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A Bayesian method for using simulator data to enhance human error probabilities assigned by existing HRA methods
In the past several years, several international organizations have begun to collect data on human performance in nuclear power plant simulators. The data collected provide a valuable opportunity to improve human reliability analysis (HRA), but these improvements will not be realized without implementation of Bayesian methods. Bayesian methods are widely used to incorporate sparse data into models in many parts of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), but Bayesian methods have not been adopted by the HRA community. In this paper, we provide a Bayesian methodology to formally use simulator data to refine the human error probabilities (HEPs) assigned by existing HRA methods. We demonstrate the methodology with a case study, wherein we use simulator data from the Halden Reactor Project to update the probability assignments from the SPAR-H method. The case study demonstrates the ability to use performance data, even sparse data, to improve existing HRA methods. Furthermore, this paper also serves as a demonstration of the value of Bayesian methods to improve the technical basis of HRA.
Amplitudes and Ultraviolet Behavior of N = 8 Supergravity
In this contribution we describe computational tools that permit the evaluation of multi-loop scattering amplitudes in N = 8 supergravity, in terms of amplitudes in N = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory. We also discuss the remarkable ultraviolet behavior of N = 8 supergravity, which follows from these amplitudes, and is as good as that of N = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory through at least four loops.
Ab-Initio Hamiltonian Approach to Light Nuclei And to Quantum Field Theory
Nuclear structure physics is on the threshold of confronting several long-standing problems such as the origin of shell structure from basic nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon interactions. At the same time those interactions are being developed with increasing contact to QCD, the underlying theory of the strong interactions, using effective field theory. The motivation is clear - QCD offers the promise of great predictive power spanning phenomena on multiple scales from quarks and gluons to nuclear structure. However, new tools that involve non-perturbative methods are required to build bridges from one scale to the next. We present an overview of recent theoretical and computational progress with a Hamiltonian approach to build these bridges and provide illustrative results for the nuclear structure of light nuclei and quantum field theory.
Atoms in Flight: The Remarkable Connections between Atomic and Hadronic Physics
Atomic physics and hadron physics are both based on Yang Mills gauge theory; in fact, quantum electrodynamics can be regarded as the zero-color limit of quantum chromodynamics. I review a number of areas where the techniques of atomic physics provide important insight into the theory of hadrons in QCD. For example, the Dirac-Coulomb equation, which predicts the spectroscopy and structure of hydrogenic atoms, has an analog in hadron physics in the form of light-front relativistic equations of motion which give a remarkable first approximation to the spectroscopy, dynamics, and structure of light hadrons. The renormalization scale for the running coupling, which is unambiguously set in QED, leads to a method for setting the renormalization scale in QCD. The production of atoms in flight provides a method for computing the formation of hadrons at the amplitude level. Conversely, many techniques which have been developed for hadron physics, such as scaling laws, evolution equations, and light-front quantization have equal utility for atomic physics, especially in the relativistic domain. I also present a new perspective for understanding the contributions to the cosmological constant from QED and QCD.
Diagonal Approximation for Holographic Rényi Entropies
Recently, Dong et al., [A modified cosmic brane proposal for holographic Renyi entropy, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2024) 120] proposed a modified cosmic brane prescription for computing the Rényi entropy 𝑆𝛼 of a holographic system in the presence of multiple extremal surfaces. This prescription was found by assuming a diagonal approximation, where the Rényi entropy is computed after first measuring the areas of all extremal surfaces. We derive this diagonal approximation for the case of two extremal surfaces and show that it accurately computes Rényi entropies up to 𝑂(log𝐺) corrections. For 𝛼 <1, this allows us to derive the modified cosmic brane prescription, which differs from the original cosmic brane prescription at leading order in 𝐺. For 𝛼 >1, it leads to the original cosmic brane prescription without needing to assume that replica symmetry is unbroken in the bulk.
Search for a Standard Model Higgs Boson with a Dilepton and Missing Energy Signature
The subject of this thesis is the search for a standard model Higgs boson decaying to a pair of W bosons that in turn decay leptonically, H → W + W - → $\bar{ℓ}$vℓ$\bar{v}$. This search is performed considering events produced in p$\bar{p}$ collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV, where two oppositely charged lepton candidates (e + e - , e ± μ ± , or μ + μ} - ), and missing transverse energy, have been reconstructed. The data were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider, and are tested against the standard model predictions computed for a Higgs boson with mass in the range 115-200 GeV. No excess of events over background is observed, and limits on Standard Model Higgs boson production are determined. An interpretation of these limits within the hypothesis of a fourth-generation extension to the standard model is also given. The overall analysis scheme is the same for the three dilepton pairs being considered (e + e - , e ± μ ± , or μ + μ - ); this thesis, however, describes in detail the study of the dimuon final state.
Extra Dimensions: 3D and Time in PDF Documentation
High energy physics is replete with multi-dimensional information which is often poorly represented by the two dimensions of presentation slides and print media. Past efforts to disseminate such information to a wider audience have failed for a number of reasons, including a lack of standards which are easy to implement and have broad support. Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) has in recent years become the de facto standard for secure, dependable electronic information exchange. It has done so by creating an open format, providing support for multiple platforms and being reliable and extensible. By providing support for the ECMA standard Universal 3D (U3D) file format in its free Adobe Reader software, Adobe has made it easy to distribute and interact with 3D content. By providing support for scripting and animation, temporal data can also be easily distributed to a wide audience. In this talk, we present examples of HEP applications which take advantage of this functionality. We demonstrate how 3D detector elements can be documented, using either CAD drawings or other sources such as GEANT visualizations as input. Using this technique, higher dimensional data, such as LEGO plots or time-dependent information can be included in PDF files. In principle, a complete event display, with full interactivity, can be incorporated into a PDF file. This would allow the end user not only to customize the view and representation of the data, but to access the underlying data itself.
The fast neutron fluence and the activation detector activity calculations using the effective source method and the adjoint function
This paper describes the application of effective source in forward calculations and the adjoint method to the solution of fast neutron fluence and activation detector activities in the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) and RPV cavity of a VVER-440 reactor. Its objective is the demonstration of both methods on a practical task. The effective source method applies the Boltzmann transport operator to time integrated source data in order to obtain neutron fluence and detector activities. By weighting the source data by time dependent decay of the detector activity, the result of the calculation is the detector activity. Alternatively, if the weighting is uniform with respect to time, the result is the fluence. The approach works because of the inherent linearity of radiation transport in non-multiplying time-invariant media. Integrated in this way, the source data are referred to as the effective source. The effective source in the forward calculations method thereby enables the analyst to replace numerous intensive transport calculations with a single transport calculation in which the time dependence and magnitude of the source are correctly represented. In this work, the effective source method has been expanded slightly in the following way: neutron source data were performed with few group method calculation using the active core calculation code MOBY-DICK. The follow-up neutron transport calculation was performed using the neutron transport code TORT to perform multigroup calculations. For comparison, an alternative method of calculation has been used based upon adjoint functions of the Boltzmann transport equation. Calculation of the three-dimensional (3-D) adjoint function for each required computational outcome has been obtained using the deterministic code TORT and the cross section library BGL440. Adjoint functions appropriate to the required fast neutron flux density and neutron reaction rates have been calculated for several significant points within the RPV and RPV cavity of the VVER-440 reacto rand located axially at the position of maximum power and at the position of the weld. Both of these methods (the effective source and the adjoint function) are briefly described in the present paper. The paper also describes their application to the solution of fast neutron fluence and detectors activities for the VVER-440 reactor. (authors)
Large Scale Shape Optimization for Accelerator Cavities
We present a shape optimization method for designing accelerator cavities with large scale computations. The objective is to find the best accelerator cavity shape with the desired spectral response, such as with the specified frequencies of resonant modes, field profiles, and external Q values. The forward problem is the large scale Maxwell equation in the frequency domain. The design parameters are the CAD parameters defining the cavity shape. We develop scalable algorithms with a discrete adjoint approach and use the quasi-Newton method to solve the nonlinear optimization problem. Two realistic accelerator cavity design examples are presented.
Mixing and CP Violation in Charm Meson Decays
Mixing and CP violation (CPV ) in the neutral D system were first discussed over thirty years ago but mixing was observed for the first time only very recently. Since then, these observations have been confirmed in other experiments and in other D{sup 0} decay modes. Unlike the K, B and B{sub s} systems, for which mixing was observed years earlier, the short distance ({Delta}C = 2) amplitude contributing to mixing in the D system arises from box diagrams with down- rather than up-type quarks in the loops. The d and s components are GIM-suppressed, and the b component is suppressed by the small V{sub ub} CKM coupling. In the standard model (SM), therefore, long range, non-perturbative effects, a coherent sum over intermediate states accessible to both D{sup 0} and {bar D}{sup 0}, are the main contribution to mixing. These are hard to compute reliably, however. The phenomenon of mixing in neutral meson systems has now been observed in all flavours, but only in the past year in the D{sup 0} system. The standard model anticipated that, for the charm sector, the mixing rate would be small, and also that CP violation, either in mixing or in direct decay, would be below the present levels of observability. It is hoped that further study of these phenomena might reveal signs of new physics. A review of recently available, experimental results is given.
ServiceX A Distributed, Caching, Columnar Data Delivery Service
We will describe a component of the Intelligent Data Delivery Service being developed in collaboration with IRIS-HEP and the LHC experiments. ServiceX is an experiment-agnostic service to enable on-demand data delivery specifically tailored for nearly-interactive vectorized analysis. This work is motivated by the data engineering challenges posed by HL-LHC data volumes and the increasing popularity of python and Spark-based analysis workflows.ServiceX gives analyzers the ability to query events by dataset metadata. It uses containerized transformations to extract just the data required for the analysis. This operation is colocated with the data to avoid transferring unnecessary branches over the WAN. Simple filtering operations are supported to further reduce the amount of data transferred.Transformed events are cached in a columnar datastore to accelerate delivery of subsequent similar requests. ServiceX will learn commonly related columns and automatically include them in the transformation to increase the potential for cache hits by other users.Selected events are streamed to the analysis system using an efficient wire protocol that can be readily consumed by a variety of computational frameworks. This reduces time-to-insight for physics analysis by delegating to ServiceX the complexity of event selection, slimming, reformatting, and streaming.
Next Generation Workload Management and Analysis System for Big Data
We report on the activities and accomplishments of a four-year project (a three-year grant followed by a one-year no cost extension) to develop a next generation workload management system for Big Data. The new system is based on the highly successful PanDA software developed for High Energy Physics (HEP) in 2005. PanDA is used by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and the AMS experiment at the space station. The program of work described here was carried out by two teams of developers working collaboratively at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). These teams worked closely with the original PanDA team – for the sake of clarity the work of the next generation team will be referred to as the BigPanDA project. Their work has led to the adoption of BigPanDA by the COMPASS experiment at CERN, and many other experiments and science projects worldwide.
Sparse Gaussian elimination with controlled fill-in on a shared memory multiprocessor
It is shown that in sparse matrices arising from electronic circuits, it is possible to do computations on many diagonal elements simultaneously. A technique for obtaining an ordered compatible set directly from the ordered incompatible table is given. The ordering is based on the Markowitz number of the pivot candidates. This technique generates a set of compatible pivots with the property of generating few fills. A novel heuristic algorithm is presented that combines the idea of an order-compatible set with a limited binary tree search to generate several sets of compatible pivots in linear time. An elimination set for reducing the matrix is generated and selected on the basis of a minimum Markowitz sum number. The parallel pivoting technique presented is a stepwise algorithm and can be applied to any submatrix of the original matrix. Thus, it is not a preordering of the sparse matrix and is applied dynamically as the decomposition proceeds. Parameters are suggested to obtain a balance between parallelism and fill-ins. Results of applying the proposed algorithms on several large application matrices using the HEP multiprocessor (Kowalik, 1985) are presented and analyzed.
Precise Predictions for Z + 4 Jets at Hadron Colliders
We present the cross section for production of a Z boson in association with four jets at the Large Hadron Collider, at next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling. When the Z decays to neutrinos, this process is a key irreducible background to many searches for new physics. Its computation has been made feasible through the development of the on-shell approach to perturbative quantum field theory. We present the total cross section for pp collisions at {radical}s = 7 TeV, after folding in the decay of the Z boson, or virtual photon, to a charged-lepton pair. We also provide distributions of the transverse momenta of the four jets, and we compare cross sections and distributions to the corresponding ones for the production of a W boson with accompanying jets.
Combined CDF and D0 Searches for the Standard Model Higgs Boson Decaying to Two Photons with up to 8.2 fb^-1
We combine results from CDF and D0's direct searches for the standard model (SM) Higgs boson (H) produced in p{bar p} collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV, focusing on the decay H {yields} {gamma}{gamma}. We compute upper limits on the Higgs boson production cross section times the decay branching fraction in the range 100 < m{sub H} < 150 GeV/c{sup 2}, and we interpret the results in the context of the standard model. We use the MSTW08 parton distribution functions and the latest theoretical cross section predictions when testing for the presence of a SM Higgs boson. With datasets corresponding to 7.0 fb{sup -1} (CDF) and 8.2 fb{sup -1} (D0), the 95% C.L. upper limits on Higgs boson production is a factor of 10.5 times the SM cross section for a Higgs boson mass of 115 GeV/c{sup 2}.
A Parallelised ROOT for Future HEP Data Processing
In the coming years, HEP data processing will need to exploit parallelism on present and future hardware resources to sustain the bandwidth requirements. As one of the cornerstones of the HEP software ecosystem, ROOT embraced an ambitious parallelisation plan which delivered compelling results. In this contribution the strategy is characterised as well as its evolution in the medium term. The units of the ROOT framework are discussed where task and data parallelism have been introduced, with runtime and scaling measurements. We will give an overview of concurrent operations in ROOT, for instance in the areas of I/O (reading and writing of data), fitting / minimization, and data analysis. This paper introduces the programming model and use cases for explicit and implicit parallelism, where the former is explicit in user code and the latter is implicitly managed by ROOT internally.
Explainable AI classification for parton density theory
Quantitatively connecting properties of parton distribution functions (PDFs, or parton densities) to the theoretical assumptions made within the QCD analyses which produce them has been a longstanding problem in HEP phenomenology. To confront this challenge, we introduce an ML-based explainability framework, XAI4PDF, to classify PDFs by parton flavor or underlying theoretical model using ResNet-like neural networks (NNs). By leveraging the differentiable nature of ResNet models, this approach deploys guided backpropagation to dissect relevant features of fitted PDFs, identifying x-dependent signatures of PDFs important to the ML model classifications. By applying our framework, we are able to sort PDFs according to the analysis which produced them while constructing quantitative, human-readable maps locating the x regions most affected by the internal theory assumptions going into each analysis. This technique expands the toolkit available to PDF analysis and adjacent particle phenomenology while pointing to promising generalizations.