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CALIBRATION OF THE HEAVY FLAVOR TRACKER (HFT) DETECTOR IN STAR EXPERIMENT AT RHIC

Alanazi, Norah
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1448026418

Abstract Details

2015, MS, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Physics.
Alanazi, Norah, M.S. December 2015 NUCLEAR PHYSICS CALIBRATION OF THE HEAVY FLAVOR TRACKER (HFT) DETECTOR IN STAR EXPERIMENT AT RHIC (49 pp.) Director of Thesis: Spyridon Margetis This project is in the area of Relativistic Nuclear collisions and the commissioning of a new silicon vertex detector, the Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) in the STAR exper- iment at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). BNL hosts RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the world’s most advanced dedicated heavy ion and polarized proton accelerator facility. Heavy Ion collisions at RHIC provide a unique probe into the understanding of several aspects of the behavior of nuclear, i.e. strongly inter- acting, matter. Among the many insights that can be provided is the description of parton interaction inside the hot and dense medium produced in the early stages of a collision. It also allows us to search for evidence for a phase transition in nuclear matter, a phase where partons [quarks and gluons] can move freely over an extended volume. Production of heavy quarks in high-energy nuclear collisions at RHIC occurs mainly during the initial collisions where energetic gluon and quark interactions can create heavy quarks. Thus, heavy flavor provides an ideal probe in studying the hot and dense medium created in the early phases of high-energy nuclear collisions. A detailed study of heavy flavor is essential to better understand the parton dynamics and select among competing theoretical approaches, however, precise measurements of heavy flavor are di¿cult to obtain due to relatively low production rates and short lifetimes of heavy flavor hadrons. The combinatorial background in nuclear collisions makes the measurement of heavy flavor a challenging task. One approach to dra- matically reduce the combinatorial background by several orders of magnitude is to separate the heavy-flavor hadron’s decay vertex from the background. This is done with the help of high resolution vertex detectors. The Heavy Flavor Tracker upgrade for the STAR experiment, which made its debut during the year 2014 RHIC run (Run14), greatly improved the experiment’s track pointing capabilities making STAR an ideal detector for heavy flavor studies. The HFT consists of three subsystems, each deploying a di¿erent silicon technology. In the heart of HFT there are two layers of 400 thin silicon pixel sensors, each sensor having about one million individual pixels. The HFT is used to extend the tracks reconstructed in the Time Projection Chamber towards the event vertex, increasing at the same time their pointing resolution from a few millimeters down to about 30 microns. The achieved resolution allow us to fully reconstruct the heavy flavor hadron’s decay vertex. In this Thesis we present work and results on HFT calibration issues using a sample of the first data taken with HFT, the Run14 data set. We will focus on event vertex resolution, alignment, particle identification and selection, and track pointing resolution. We also compare our results with previous analyses and the design goals of HFT.
Spyridon Margetis (Advisor)
Mina Katramatou (Committee Member)
Declan Keane (Committee Member)
49 p.
Nuclear Physics; Physics
Nuclear Physics, heavy ions, collisions, silicon detectors, pixel detectors, silicon calibration, alignment, track pointing resolution, dca resolution

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Alanazi, N. (2015). CALIBRATION OF THE HEAVY FLAVOR TRACKER (HFT) DETECTOR IN STAR EXPERIMENT AT RHIC [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1448026418

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Alanazi, Norah. CALIBRATION OF THE HEAVY FLAVOR TRACKER (HFT) DETECTOR IN STAR EXPERIMENT AT RHIC. 2015. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1448026418.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Alanazi, Norah. "CALIBRATION OF THE HEAVY FLAVOR TRACKER (HFT) DETECTOR IN STAR EXPERIMENT AT RHIC." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1448026418

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1448026418
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© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License CALIBRATION OF THE HEAVY FLAVOR TRACKER (HFT) DETECTOR IN STAR EXPERIMENT AT RHIC by Norah Alanazi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.