Geometrical cuts

Energy loss cuts are successful in eliminating a significant portion of the background, but further reduction is required to give a clear signal. In addition final yields are calculated by a bin counting method, which requires that the background around the signal peak has a straight line shape. Therefore additional cuts are placed on the V0 candidates based on the geometrical properties of the decay. There are five quantities on which I chose to cut:

• Distance of closest approach (DCA) of the V0 candidate to the primary vertex: if the V0 candidate is a genuine particle, its momentum vector should track back to the interaction point. Spurious candidates will not necessarily do so, therefore an upper limit is placed on the approach distance of the V0 to the interaction point.
• DCA between the daughter tracks: due to detector resolution the daughter tracks never precisely meet, but placing an upper limit of the minimum distance of approach reduces background from spurious track crossings.
• DCAs of the positive and negative daughter tracks to the primary vertex: the daughter tracks are curved due to the magnetic field and a neutral strange particle will decay some distance from the interaction point. Therefore the daughter tracks should not extrapolate back to the primary vertex, but to some distance away from it. Placing a lower limit on this distance can reduce background from tracks originating from the interaction point.
• V0 decay distance: neutral strange particles decay weakly, with cτ ~ cm, so the decay vertex should typically be displaced from the interaction point. A lower limit placed on the decay distance of the V0 helps eliminate backgrounds from particles originating at the interaction point.

I wrote a class to help perform tuning of these geometrical cut quantities (see /star/u/tpb/StRoot/StV0CutTuning/) by a "brute force" approach; different permutations of the above quantities were attempted, and the resulting mass spectra analysed to see which permutations gave the best balance of background reduction and signal retention. In addition, the consistency of the background to a straight-line shape was required. Due to the limits on statistics, signal retention was considered a greater priority than background reduction. The cut values I decided upon are summarised in table one. Figures one to three show the resulting mass spectra (data are from all runs). Yields are calculated from the integral of bins in the signal (red) region minus the integrals of bins in the background (green) regions. Poisson (√N) errors are used. The background regions are fitted with a straight line, skipping the intervening bins. The signal to background quoted is the ratio of the maximum bin content to the value of the background fit evaluated at that mass. Note that the spectra have the the dE/dx cut included in addition to the geometrical cuts.

Table 1: Summary of geometical cuts. All cut values are in centimetres.

* primary vertex
** default cut present in micro-DST

Figure 1: Final K0S mass spectrum with all cuts applied.

Figure 2: Final Λ mass spectrum with all cuts applied.

Figure 3: Final anti-Λ mass spectrum with all cuts applied.