Paula Eerola

BCVEGPY: an event generator for hadronic production of the B-c meson

We have written a Fortran program BCVEGPY, which is an event generator for the hadronic production of the B-c meson through the dominant hard subprocess gg --> B-c(B-c(*)) + b + c. To achieve a compact program, we have written the amplitude of the subprocess with the particle helicity technique and made it as symmetric as possible, by decomposing the gluon self couplings and then applying the symmetries. To check the program, various cross sections of the subprocess have been computed numerically and compared with those in the literature. BCVEGPY is written in a PYTHIA-compatible format, thus it is easy to implement in PYTHIA.

The NorduGrid architecture and middleware for scientific applications

The NorduGrid project operates a production Grid infrastructure in Scandinavia and Finland using own innovative middleware solutions. The resources range from small test clusters at academic institutions to large farms at several supercomputer centers, and are used for various scientific applications. This talk reviews the architecture and describes the Grid services, implemented via the NorduGrid middleware.

The Nordugrid production grid infrastructure, status and plans

Nordugrid offers reliable grid services for academic users over an increasing set of computing & storage resources spanning through the Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. A small group of scientists has already been using the Nordugrid as their daily computing utility. In the near future we expect a rapid growth both in the number of active users and available resources thanks to the recently launched Nordic grid projects.We report on the present status and short term plans of the Nordic grid infrastructure and describe the available and foreseen resources, grid services and our forming user base.

Particle identification using the time-over-threshold method in the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker

Abstract Test-beam studies of the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) straw tube performance in terms of electron–pion separation using a time-over-threshold method are described. The test-beam data are compared with Monte Carlo simulations of charged particles passing through the straw tubes of the TRT. For energies below 10 GeV , the time-over-threshold method combined with the standard transition-radiation cluster-counting technique significantly improves the electron–pion separation in the TRT. The use of the time-over-threshold information also provides some kaon–pion separation, thereby significantly enhancing the B-physics capabilities of the ATLAS detector.

Building a production grid in Scandanavia

Innovative middleware solutions are key to the NorduGrid testbed, which spans academic institutes and supercomputing centers throughout Scandinavia and Finland and provides continuous grid services to its users.

Recent aging studies for the ATLAS transition radiation tracker

The transition radiation tracker (TRT) is one of the three subsystems of the inner detector of the ATLAS experiment. It is designed to operate for 10 yr at the LHC, with integrated charges of /spl sim/10 C/cm of wire and radiation doses of about 10 Mrad and 2/spl times/10/sup 14/ neutrons/cm/sup 2/. These doses translate into unprecedented ionization currents and integrated charges for a large-scale gaseous detector. This paper describes studies leading to the adoption of a new ionization gas regime for the ATLAS TRT. In this new regime, the primary gas mixture is 70%Xe-27%CO/sub 2/-3%O/sub 2/. It is planned to occasionally flush and operate the TRT detector with an Ar-based ternary mixture, containing a small percentage of CF/sub 4/, to remove, if needed, silicon pollution from the anode wires. This procedure has been validated in realistic conditions and would require a few days of dedicated operation. This paper covers both performance and aging studies with the new TRT gas mixture.

Roadmap for the ARC grid middleware

The Advanced Resource Connector (ARC) or the NorduGrid middleware is an open source software solution enabling production quality computational and data Grids, with special emphasis on scalability, stability, reliability and performance. Since its first release in May 2002, the middleware is deployed and being used in production environments. This paper aims to present the future development directions and plans of the ARC middleware in terms of outlining the software development roadmap.

Tracking performance of the transition radiation tracker prototype for the ATLAS experiment

A prototype of the Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) for the ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC has been built and tested at the CERN SPS. Detailed studies of the drift-time measurements, alignment technique, hit registration efficiency, track and momentum accuracy were performed. A coordinate measurement accuracy of 150 Pin for a single TRT drift tube and momentum resolution of 0.8% for 20 GeV pions in a 1.56 T magnetic field were achieved. The results obtained are in agreement with the expected tracking performance of the ATLAS TRT

An X-ray scanner for wire chambers

The techniques to measure the position of sense wires and field wires, the gas gain and the gas flow rate inside wire chambers using a collimated and filtered X-ray beam are reported. Specific examples are given using barrel modules of the Transition Radiation Tracker of the ATLAS experiment.

Acceptance tests and criteria of the ATLAS transition radiation tracker

The Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) sits at the outermost part of the ATLAS Inner Detector, encasing the Pixel Detector and the Semi-Conductor Tracker (SCT). The TRT combines charged particle track reconstruction with electron identification capability. This is achieved by layers of xenon-filled straw tubes with periodic radiator foils or fibers providing TR photon emission. The design and choice of materials have been optimized to cope with the harsh operating conditions at the LHC, which are expected to lead to an accumulated radiation dose of 10 Mrad and a neutron fluence of up to 2middot1014 n/cm2 after ten years of operation. The TRT comprises a barrel containing 52 000 axial straws and two end-cap parts with 320 000 radial straws. The total of 420 000 electronic channels (two channels per barrel straw) allows continuous tracking with many projective measurements (more than 30 straw hits per track). The assembly of the barrel modules in the US has recently been completed, while the end-cap wheel construction in Russia has reached the 50% mark. After testing at the production sites and shipment to CERN, all modules and wheels undergo a series of quality and conformity measurements. These acceptance tests survey dimensions, wire tension, gas-tightness, high-voltage stability and gas-gain uniformity along each individual straw. This paper gives details on the acceptance criteria and measurement methods. An overview of the most important results obtained to-date is also given