The goal of this project is the development of an innovative data analysis framework that will advance our understanding of the forces between quarks, constituents of familiar particles like protons. The theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) describes how quarks are bound together by particles called gluons and suggests that the glouns holding the quarks together manifest themselves in small bundles or tubes between the quarks. Excitations of these "flux tubes," which can be visualized like a jump rope rotating between the quarks, lead to a new family of particles called exotic hybrids that exhibit both the properties of quarks and gluons. The experimental observation and study of these exotic particles is the goal of several current and planned experiments and will ultimately require utilization of computer grids to analyze the petabyte-scale data sets that will be produced by future experiments.
Exotic hybrids have unique sets of so-called quantum numbers that characterize their intrinsic spin, differences in how the matter and antimatter partners behave, and what happens to their properties when one examines them in a mirror. The identification of a particle's quantum numbers is done by using detectors to collect large samples of decays of the particle and then describing the patterns of decays using a procedure called an "amplitude analysis." The observed distributions that characterize decay patterns are then fitted to mathematical functions that depend on the particle's quantum numbers and other theoretical assumptions. The unambiguous identification of exotic hybrids requires a systematic application of this amplitude analysis and this, in turn, calls for a close collaboration between experimentalists and phenomenologists to understand how experimental and theoretical biases could affect conclusions.
This project will develop a suite of analysis tools built on the backbone of the Open Science Grid, that would allow transparent analysis of current and future experimental data. The open access analysis paradigm being developed in this project will facilitate direct access to data by phenomenologists and their students for testing theoretical models that underpin the amplitude analysis technique. The tools developed will be open-source and will be utilized by future projects or experiments that plan to provide open access to data.
Our analysis framework, coupled with new high quality data, will address problems that hindered earlier analyses that sometimes led to ambiguous or erroneous conclusions.
