Minutes July2014 to Dec2014

12/17/2014

Present: Min, JP, Jie, Jixie, Pengjia, Chao, Melissa
By Phone: Vince, Toby, Ryan, Ellie

Feature Presentations:

• Melissa
  • Gave an update on packing fraction analysis. Previously, in her fitting routine to determine the level of "contamination" in the
    elastic peak from the 2nd peak, she used a single Gaussian to fit the 2nd peak. For this time, she showed the updated fit to the
    2nd peak, which includes the contributions from the Nitrogen quasi-elastic peak, the helium quasi-elastic peak, and the hydrogen
    elastic peak. To understand the relative contributions from the different materials, she used the QFS model to help constrain the fit.
    JP commented that the fermi momentum used for nitrogen (set to 240 MeV) may be slightly too large. Since the nitrogen parameters
    (specifically the nucleon separation energy) are not as well constrained as the helium, she looked at the effect of adjusting these
    parameters on the overal packing fraction. The effect is not large; this variation was included as part of the uncertainty. Next she will
    work on extracting the packing fraction for different materials/settings, but first she will focus more on understanding the discrepancy
    in the yields. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Min
  • Gave an update on her acceptance study. To do the forward transport, she uses a forward transport function to go from the target
    plane to the virtual plane, then applies a correction, then uses a forward transport function to go from the virtual plane to the focal plane.
    A single function is used to do the transport backward from the focal plane to the target plane. This has been incorporated into the
    g2psim package; the value for δ used in g2psim must be consistent with the value for δ used in the fits. At the focal plane,
    she used the focal plane, dp and beam cuts from the data in the simulation. For the reverse transport to the target plane, she used the
    exact same trajectories from the data to calculate x, y, θ, φ and δ and do the fit. Previously, she had tried using SNAKE to
    generate a bunch of trajectories in the range of the acceptance to use for the fits, but found a discrepancy between the data and simulation
    results. Next she will update the fits and compare the value of δ using the updated g2psim energy loss model. She will also look at
    other dp settings and do a comparison of target y. More details can be seen in her slides here.

General Discussion:

• As discussed at the last collaboration meeting, we will have an "unofficial" collaboration meeting on January 7th, during the normal meeting
  time, in order to re-evaluate what progress has been made. All students should plan to give a short update (~5 minutes) on the status of their
  analysis projects and a plan for the future.

12/10/2014

Present: Chao, Pengjia, Yunxiu Ye, Jie, Min, JP, Jixie
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Vince

Feature Presentations:

• Toby
  • Gave an update of the yield check for the 3.3 GeV energy setting. For 2.490 GeV momentum setting, the beam position looks stable
    and different cuts on raster pattern does not suppress the yield spread. Pengjia suggests that the bpm available cut should be applied
    to cut off the beam trips. He also checked the 2.2 GeV energy setting with 5.0 T transverse target field. In this case, the raster pattern
    indicates some beam scraping in the runs with higher rate for 1.600 GeV setting. The other momentum settings looks reasonable.
    Currently he is checking the 2.2 GeV, 5.0T longitudinal setting and may give a report next time. More details can be seen in his slides here.
• Jie
  • Gave an update on trying to match the dp distribution between simulation and data. Compare to last time, he enlarged the smearing
    of the focus plane variables by a factor of 10. The elastic peak of empty target (pure Helium) is still narrower than the data if there is no
    cut on beam position. If the raster is cut with in a 2 mm radius circle, the width of the elastic peak agrees with the data but the central
    value has a deviation. JP suggests him to use the most recent HRS transport functions from Min. More details can be found in his slides
    here.

General Discussion:

• Toby need help form other students to check the yields. He will send an email about remaining tasks.

12/3/2014

Present: Chao, Pengjia, Yunxiu Ye, Jie, Min, JP, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Vince, Xiaochao

Feature Presentations:

• Pengjia
  • Looked at the change in the asymmetry for different acceptance cuts. He compared the asymmetry without any acceptance cuts, and with
    cuts applied on dp and φ. He also tried combining the events into 3 W-bins, to improve the statistics in each bin. JP pointed out that, in
    doing this, you lose information on the structure. He showed the asymmetry comparison for all of the energy settings, using LHRS data. For
    the 2.5T settings, the uncertainty is larger due to the low polarization. Once the RHRS optics is ready, the right arm runs can also be included
    to improve statistics.
  • He also calculated the ungated total charge for each run and added it to the mysql database. He calculated the charge by taking the average
    between the upstream and downstream sis3800, counting the charge between the first and last event. He checked the calculation using the
    sis3801 and happex bcm values. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Min
  • Gave an update on focal plane matching. A transport function is used to go from the target plane to the virtual plane, where a correction is
    applied, and then a transport function is used to go from the virtual plane to the focal plane. This has been incorporated this into the g2psim
    transport package. She showed a comparison between simulation and data of x vs y and θ vs φ. Overall the result looks good. In the θ vs
    φ plot, there seems to be some strange structure in the last row of sieve holes. This only appears in the simulation results, so it's likely
    due to the fitting function used in the simulation. She is also working on updating the fit of the reverse functions; the updated transport
    functions alter the reverse functions. Once the energy loss model is updated in the g2psim package, she will update the fits. More details
    can be seen in her slides here.

• Chao
  • He has uploaded a draft of a technote on the helicity decoder here. He would appreciate any feedback.
  • Also gave an update on optics calibration for the RHRS. Previously, he showed that one of sieve holes had some strange structure in the dp
    distribution. He compared the distribution from this sieve hole (7.6) to neighboring sieve holes, but the odd structure in the dp distribution
    seems to be unique to this hole, suggesting that the beam was hitting some additional material. Since this issue was also seen in the LHRS
    optics data, it's possible that there was something in the target chamber (symmetric on both sides) that is in the beam trajectory. More details
    can be seen in his slides here.

General Discussion:

• Pengjia will give the update for g2p at the Hall A collaboration meeting next week. There will be a dry run on Friday, at 2pm in room F226.

11/19/2014

Present: Chao, Pengjia, Jie, Min, JP, Kalyan, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl

Feature Presentations:

• Toby
  • Gave a summary of yield drifts for the 3.3 GeV energy setting, including a breakdown for different momentum settings. The two worst
    settings are 2.490 GeV/c (~15% spread) and 2.342 GeV/c (~8% spread), both for material 19. He showed a thorough breakdown of the
    quantities he checked for the 2.490 GeV/c momentum setting, including beam energy, septum current, scattering angle, beam current and
    raster pattern. There does seem to be some drift in the beam energy, which is due to the fact that there was no energy lock during this time
    (since only Hall A was running). Ryan commented that, in testing the effect of beam energy using the Bosted model, a change in the beam
    energy of 10 MeV only changes the XS by ~0.5%. For next time, Toby will check the scalers and beam position as a possible reason for the
    drift in yields. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Melissa
  • Summarized the momentum settings that have a discrepancy in the yields for the 2.2 GeV, 2.5T energy setting. For many settings, the
    change in yield seems correlated to a change in beam position, specifically the x-position. The change in beam position often occurs when
    there is a gap in time when the runs were taken. She will work with Jie to see whether the shift in beam position/yields matches with the
    expectation from simulation. We may need to include an acceptance correction based on the change in beam position. She also showed the
    yields for packing fraction runs taken in this energy setting for material 7. Between the first run (3503) and the other 3 runs (3574, 3727,
    3864), a Moller measurement was taken, and afterwards the rate in the 3rd arm suggested the beam was scraping something. The raster size
    was changed from 2cm to 1.8cm to fix this problem. She will try comparing events at the edge of the raster to the center of the raster between
    these 4 runs to see if it corrects the problem. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Pengjia
  • Gave an update on looking at the effect of different acceptance cuts on the asymmetry. He looked at the 2.2 GeV, 5T longitudinal setting,
    and combined runs from material 17 and 18 to improve statistics. He varied the cuts on the reconstructed variables in the target plane; dp
    φ and θ. He also showed an example of the 3D acceptance cut relationship. The asymmetry seems to be sensitive to the cut on φ, but not
    as sensitive to the cut on θ. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave an update on trying to match the dp distribution between simulation and data. Last time he showed that the elastic peak for and empty
    run (only helium) is much narrower than the data. He have a breakdown of the values used for smearing the elastic peak. The beam energy
    resolution is probably alright when the energy lock is on, but might be larger for runs where the lock was not on. The VDC resolution is probably
    actually worse than what he is currently using. He also included the HRS resolution, which hadn't been included previously. Including the HRS
    resolution widens the peak, resulting in a better match with the data for an optics run on carbon without liquid helium (including all the sieve
    holes). However, for the same run, but only the center sieve hole, the simulated peak is actually wider than the data. Also, the comparison for
    the empty run still results in a simulation result that is much narrower than the data. He will continue to work on this problem, and will update
    the g2psim package with the newest version of the energy loss model More details can be seen in his slides here.

General Discussion:

• There will be no meeting next week, we will meet again on December 3rd.

11/12/2014

Present: Chao, Kalyan, Jie, Pengjia, Min, JP, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Vince, Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Moshe

General Discussion:

• The main goal of this meeting was to identify each students approximate timeline for graduation, and any specific requirements for their
  thesis from their university. A brief summary is listed below, more details can be seen in the slides listed in the agenda here:
  • Melissa: Spring 2015
  • Ryan: Spring 2016-Fall 2016
  • Chao: August 2015
  • Toby: Spring 2016
  • Jie: Summer 2016
  • Min: May 2015
  • Pengjia: May 2015

• For Friday's meeting, each student should also have a detailed short and long term plan for completing analysis goals before their
  anticipated graduation date. If known, plans for after graduation should also be included.

• Future paper topics were also discussed, possibilities include:
  • Asymmetries
  • g2
  • Moments of g2 (BC sum rule, polarizabilities)
  • hyperfine splitting

11/05/2014

Present: Jixie, Jie, Min, Chao, Pengjia, JP, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Moshe

Feature Presentations:

• Melissa
  • Working on updating the fitting routine used in her packing fraction analysis. Currently, she is estimating the quasi-elastic peak
    as a single gaussian, but really it contains contributions from multiple sources (nitrogen quasi-elastic, helium quasi-elastic and hydrogen
    elastic). To better understand the different contributions, she is using the QFS model to determine the relative contributions to the peak.
    She started with an empty dilution run to determine the parameters for helium, then the results to model carbon dilution run. The carbon
    parameters could then be used to estimate the nitrogen parameters in modeling a production (ammonia) run. For next time, she will try
    subtracting the elastic tail from the data, to better match the model with data. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Chao
  • Gave an update on the status of optics calibrations. He tested the optics portion of the g2psim package for the RHRS, including ray
    tracing and HRS transport functions; it seems to be working well. A small problem was found in the RHRS calibration; for one sieve hole,
    the dp spectrum has additional structure, as if events were hitting something. This structure was only seen in one hole, and it wasn't seen
    in the straight through data. JP suggested examining nearby holes to look for a gradual change in the dp distribution. He also showed the
    results of using an event by event simulation to calculate the effective theta and phi angles. There appears to be some "smearing" in the
    distribution of BPM X vs Y; JP suggested cutting out these smeared events for determining the effective theta and phi angles. He will
    working on calibrations for the remaining energy settings and septum settings. More details can be see in his slides here.

• Pengjia
  • Looking at the effect of different acceptance cuts on the asymmetry. He is looking at asymmetries for the 2.2 GeV, 5T setting for material
    17. He started by fixing dp, y and φ and varying the cut on θ. He then followed the same procedure, but varying the cut on dp, y and φ.
    Karl suggested that, since the error bars are so large, it might be useful to use larger W bins to get getter statistics. Pengjia will try this for
    next time. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Ryan
  • Uploaded a draft of a technote on radiative corrections here. He would appreciate any comments or feedback.

General Discussion:

• We will have a collaboration next Friday (Nov. 14th), the registration link and program can be found here.
• Students will prepare a 15/20 minute summary of analysis progress and future plans.
• For next week's analysis meeting, each student should come prepared with expected dates/time constraints for graduation along with any
  specific requirements from their university.

10/29/2014

Present: Jie, Chao, Pengjia, Min, Kalyan, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan

Feature Presentations:

• Min
  • Gave an update on focal plane matching. The focal plane data and simulation results at the target are matched using a fit at the "virtual
    plane". She showed a comparison of simulation and data for the virtual plane fit, and for the focal plane projection. Overall, the results
    look good! For now she has done a visual matching, but for next time she will include a quantitative comparison of the results. She will
    continue with this acceptance study for next time. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave an update on the energy loss model being used in the g2psim package. Last time, he showed a comparison of different ionization
    models for the straight thru case with a carbon target (no liquid helium) and found agreement between simulation and data. This time, he
    checked the ionization model with different materials and compared the results with data. He compared the fluctuation model with the
    (new) Landau function for both a layer of NH3 and a layer of LHe, and found consistency between the models for both materials. However,
    in the comparison with data, he found that the width of the elastic peak in the simulation is much narrower than in the data. For next time,
    he will provide a detailed list of what is included in the simulation. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Toby
  • Gave an update on dilution analysis. For the 3.3 GeV energy setting, he has updated his results to include bin averaging (to account for
    overlapping acceptance), which is weighted by statistical uncertainty. He also averaged over all the production runs at each momentum
    setting, and included the systematic uncertainty from the nitrogen model. He moved on the to 2.2 GeV, 5T transverse setting and looked at
    the discrepancy in the yields for some kinematic settings. He found that using an estimated total charge, as opposed to the helicity gated
    total charge which is currently listed in the mysql database, solved the disagreement in the yields. He will continue to look in this problem.
    More details can be found in his slides here.

10/22/2014

Present: Chao, Pengjia, Min, Moshe
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie

Feature Presentations:

• Pengjia
  • Gave an update on studying the effect of different acceptance cuts on the physics asymmetry. Target plane variables (x, theta, y, phi)
    calculated by most recent optics package are chosen to apply cuts instead of the focus plane variables. An overall dilution factor 0.15
    is applied to all runs instead of Toby's calculation. The physics asymmetries of 2.254 GeV longitudinal setting has been calculated
    with different acceptance cuts. The result can be found in the elog entry https://hallaweb.jlab.org/dvcslog/g2p/184. More details
    can be seen in his slides here.

• Chao
  • Gave an update on optics calibration of right arm. The same method to calibrate target y variable of LHRS is applied to RHRS. The
    sieve holes for upstream aluminum window can not be distinguished very well in some dp scan runs so the y calibration result are a
    bit worse than LHRS. The results after the second iteration looks pretty good. The longitudinal field setting of RHRS only has one
    optics run. Compare to LHRS, RHRS is more influenced by the broken septum but it seems still to be correctable. The optics calibration
    with target field requires some input from simulation package. He is currently testing the simulation with right arm and the aluminum
    window target. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Ryan
  • Gave an update on the study of Small Angle GDH nitrogen cross sections. Last time he showed a compare between Bosted model and
    data which does not agree well at the quasi-elastic peak possibly caused by the 2 MeV binning. He rerun the analysis with a 10 MeV
    binning in nu. He also made a change of handling of punch-through in elastic tail to make it consistent. After tuning, the overall scale
    factors are with in +/-5%. He is curretly working on dealing with the jumps in the data. More details can be seen in his slides here.

10/15/2014

Present: Chao, Jie, Pengjia, Min, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie

Feature Presentations:

• Min
  • Gave an update on focal plane matching. The goal is to match focal plane data to simulation at the virtual plane. Previously, she
    was doing the fit at the virtual plane using (x,θ,y,φ), this time the fit was done using (δ,θ,y,φ). Since δ doesn't change due to the
    magnetic field, only θ, y and φ need to be fit. She showed the comparison between data and simulation without the fit and with up
    to a 3rd order fit; the results match very well after the fit is applied. Next she will work on projecting onto the focal plane to make
    the simulation match the data. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave more details on his update to the energy loss model. Previously, he showed a comparison of data with simulation, including
    only the energy loss due to ionization in the simulation, and found that the simulation result was wider than the data. The ionization
    model used in SAMC is a Landau distribution with the most probable value at 0 and a FWHM at 4ε. He updated the model to have
    a most probably value of -0.22278 and a FWHM of ε. He compared both landau distributions to a fluctuation model, and found that
    the updated Landau model (with FWHM=ε) matched much better than the previous model (with FWHM=4ε). He also showed a
    comparison of data from a carbon run without helium with simulation results including the complete energy loss model (ionization,
    internal and external Bremsstrahlung), which match reasonably well. Next he will work on comparing data with simulation for other
    target types. More details can be seen in his slides here.

10/8/2014

Present: JP, Chao, Jie, Pengjia, Min, Kalyan, Melissa
By Phone: Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Vince

Feature Presentations:

• Melissa
  • Gave an update on packing fraction analysis. In order to combine yields from dummy and production runs, it is necessary to scale
    the radiation lengths to match. The yields are generated using two different radiation thicknesses; one using the length of helium in
    the dummy run, and the length of helium in the production cell. The ratio of these results gives the factor used to scale the radiation
    length of the dummy run to match the radiation length of the production run. The scaling factor from using this method is close to 1.
    Instead of using just the radiation length of helium in the production, the contributions from all materials should be considered, which
    should make the correction larger. She is also planning to update her fitting routine to determine the contamination to the elastic peak.
    Currently, the quasi-elastic peak is fit with a single gaussian, but ideally the fit should account for the helium quasi-elastic, nitrogen
    quasi-elastic, and hydrogen elastic peaks. JP also suggested checking for temperature fluctuations in the target nose, since at these low
    temperatures, small fluctuations could have a large effect on the density of the helium. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Ryan
  • Gave an update on his study of the Small Angle GDH nitrogen cross sections. Showed an overview of his method and a summary of the
    saGDH data available. We won't be able to get a ratio of nitrogen/carbon, because the only available carbon data has difference acceptance
    cuts than the nitrogen data. He showed an example of unfolding the data for 2.1GeV at 6 degrees, using the Bosted model for the lowest
    energy spectrum in the unfolding. Karl suggested checking the effect of changing the central energy of the model. To get an experimental,
    unfolded cross section, the difference between the unfolded and radiated interpolated spectrum is applied to the saGDH data. He is using the
    difference method, as opposed to the ratio method, because the cross section gets close to zero at some points. He also discussed his method
    of error propagation. Based on conversations with Vince, he starts with a 6% systematic, and combines this with contributions from the elastic
    tail subtraction and inelastic unfolding. The raw statistical error is scaled using the ratio of the unfolded and inelastic radiated cross sections.
    To tune the Bosted model, he is trying to find one set of parameters that describe the saGDH data. JP pointed out that there is a visible difference
    between the model and data at the quasi-elastic peak. It's possible the 2MeV binning is too fine; Ryan will look at the 10 MeV bin data to see if
    it smooths out the peak. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Pengjia
  • Is working on studying the effect of different acceptance cuts on the physics asymmetry. For each variable (x, y, theta, phi), he split the
    distribution into several regions and compared the asymmetry in each region. JP suggested splitting each variable into equal regions statistically
    instead of equal regions in size. For now, the dilution factor can be left out, and can be applied later when dilution factor analysis is complete.
    His slides can be seen here.

• Chao
  • Gave an update on optics analysis, specifically the y calibration using the target chamber upstream window. Last time he showed a first
    iteration of the calibration using events from only one large hole in the sieve slit. For the second iteration, he included any possible events from
    the target and the aluminum window. In addition, he added a focal plane cut to make it easier to distinguish between the sieve holes. The results
    from the second iteration look pretty good, so for the LHRS calibrations he will stop here for now. The RHRS straight through calibration (with good
    septum) is completed, so he will start on the longitudinal field setting for the RHRS. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave a quick update on the energy loss model for g2psim. The main update is that the Landau distribution used for the ionization model should
    be Landau(x,ε) instead of Landau(x,4ε). He will give more details next week. His slides can be seen here.

General Discussion:

• A room has been booked for the collaboration meeting on November 14th. Kalyan will set up a formal registration for the meeting.

10/1/2014

Present: JP, Chao, Jie, Pengjia, Min, Kalyan, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Moshe, Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl

Feature Presentations:

• Toby
  • Gave an update on dilution analysis. His current method involves building the total background yield from dilution runs, which are scaled
    appropriately to match the radiation lengths between runs. To determine the overall systematic uncertainty, contributions come from the
    packing fraction and the scaling factor gamma, which is the radiation length/nucleon scaling factor for scaling carbon dilution runs to
    nitrogen. The scaling parameters alpha and beta, which are determined using simulation with the Bosted model, may also contribute to the
    overall systematic. The results for the dilution factor (for the 3.3 GeV setting) seem reasonable but have a large uncertainty currently. He
    also described a possible new method, which has been used previously for the RSS and SANE experiments. In this method, the yields are
    determined from simulation, where the packing fraction value is an input. In this method, some of the systematics will cancel out in the
    ratio used to determine the dilution factor. The downside to this method is that it requires the ratio of the simulation/data to be
    kinematically independent. JP suggested trying to improve this method to rely less on the model. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Min
  • Gave an update on matching focal plane data in SNAKE. Her goal is to match the simulation results and focal plane data at the "virtual
    plane", which is located at the entrance of Q1. This location is chosen so that changes can be applied in the septum region, not at the HRS.
    She showed the comparison of simulation with data for each sieve hole before and after applying the first order fit. There was much discussion
    on how to do the fit; Jixie suggested fixing the parameters a2/b2 to begin with, then tune them during the second iteration and JP suggested
    fitting the offset first. There was also some discussion on how to determine the chi-squared value, specifically whether chi-sqared can be
    minimized in y and phi at the same time, or whether they should be minimized separately. Jixie and Min will discuss this more offline. More
    details can be seen in her slides here.

General Discussion:

• Based on the results of the poll, November 14th is the best day for a collaboration meeting. Each student will give a summary of analysis
  

progress (~30 minutes) and there will be time for discussion of thesis topics.

9/24/2014

Present: JP, Chao, Jie, Pengjia, Min, Kalyan, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone:Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl

Feature Presentations:

• Pengjia
  • Gave a summary of BPM calibrations for entire experimental run. The best situation for calibrations is for data taken between May 3-7, which
    includes some optics and production data. For runs taken during this time period, the average beam position and angle is 1mm and 1.1 mrad,
    respectively. The biggest uncertainties are seen in data taken between March 29-31 and April 26-30. During March 29-30, both production and
    optics data was taken, and the calibration became worse due to large uncertainty in the pedestal. During April 26-30, only production data was
    taken and the calibration of BPM B had to be done using BPM A and harp data. JP asked how reliable these uncertainties are; Chao said that optics
    data can be used to try to reconstruct the beam position, as a cross check, but he is not sure of the uncertainty of this method. The run-by-run
    uncertainties are available in the mysql database. For next time, he will compile a table of contributions to the systematic uncertainty. More details
    can be seen in his slides here.

• Ryan
  • Showed a systematic error study for inelastic radiative corrections. He wanted to do a sanity check of his method to unfold/radiatively correct the
    nitrogen data. He started with the Bosted model, which he radiated using SAGDH settings. He then unfolded/radiatively corrected this model, and
    used the result to compare to the original Bosted model. In radiating the model, he didn't average over the scattering angle at all, and used 3MeV as
    the value for Delta-E. To radiatively correct this model, it is not possible to directly unfold the equation to get an experimental Born XS, instead he
    must use an iterative procedure. He showed a comparison of the Bosted model, the radiated model, and the unfolded model. The ratio of the Bosted
    model compared with the radiated-then-unfolded model agree at low nu to ~1-3%. At higher nu the disagreement becomes larger, but it is never
    more than 5%. This is good evidence that his method works, so going forward he will start to unfold the SAGDH data and see if he can tune the Bosted
    model to match the SAGDH data set. More details can be seen in his slides here.

General Discussion:

• Pengjia will be at JLab for 3 months. We should have another discussion soon about analysis tasks for students as some projects start to finish up.
• Will we try to have a collaboration meeting in mid November. Kalyan has set up a Doodle Poll to select a date - please respond!

9/17/2014

Present: JP, Kalyan, Min, Jie, Chao, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone:Toby, Ryan

Feature Presentations:

• Melissa
  • Gave an update on packing fraction analysis. As was suggested previously, the differing radiation lengths between the dummy and production runs
    needed to be accounted for. Following the method previously described by Toby, the he4 cross section was radiated using two different radiation
    thicknesses, one that matched the empty run and one that matched the production run. The ratio of these two cross sections is then used to scale the
    yield from the dummy run. The scaling factor was larger than expected, most likely due to the fact that the "radcor" program was used to radiate the
    he4 cross section, and is not meant for elastic radiative corrections. Using this scaling factor, the value of the packing fraction is 0.432. The uncertainty
    is still large (0.045). This includes a contribution from the difference between the sum and fitting method used to get the area of the peaks. Since the fit
    is only used to determine the level of contamination, JP suggested that it shouldn't be included directly in the uncertainty. He also suggested that, in the
    fit of the production run, using one gaussian peak to fit the the second peak may not be a good approximation, since the second peak contains
    contributions contributions from hydrogen elastic, nitrogen quasi-elastic and helium quai-elastic. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave an update on the energy loss model used in g2psim. He showed several comparisons of simulation results with data using different ionization
    models. He showed a simulation results using the ionization model from geant4 combined with the bremsstrahlung model from g2psim, compared to
    results using the SAMC energy loss model. There is a shift between the two results, which may result from using the mean value vs the most probable
    value of the distribution. Comparing the simulation results with data, the combination of the SAMC ionization model with the SAMC bremsstrahlung
    model seems to match best with the data. One update from last time, instead of using data from all sieve holes, he cut on just the center sieve hole. He
    showed the step-by-step energy loss process (from SAMC), and tried switching the order to see the effect on the results. JP pointed out that the 3
    middle steps actually happen simultaneously, so breaking them into steps is an approximation. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Chao
  • Gave an optics status update, specifically a revision of the y-target calibration. Using the beam position scan isn't ideal; since we only took data at
    dp=0%, the calibration will only work for a small dp range. Jixie results (using geant4) suggest that the upstream window of the target chamber has
    some acceptance by the Q1 entrance. Since they have seen something upstream in the optics data, he will try to use this data to do the y-target
    calibration. This result will be more reliable, as it will take all dp settings into account. He identified the data from the window, and used a vertex cut
    to select them. In each setting, one hole was selected to do the calibration. The calibration result was compared to the known location of the sieve
    hole. There was good agreement, which suggests the method is working. He is currently on figuring out how to check that the data is actually
    coming from the upstream window. More details can be seen in his slides here.

9/10/2014

Present: Chao, JP, Jie, Jixie, Kalyan, Melissa
By Phone: Pengjia, Toby, Ryan, Ellie

Feature Presentations:

• Ryan
  • Gave an update on using SAMC to compare the Bosted model to SAGDH nitrogen cross sections. SAMC can include both energy loss and inelastic
    radiative corrections, which makes it the best comparison to the SAGDH cross sections. However, the radiative corrections take a long time to run,
    so it may not be worthwhile. To test the results of SAMC, he threw 10M events for each momentum setting, but did not turn on energy loss. He
    compared this to his previous method of averaging the Bosted model result over the scattering angle. The ratio of the two methods is close to 1,
    suggesting that both methods give similar results. He also did the same comparison, but first radiating SAMC/angle averaged Bosted model, (see
    slide for equations). There was some discussion on whether this is the proper method to apply these corrections, but it seems that Ryan's method is
    consistent with what was done previously. Of the two methods, Ryan concluded that the SAMC method isn't any better than his previous method, so
    it is not worth the extra time it takes to run. JP suggested checking how much the scattering angle varies over the length of the target; if it is linear,
    than using the average is a good approximation, but this may not be the case. Since there is no SAGDH carbon data that matches our kinematics (that
    has been analyzed), we won't be able to do a comparison of nitrogen/carbon. Ryan plans to nail down the Bosted model so that it can be used instead;
    he will scale the Bosted model to match SAGDH nitrogen data, do the same with the SAGDH carbon data, then use the ratio of these to translate the
    results to our data. More details can be seen in his slides here.

9/3/2014

Present: Chao, Kalyan, Jie, Min, JP, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Pengjia, Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Alexandre

Feature Presentations:

• Toby
  • Gave an update on dilution analysis. His previous method for scaling carbon data to the Bosted nitrogen model had some issues; it left a large gap
    at the delta resonance, the yield was not continuous at higher values of nu (which is most likely an acceptance issue), and he assumed a constant
    scaling factor in nu. In his updated method, he ran the Bosted simulation for both carbon and nitrogen, and used the ratio between the two models
    as a bin-by-bin scaling factor for carbon. He also showed a method for matching the radiation lengths of the different materials. To match the
    radiation lengths of two different targets, for example carbon and production, he produces two radiated carbon models. The first has the radiation
    length of the carbon target, while the second uses the radiation length of the production target. The ratio of these two models is the scaling factor to
    matchthe radiation length of carbon to production. JP suggested building both radiation lengths into the model, to make the process one step versus
    two. Toby will look into the difference in results for the two methods. The preliminary results for the dilution factor are smaller than expected, but he
    is still working on determining the uncertainty. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Min
  • Working on matching focal plane data to SNAKE. To accomplish this, she first divides the transport functions into two steps; the target to the virtual
    plane, then the virtual plane to the focal plane. She focused on tuning the functions that included contributions from the septum field, and worked on
    aligning the center sieve hole. The results look good, so for next time she will work on aligning the other sieve holes. More details can be seen in her
    slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave an update on the energy loss model. Last time he showed a comparison of the ionization models used in geant4 and SAMC. This time, he looked
    at how internal and external Bremsstrahlung are included in SAMC and the g2psim package. Ryan suggested looking at the size of the contribution from
    internal/external Bremsstrahlung to the overall energy loss, as he found it was much smaller than the contribution from ionization. Jie showed a comparison
    between data and simulation including two different ionization models; in one case (geant4 model) the simulation was too narrow compared to the data, in
    the other case (SAMC model), the simulation was wider than the data. Jixie suggested to only look at the data from one sieve hole when comparing with
    simulation, as opposed to all the sieve holes. More details can be seen in Jie's slides here.

8/27/2014

Present: Min, JP, Jie, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Moshe, Pengjia, Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Alexandre

Feature Presentations:

• Moshe
  • Gave an update on dilution analysis with GEp data. GEp needs an accurate dilution factor in the hydrogen-elastic region, which is tough to achieve
    since there is little data and few good models for nitrogen and helium in the quasi-elastic region. One solution is to use small angle GDH data and
    extrapolate to different kinematics. The second solution is to use carbon data, if it is possible to scale the carbon data to nitrogen in the quasi-elastic
    setting. He showed results from simulation comparing carbon, nitrogen and helium. In the Bosted model, the quasi-elastic region of carbon and
    nitrogen are scaleable, while in the QFS model, carbon, nitrogen and helium are all scaleable. In the elastic region, he scaled carbon and nitrogen data
    to the same number of elastic events. With both models, this made a good match at the quasi-elastic region. Following this same procedure for
    comparing helium and nitrogen, however, did not give a good match in the quasi-elastic region. Based on his simulation, the contribution from helium
    is relatively small in both models. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Melissa
  • Gave an update on extracting the packing fraction using data. She updated her previous method, which included input from simulation, to include
    only production/dilution runs. This method assumes a uniform acceptance throughout the target cell, which can be corrected for once the acceptance
    analysis is complete. Toby pointed out that helium and nitrogen have different radiation lengths, which will need to be accounted for. The resulting
    value for the packing fraction agrees with the expectation, but with a large uncertainty (~10%). She will work on reducing this uncertainty, as well as
    extracting the packing fraction for other materials/settings. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Ryan
  • Gave an update on using SAMC to generate nitrogen cross sections. He got the version of SAMC setup for SAGDH experimental conditions from Vince,
    and used the Bosted model as the cross section model. An advantage of using SAMC is that it can include energy loss corrections and inelastic radiative
    corrections. This will probably allow for the best comparison between the Bosted model and SAGDH nitrogen cross sections. However, the radiative
    take a long time to run, so it may not be worthwhile. For next time, he will work on comparing the SAMC results for the XS with his method for averaging
    the cross section over the acceptance as well as the SAMC radiative corrections with his method of radiative corrections. More details can be seen his
    slides here.

8/20/2014

Present: Kalyan, Min, JP, Jie, Jixie Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Pengjia, Moshe, Alexandre

Feature Presentations:

• Jie
  • Gave an update on the energy loss model being used in the g2psim package. Previously, he showed a discrepancy in the delta when comparing
    data with simulation results. He was able to better match the data with simulation by using a different ionization model. The old ionization model
    (taken from Geant 4) used a continuous energy loss, with fluctuations, below an energy threshold. Above the threshold, the energy loss is simulated
    by the explicit secondary particles. The updated ionization model (taken from SAMC) assumes the probability distribution of energy loss by ionization
    is a Landau distribution. He showed a comparison of the energy loss from ionization for g2psim and the SAMC model. If g2psim includes continuous
    energy loss, but not delta-ray production, it does not match with the model. But, if g2psim includes 1 delta-ray production along with continuous energy
    loss, it agrees much better with the model. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Min
  • Gave an update on her acceptance study. Last time, she showed that there is some discrepancy between the peaks (in delta, theta and phi variables),
    between data and simulation. She showed comparisons of the data and simulation with the "true" locations, and a sanity check of the transport functions,
    which seem to fit our requirements for the resolution. There was some discussion about whether or not the exit/entrance windows (made of kapton and
    titanium) were included in the energy loss model. Jie says they are both included right after the sieve slit. In the simulation, Min modified the VDC resolution
    to be 0 and made the x-tg inputs the same, and saw good agreement between the data and simulation. However, when the VDC resolution was included back
    in, she again saw a discrepancy between the data and simulation. For next time, she will also include focal plane variables. More details can be seen in her
    slides here.

• Jixie
  • Simulated optics events scattering from the target chamber window to see if they make it to the focal plane. He used a 1cm raster with no target field, and
    found that events originating from the target chamber entrance window do indeed make it to the focal plane. The ratio of events from the chamber window to
    events from the target is 3.6%. More details can be seen in his slides here.

8/13/2014

Present: Kalyan, Min, JP, Jixie Melissa
By Phone: Pengjia, Moshe, Alexandre, Chao

Feature Presentations:

• Melissa
  • Gave an update on packing fraction analysis. In her current method to extract the packing fraction, the g2psim package is used to determine a value
    for the cross section of different materials (nitrogen, hydrogen and helium). She showed an updated comparison of the simulation with data. The results
    look better, but there are still some problems (simulation needs to be weighted by cross section, for example). There were also some questions raised
    about the fitting routine used to fit the data; the Landau-Gaussian convolution fit does a good job of fitting the elastic peak, but not the radiative tail. Once
    radiative corrections are included, the values of Ax (normalization factor used in packing fraction equation) will most likely change; the contribution from
    Nitrogen should be larger. A suggestion was made to not use cross sections from simulation as input, but rather just use yields from data instead. She will
    try this for next time. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Pengjia
  • Posted yields calculated from pass-3 rootfiles to the ELog. The unusual shape seen in some cases is most likely due to acceptance. There is still a
    discrepancy in the yields between different runs for some settings.

8/6/2014

Present: Min, JP, Jie, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Chao, Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Pengjia, Alexandre, Karl

Feature Presentations:

• Min
  • Gave an update on acceptance studies. In the simulation, the events are generated uniformly over the area of the raster, so she did a study to check
    the beam distribution for the data. Within the raster pattern, she divided each event by the XS (which was calculated event by event using the Bosted
    model). By doing this, the 2D plot of the raster pattern appears to be uniform. She also showed the corresponding 1D plots of beam x and beam y;
    the beam y distribution appears to be flat while the beam x distribution has a slope on the left side. She also used the same procedure, but divided by
    the Mott cross section, and saw similar results.
  • Also showed a comparison between data and simulation for a 2.2 GeV optics run with 0T target field. Last time, she showed a discrepancy between the
    two. For this time, she updated the simulation to include a different ionization model and used the same energy loss used in optics calibrations. Using the
    updated simulation, there is much better agreement between data and simulation. JP commented that we should make sure we understand where the
    discrepancy came from in order to choose the best model, not just choosing the one that matches the data best, so as not to introduce bias to the analysis.
    For next time, Jie will show a comparison of the two models. More details can be seen in Min's slides here.

• Ryan
  • Gave an update on his comparison of the nitrogen XS from SAGDH data with the Bosted model. The raw XS results from SAGDH now include a multi-track
    analysis study. To find the best scaling factor to match the data with the model, he uses a reduced chi-squared method. Vince gave him the results of an
    elastic tail Monte Carlo used to simulate the acceptance, which also includes the "punch through" correction. Although this can't be compared to older SAGDH
    nitrogen analysis (since the acceptance cuts have changed), but he can use the results to compare Vince's method to his. He found that his method is consistent
    with the Monte Carlo results, and the small difference (which is a maximum of 5% in the tail), is only ~1% difference in the subtracted XS. He showed the
    comparison of the XS from data with the Bosted for all the SADGH kinematics; each setting has a different scaling factor and shift in nu. The shift in nu is quite
    large (6-16 MeV). To understand the energy shift, Karl suggested trying to reproduce the shift with a change in scattering angle. JP also suggested making the
    outgoing thickness of the cell a parameter, as a small change could have a large effect. There was a question of what was included in the radiating of the Bosted
    model; for next time he will show a comparison of the model before and after radiation. He will also work on full inelastic radiative corrections for the SAGDH data
    so that he can extract the Born XS, which can then be compared to the Bosted model. More details can be seen in his slides here.

7/30/2014

Present: JP, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Pengjia, Alexandre

Feature Presentations:

• Toby
  • Gave an update on dilution analysis. Last time, he showed a comparison of yields from data with the prediction from the Bosted model, and then
    scaled the model by computing an "acceptance factor". This time, he did the same thing for the 2.2 GeV settings, but found that the same acceptance
    factor did not work for all energy settings, due to the fact that the scattering angle is different for each energy setting. Since the scattering angle is
    dependent on nu, the acceptance factor will have to be momentum dependent. He showed plots of the scattering angle vs nu for the 3.3 and 2.2 GeV
    settings, and fit the distribution with an exponential function (see Jixie's elog post 49 for more details). The parameters from the fit can then be used
    to calculate the scattering angle for each momentum value in the Bosted model. This method looks promising, but there appears to be a suppression
    of the delta in our data that does not match with simulation. From this, he will be able to extract a rough value for the dilution factor, which should be
    available soon. More details can be seen in his slides here.

7/16/2014

Present: Jie, Min, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Pengjia

Feature Presentations:

• Min
  • Working on an acceptance study for the 1st and 3rd septum settings. For looking at data from optics runs, she applies focal plane and target cuts to
    get rid of junk events and select only elastic events. For this time, she updated the beam cut to match what Chao used for the optics calibrations. For
    the simulation, elastic events are generated according to the beam position in the cut. For the dilution run (empty run), the procedure is similar, but she
    applies a target plane graphical cut on the data instead of a focal plane cut. To simulate the empty run, she used the same target plane cuts that were
    applied to the data, but generated events in an ellipse. For both the optics and dilution runs, the theta and phi variables agree reasonably well, but there
    is a discrepancy in the dp variable. For next time, she will look into this discrepancy as well as look at the other settings. More details can be seen in her
    slides here.

• Ryan
  • Showed a comparison of the Bosted Model with SAGDH data. He generated the nitrogen cross section using the Bosted model for each of the SAGDH
    kinematics, then he can radiate the model for each reconstructed scattering angle, within acceptance. In order to compare to SAGDH data, he averaged
    over the scattering angles. Previously, he tried to determine a single scaling factor for all the kinematic settings, this time he chose different scaling
    factors for each setting to best match the data. For each setting, he found that averaging over the scattering angle decreases the scaling factor by about
    5%. Karl suggested using another data set to compare, possibly using our data to extract the carbon cross section. For the future, he will consider the
    effect of the punch through from the collimators, which effectively increases the radiation length. He will also look at the SAGDH data for
    two settings that he hasn't looked at before (9deg/2234 MeV and 9deg/3319 MeV), among other things. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave an update on packing fraction analysis. Last time, he used runs from the 2nd septum setting (40-32-16). Since the SNAKE model is not quite
    ready for this setting yet, this time he analyzed a set of runs from the 2.2 GeV, 5T, longitudinal setting, which uses the 3rd septum setting (40-00-16).
    He applied a 2D graphical cut to select elastic events, though Karl pointed out that this isn't a 100% pure elastic sample, as there could be a tail underneath
    the peak. Using this set of runs, he determined the packing fraction to be 0.51, with an uncertainty of 7.6%. The largest contribution to this uncertainty
    comes from the uncertainty of the absolute beam position. Ellie suggested showing a comparison of the XS models (that are used as input) to data to test
    how well they match, which Jie will work on for next time. More details can be seen in his slides here.

General Discussion:

• Ryan and Toby have circulated their abstracts for the GRC. Please provide feedback!

7/9/2014

Present: Jie, Min, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Pengjia

Feature Presentations:

• Melissa
  • Showed updates to her method to extract the packing fraction. Biggest change is that the input for cross sections for the various materials will be
    determined using g2psim. Also, different runs, which have consistent beam position information, were used for the analysis. To test the conditions of
    the simulation, she showed a comparison between simulation and data for a helium dilution run. The parameters of the simulation will need to be
    adjusted, as there is a clear discrepancy between the simulation and data. Using the updated values for the XS, the value for the packing fraction
    increases slightly, but will likely change as the simulation results are improved. More details can be seen in her slides here.

7/2/2014

Present: Kalyan, JP, Chao, Jie, Min, Jixie, Melissa
By Phone: Toby, Ryan, Ellie, Karl, Pengjia, Alexandre

Feature Presentations:

• Min
  • Working on an acceptance study for the 3rd ("very bad") septum configuration, using a Monte-Carlo simulation. She started with optics and dilution runs,
    since they have a simple target. Loose cuts were applied to throw away junk events, and to select elastic events. She showed a comparison of simulation vs
    data; for the 1.7 GeV setting (empty cell run), the simulation results are smaller than the data, but for the 2.2 GeV setting, the simulation is larger than the data.
    Also, the shape
    of the phi distributions from simulation do not match the data. JP suggested this could be a result of the momentum calibration or energy
    loss being slightly off. For next time, she will look at a setting with the "good" septum configuration. Also, she will look into the delta discrepancy for the elastic
    setting and will work on tuning the apertures for theta/phi matching (boundary matching). Additionally, the simulation needs to be updated to reflect the true
    shape of the beam, which is elliptical, not circular. More details can be seen in her slides here.

• Jie
  • Gave an update on simulations. Last time he showed an update to the event generator. This time, he wanted to check the difference in the phase space
    density. He showed a comparison of the density function vs theta for two different values of phi-target; the difference between them was very small. He also
    showed an update of the packing fraction uncertainty. He determined the relative uncertainty to be 7.19% for a 1mrad shift in the scattering angle. He showed
    the beam information for the 3 runs being used in the packing fraction calculation (a production, dummy and carbon run), and the beam position seemed
    consistent for all 3 runs. JP expressed concern that this beam position calibration is too good, and doesn't reflect the actual beam conditions. For next time,
    Jie will show the beam position event by event. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Ryan
  • Showed a comparison of small angle GDH data with the P. Bosted model. He generated a nitrogen cross section using the Bosted model, then inelastically
    radiated it so that it could be compared with the SAGDH data (the SAGDH data already has the elastic tail subtracted). He showed comparisons for several
    different energy settings, in all cases the Bosted XS had been scaled down by 30%. For next time, he will check the effect of averaging over the scattering angle;
    the Bosted model is calculated at one scattering angle, while the SAGDH data is broken up into multiple bins. He will also repeat this study using QFS and do full
    inelastic radiative corrections on the SAGDH data in order to extract the Born cross section. More details can be seen in his slides here.

• Toby
  • Gave an update on dilution analysis. Last time there was a question about using the radiated vs unradiated Bosted model, this time he showed a comparison
    of the two. He also updated his method to extract the dilution factor. The number of counts is defined in terms of the acceptance, luminosity, cross section and
    time. This way, the yield scales by the acceptance, which can be assumed to be the same for each run. The yield from carbon (and helium) can be calculated using
    dilution runs, which can then be related to a cross section using the P. Bosted model. Using the acceptance scaling factor, he can relate the nitrogen and carbon
    yields. Using the data from the 3.3 GeV setting, the scaling factor ("a") that relates carbon to nitrogen is 1.17, but this may need to be adjusted regions (quasi-
    elastic, delta, beyond the delta, etc.) More details can be seen in his slides here.