Re: Optical Algorithm for RHIC PID

From: Borge Svane Nielsen (borge@alf.nbi.dk)
Date: Mon Sep 10 2001 - 06:01:07 EDT

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    Hi all,
    
    Concerning ring finding algoritms, I think one should be careful assuming
    fixed radius in our case. We have pions, kaons and protons, many of them
    close to the Cherenkov threshold, i.e. not saturated rings. 
    
    To use Julia's method would mean first to determine the momentum and then
    assume in sequence that the particle is a pion/kaon/proton, do the ring
    finding and fitting to a circle and then at the end produce probabilities
    for each of the hypotheses. This is indeed a viable method, but did does
    introduce systematic effects. Adding knowledge about the centre of the
    circle is just one more parameter in the game. This kind of method is
    reported as one option in the paper I quoted.
    
    The other type of method relies a little more on knowing the centre, but
    is probably less biased when it comes to pre-knowledge about the
    radius. It is basically Claus' concept: start with a centre, histogram
    radii from the centre and determine a best radius - possibly followed by a
    refitting of the hits in the found ring to a (slightly) shifted centre and
    radius.
    
    In either case, the worst problem is to suppress background hits not
    belonging to the ring. It pays to have a good understanding of the
    background sources: white noise, other reconstructable tracks, not
    reconstructable tracks, etc. The background is typically not flat, because
    the geometry in the RICH is limited, i.e. you are always close to the edge
    of the detector.
    
    Another thing relating to Claus' mail. Gain matching is of limited
    value. All you really need to know is if the signal is above threshold to
    be counted as a photon. Trying to count photons in a given channel from
    the measured pulse height is difficult to impossible due to the signal
    spread of a single photon. I am not sure, Claus, if your dR signals were
    weighted with ADC count. I think they shouldn't be.
    
    Cheers,
    Borge
    
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    | Børge Svane Nielsen                 E-mail:  borge@nbi.dk              |
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