About the US/LHC Project

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland is opening new vistas on the deepest secrets of the universe, stretching the imagination with newly discovered forms of matter, forces of nature, and dimensions of space. This site provides general information about the Large Hadron Collider and detailed information about American participation in the LHC accelerator and experiments. U.S. LHC participation is supported by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

A proton-proton collision event in the CMS experiment producing two high-energy photons (red towers). This is what we would expect to see from the decay of a Higgs boson but it is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes. (Courtesy: CERN)

Home > The US and the LHC > Collaborating Institutions > Purdue University Calumet

Purdue University Calument

Neeti Parashar at Point 5/CMS

Purdue University Calumet joined the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration in 2005. The high energy physics group is led by Prof. Neeti Parashar and consists of a post-doctoral fellow (Dr. Pratima Jindal), one graduate student (Ana Momidik) and two undergraduate students (Dayna Thompson, Lidija Krstevski) working on this experiment.

Our main contribution has been to the Forward Pixel Detector of CMS, also often referred to as the Forward Pixel Disks. This is an integral component of the CMS Tracker. The design of the Forward Pixel detector is a complex one. It is comprised of 4 circular disks, two on each side of the Pixel Barrel. The inner and the outer diameter of each disk are 6 cm and 15 cm, respectively. The η coverage of these disks is from 1.5 to 2.25. Each of the four disks includes 24 wedge shaped blades arranged in a turbine like geometry. Each blade is rotated 200 around their radial symmetry axis to increase charge sharing among pixels. This would provide a hit resolution of ~ 15 μm.

Pratima Jindal

Purdue University Calumet has delivered the geometry of the Forward Pixel Disks, which was developed anew. The older geometry was not user friendly, very difficult to modify and non-readable by the users. Therefore, we developed a new package which uses the detector description database (DDD) interface for the XML (eXtensive Markup Language) to GEANT simulation. The DDD description of the Forward Pixel detector is based on the precise measurements of different components. Most of the geometry files are written in XML and the usage of symmetry is maximized.

We have also contributed very heavily to the construction of the disks themselves at the Silicon Detector Facility (Sidet). Our group has been responsible for burn-in tests for the plaquettes and panels used in the construction of the Forward Pixel detector. Purdue Calumet group has performed the second largest number of shifts from an institution amounting to a total of 11% of the total shifts and highest by an individual (post-doc) required to successfully build the disks.

Lidija Krsteviski

The material budget study is an important step in the implementation of the detector. It also serves as a strong consistency check between hardware and software. We reviewed materials from the smallest units up to the whole structure.

Our current activities are:

Forward Pixel Geometry Maintenance and Simulation
DQM Pixel Commissioning shifts and as experts developing the documents
LPC and CMS b-tagging validation task and performance studies
LPC Leptons+ Jets +MET Electron efficiency analysis using the tag and Probe Method
Tier-3 center at Purdue University Calumet

Purdue University Calumet graduate student Ana Momidik (left) and undergraduate Dayna Thompson work on the FPIX subdetector for CMS

We are very excited to embark on the discovery prospects as the LHC injects the proton-proton collisions, in a matter of weeks.