Joseph Boudreau

This paper presents a novel approach to the joint optimization of job scheduling and data allocation in grid computing environments. We formulate this joint optimization problem as a mixed integer quadratically constrained program. To tackle the nonlinearity in the constraint, we alternatively fix a subset of decision variables and optimize the remaining ones via Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP). We solve the MILP problem at each iteration via an off-the-shelf MILP solver. Our experimental results show that our method significantly outperforms existing heuristic methods, employing either independent optimization or joint optimization strategies. We have also verified the generalization ability of our method over grid environments with various sizes and its high robustness to the algorithm hyper-parameters.

The complex geometry of the whole detector of the ATLAS experiment at LHC is currently stored only in custom online databases, from which it is built on-the-fly on request. Accessing the online geometry guarantees accessing the latest version of the detector description, but requires the setup of the full ATLAS software framework "Athena", which provides the online services and the tools to retrieve the data from the database. This operation is cumbersome and slows down the applications that need to access the geometry. Moreover, all applications that need to access the detector geometry need to be built and run on the same platform as the ATLAS framework, preventing the usage of the actual detector geometry in stand-alone applications. Here we propose a new mechanism to persistify (in software development in general, and in HEP computing in particular, persistifying means taking an object which lives in memory only - for example because it was built on-the-fly while processing the experimental data, - serializing it and storing it on disk as a persistent object) and serve the geometry of HEP experiments. The new mechanism is composed by a new file format and the modules to make use of it. The new file format allows to store the whole detector description locally in a file, and it is especially optimized to describe large complex detectors with the minimum file size, making use of shared instances and storing compressed representations of geometry transformations. Then, the detector description can be read back in, to fully restore the in-memory geometry tree. Moreover, a dedicated REST API is being designed and developed to serve the geometry in standard exchange formats like JSON, to let users and applications download specific partial geometry information. With this new geometry persistification a new generation of applications could be developed, which can use the actual detector geometry while being platform-independent and experiment-independent.

We discuss algorithms for the analysis of hadronic final states, with application to single top t-channel production, heavy Higgs decaying as H → W⁺W^- in the lepton plus jets mode, and others. In our examples, nature has arranged for the triple differential decay rates in angles we call θ ₁, θ₂, to be a short finite series in orthogonal functions, √2πa^m _k,lY^m _k (θ ₁, )Y^m _l (θ ₂, 0) (summation implied), where the a^m _k,l are complex constants. This observation can be exploited in two ways; first, a technique called orthogonal series density estimation may be employed to extract coefficients a^m _{k ,l} of the decay and physics parameters related to these coefficients; second, an angular analog of the convolution theorem may be employed to analytically deconvolve detector resolution effects from an observed signal.

A number of backgrounds to top-quark production at the LHC and Tevatron experiments are characterized as instrumental: beam related-backgrounds, cosmic ray backgrounds, and backgrounds from non-prompt (or fake) leptons. A number of strategies have been deployed in the experiments to minimize these backgrounds and to estimate their rates. The strategies are applied at the level of the accelerator, the detector apparatus, the first few cuts which are common to many physics analyses, and more refined kinematic cuts. Remaining fake lepton background is estimated using sophisticated data-driven techniques. We present here a survey of the state-of-the-art in the reduction of instrumental backgrounds and also their estimation.

Since the discovery of parity violation in 1957, angular distributions of leptons coming from the weak decay of polarized fermions have been used to probe the structure of the Wqq' vertex. Vector and axial vector couplings reveal themselves in the angular distributions of both light and heavy polarized fermions, but tensor and pseudotensor couplings have a prominent influence on the angular distributions only for fermions heavier than the W boson; i.e. the top quark. The copious t-channel production of polarized single top quarks at the LHC provides an opportunity to study the angular distributions of leptons from polarized top quark decay. In this paper we develop formulae for differential rates intended to be used as a likelihood function in the simultaneous extraction of decay amplitudes, phases, and polarization. The incorporation of detector effects in these formulae is accomplished using a variant of the familiar convolution theorem applying to a decomposition of the differential rates in spherical harmonics.

Differential rates in the decay B^0_s --> Jpsi phi, with phi --> K^+K^- and Jpsi --> mu^+ mu^- are sensitive to the CP-violation phase beta_s, predicted to be very small in the standard model. The analysis of B^0_s --> Jpsi phi decays is also suitable for measuring the B^0_s lifetime, the decay width difference DeltaGamma_s between the B^0_s mass eigenstates, and the B^0_s oscillation frequency Delta m even if appreciable CP violation does not occur. In this paper we present normalized probability densities useful in maximum likelihood fits, extended to allow for S-wave contributions on one hand and for the effects of direct CP violation on the other. Our treatment of the S-wave contributions includes the strong variation of the S-wave/P-wave amplitude ratio with m(K^+K^-) across the phi resonance, which was not considered in previous work. We include a scheme for re-normalizing the probability densities after detector sculpting of the angular distributions of the final state particles, and conclude with an examination of the symmetries of the rate formulae, with and without an S-wave contribution. All results are obtained with the use of a new compact formalism describing the differential decay rate of B^0_s mesons into Jpsi phi final states.