudorapidity {pipe}η{pipe} < 2, pT > 0.5 GeV/c, and azimuthal direction transverse to that of the leading object. © 2010 CERN for benefit of the CMS collaboration.

Prompt and non-prompt J/ψ production in pp collisions at √s =7 TeV

The production of J/ψ mesons is studied in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The measurement is based on a dimuon sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 314 nb-1. The J/ψ differential cross section is determined, as a function of the J/ψ transverse momentum, in three rapidity ranges. A fit to the decay length distribution is used to separate the prompt from the non-prompt (b hadron to J/ψ) component. Integrated over J/ψ transverse momentum from 6.5 to 30 GeV/c and over rapidity in the range {pipe}y{pipe} < 2.4, the measured cross sections, times the dimuon decay branching fraction, are 70.9 ± 2.1(stat.) ± 3.0(syst.) ± 7.8(luminosity) nb for prompt J/ψ mesons assuming unpolarized production and 26.0 ± 1.4(stat.) ± 1.6(syst.) ± 2.9(luminosity) nb for J/ψ mesons from b-hadron decays. © CERN for the benefit of the CMS collaboration 2011.

Dimensional correlates of poor insight in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Background: Cross-sectional studies have associated poor insight in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with increased OCD symptom severity, earlier age of onset, comorbid depression, and treatment response. The goal of this current study was to examine the relationship between dimensions of OCD symptomatology and insight in a large clinical cohort of Brazilian patients with OCD. We hypothesized that poor insight would be associated with total symptom severity as well as with hoarding symptoms severity, specifically. Methods: 824 outpatients underwent a detailed clinical assessment for OCD, including the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), the Dimensional Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (DY-BOCS), the Brown Assessment of Beliefs Scale (BABS), a socio-demographic questionnaire, and the Structured Clinical Interview for axis I DSM-IV disorders (SCID-P). Tobit regression models were used to examine the association between level of insight and clinical variables of interest. Results: Increased severity of current and worst-ever hoarding symptoms and higher rate of unemployment were associated with poor insight in OCD after controlling for current OCD severity, age and gender. Poor insight was also correlated with increased severity of current OCD symptoms. Conclusion: Hoarding and overall OCD severity were significantly but weakly associated with level of insight in OCD patients. Further studies should examine insight as a moderator and mediator of treatment response in OCD in both behavioral therapy and pharmacological trials. Behavioral techniques aimed at enhancing insight may be potentially beneficial in OCD, especially among patients with hoarding. © 2011.

GEANT4 tuning for pCT development

Proton beams in medical applications deal with relatively thick targets like the human head or trunk. Thus, the fidelity of proton computed tomography (pCT) simulations as a tool for proton therapy planning depends in the general case on the accuracy of results obtained for the proton interaction with thick absorbers. GEANT4 simulations of proton energy spectra after passing thick absorbers do not agree well with existing experimental data, as showed previously. Moreover, the spectra simulated for the Bethe-Bloch domain showed an unexpected sensitivity to the choice of low-energy electromagnetic models during the code execution. These observations were done with the GEANT4 version 8.2 during our simulations for pCT. This work describes in more details the simulations of the proton passage through aluminum absorbers with varied thickness. The simulations were done by modifying only the geometry in the Hadrontherapy Example, and for all available choices of the Electromagnetic Physics Models. As the most probable reasons for these effects is some specific feature in the code, or some specific implicit parameters in the GEANT4 manual, we continued our study with version 9.2 of the code. Some improvements in comparison with our previous results were obtained. The simulations were performed considering further applications for pCT development. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

Long-range and short-range dihadron angular correlations in central PbPb collisions at psNN = 2:76 TeV

First measurements of dihadron correlations for charged particles are presented for central PbPb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76TeV over a broad range in relative pseudorapidity (Δν) and the full range of relative azimuthal angle (Δø). The data were collected with the CMS detector, at the LHC. A broadening of the away-side (Δø y≈ π) azimuthal correlation is observed at all Δν, as compared to the measurements in pp collisions. Furthermore, long-range dihadron correlations in Δν are observed for particles with similar ø values. This phenomenon, also known as the \ridge, persists up to at least jΔνj = 4. For particles with transverse momenta (pT) of 2-4 GeV/c, the ridge is found to be most prominent when these particles are correlated with particles of pT = 2-6 GeV/c, and to be much reduced when paired with particles of pT = 10-12 GeV/c. Copyright CERN.