Date of Project

5-15-2022

Document Type

Honors Thesis

School Name

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Physics

Major Advisor

Dr. Akhtar Mahmood

Second Advisor

Dr. Robert Kelley

Abstract

Analysis of data from the ATLAS experiment at the LHC has been a research focus in the Department of Physics at Bellarmine University (BU). At BU, analysis has largely been focused on Z boson decays and searching for evidence of a Z’ (Z Prime) boson. The data are stored in the form of .xml files, with one file representing one collision event inside the ATLAS detector. Previous analyses have been conducted on an event-by-event basis, using the Hypatia software package. While this allows for high-quality visualization and effective event analysis, it is highly time-consuming. I propose and implement a piece of software that partially automates this type of analysis by applying filter parameters (cuts) programmatically. It looks for both the e+e- and μ+μ- decay modes. Cuts implemented primarily include transverse momentum: pt > 10 GeV/c for the muon decay mode and pt > 20 GeV/c for the electron decay mode. The program takes as input a directory containing data files and outputs a list of the names of files likely to contain Z (or Z’) boson decays, i.e., lists events that meet filter criteria. Identified events can then be analyzed more quickly using previous methods.

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