Principal curves for identifying outsiders in experimental tests with calorimeters
Principal curves are used for particle discrimination. They are developed for application in calibration tests of the hadronic calorimeter (Tilecal) of the ATLAS detector. Defining principal curves for electrons, pions and muons, a discrimination efficiency better than 92.4% can be achieved, even when high particle contamination is observed in the experimental data sets.

title: Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics
abstract: A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN.

title: A mobile data acquisition system
abstract: A mobile data aquisition (MobiDAQ) was developed for the ATLAS central hadronic calorimeter (TileCal). MobiDAQ has been designed in order to test the functionalities of the TileCal front-end electronics and to acquire calibration data before the final back-end electronics were built and tested. MobiDAQ was also used to record the first cosmic ray events acquired by an ATLAS subdetector in the underground experimental area.

title: A hybrid training method for neural energy estimation in calorimetry
abstract: A neural mapping is developed to improve the overall performance of Tilecal, which is the hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS detector. Feeding the input nodes of a multilayer feedforward neural network with the energy values sampled by the calorimeter cells in beam tests, it is shown that the original energy scale of pion beams is reconstructed over a wide energy range and linearity is significantly improved. As it happens for classical methods, a compromise between nonlinearity correction and the optimization of the energy resolution of the detector has to be accomplished. A hybrid training method for the neural mapping is proposed to achieve this design goal. Using the back-propagation algorithm, the method intercalates an epoch of training steps, for which the neural mapping mainly focus on linearity correction, with another block of training steps, in which the original energy resolution obtained by linearly combining the calorimeter cells becomes the main target.

title: Charged-particle multiplicities inppinteractions measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
abstract: (2011) 053033 (68pp) Received 22 December 2010 Published 19 May 2011 Online at http://www.njp.org/ doi:10.1088/1367-2630/13/5/053033 Measurements √ are presented from proton–proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of s = 0.9, 2.36 and 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events were collected using a single-arm minimum- bias trigger. The charged-particle multiplicity, its dependence on transverse momentum and pseudorapidity and the relationship between the mean transverse momentum and charged-particle multiplicity are measured. Measurements in different regions of phase space are shown, providing diffraction-reduced measurements as well as more inclusive ones. The observed distributions are corrected to well-defined phase-space regions, using model-independent corrections. The results are compared to each other and to various Monte Carlo (MC) models, including a new AMBT1 pythia6 tune. In all the kinematic regions considered, the particle multiplicities are higher than predicted by the MC models. The central charged-particle multiplicity per event and unit of pseudorapidity, for tracks √ with p T > 100 MeV, is measured to be 3.483 ± 0.009 (stat) (syst) at s = 0.9 TeV and 5.630 ± 0.003 (stat) ± 0.169 (syst) at s = 7 TeV. Abstract. New Journal of Physics 13 (2011) 053033  Content may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation and DOI.

title: Search for strong gravity signatures in same-sign dimuon final states using the ATLAS detector at the LHC
abstract: A search for microscopic black holes has been performed in a same-sign dimuon final state using 1.3 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at a centre of mass energy of 7 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The data are found to be consistent with the expectation from the Standard Model and the results are used to derive exclusion contours in the context of a low scale gravity model.

title: First beam operation of the CMS calorimeter trigger synchronization boards
abstract: The CMS experiment uses information from its electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters and muon detectors to decide whether to readout the whole detector. For such a task to be successful, all trigger primitives pushed through the trigger decision tree must be flawlessly aligned in time for operation at 40 MHz. Both calorimeters in CMS use the Synchronization Link Board for this purpose. In this article we report on the results of tests of this board using realistic beam conditions, which demonstrate the soundness of the adopted architecture and synchronization principle.

title: Gribov copies and gauge fixing in lattice gauge theories
abstract: We address the problem of the gauge fixing versus Gribov copies in lattice gauge theories. For the Landau gauge, results show that a suitable combination of evolutionary algorithms with traditional steepest descent methods identifies the global maximum of the optimisation function. We discuss the performance of the combined algorithm on small cubic lattices for SU(2) and SU(3).

title: Measurement of the Muon Stopping Power in Lead Tungstate
abstract: A large sample of cosmic ray events collected by the CMS detector is exploited to measure the specific energy loss of muons in the lead tungstate of the electromagnetic calorimeter. The measurement spans a momentum range from 5 GeV/c to 1 TeV/c. The results are consistent with the expectations over the entire range. The calorimeter energy scale, set with 120 GeV/c electrons, is validated down to the sub-GeV region using energy deposits, of order 100 MeV, associated with low-momentum muons. The muon critical energy in lead tungstate is measured to be 160+5/-6 plus or minus 8 GeV, in agreement with expectations. This is the first experimental determination of muon critical energy.

title: Performance of the CMS hadron calorimeter with cosmic ray muons and LHC beam data
abstract: 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.

title: Gauge fixing methods and Gribov copies effects in lattice QCD
abstract: We compare two Landau gauge fixing methods, aiming to find the global maximum of the gauge fixing functional. Moreover, a systematic effect of Gribov copies in the gluon and ghost propagators computed in Landau gauge is presented and discussed.