CMS Data Week Milestones

Fermilab: 18-22 July 2011

Work as a team to meet these milestones. The Level-3 project managers will visit your group to participate in brief milestone seminars after your team has completed the milestones in section B.

A. Building Blocks
At the formation of the team, each member can:

1. Use a spreadsheet or other appropriate tool to:
   • perform simple arithmetic on columns of numbers.
   • make meaningful data plots
   • create and interpret histograms
2. Make use of relativistic units that are common in particle physics.
3. Recognize that charge, energy and momentum are conserved in two-body decays both at rest and moving in the lab frame.

B. Foundations for Data Analysis
Completing these milestones gains the team access to the raw data. Each team member can:

1. Describe the particle your team is investigating, how it is produced and how it might decay.
2. Explain what is measured in the trackers and calorimetry in CMS. Describe how these components measure these properties.
3. Describe the effect of a magnetic field on the trajectory of a charged particle.
4. Present and fully describe five screenshots of 3-D events during the milestone seminar.
5. Describe how to determine the mass of a particle given its energy and momentum.
6. Demonstrate how to determine the invariant mass of a moving particle by measuring its observable decay products.
7. Create a plot of provided data.
8. Describe the information in each column of your data spreadsheets.

C. Data Analysis
Completing these milestones finishes the project.

1. Use the data tables to calculate the invariant mass of any particle.
2. Distinguish and enhance signal by removing background and applying cuts.
3. Fully describe both signal and background.
4. Create a final mass plot.
5. State the "goodness" of the results.
6. Fully describe the parent particle(s) in your data.
7. Define and investigate any additional milestones that the group finds necessary.
8. Present your findings at the Friday all-hands conference.