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CMS

Cornell is a member of the CMS collaboration and its US subgroup USCMS. CMS is one of the large detectors being built at the LHC at the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland.

Experimental Activities

CMS

A view of the CMS detector, which is currently under construction.

Cornell is currently engaged in the following areas of the CMS experiment:

Pixel detector

The CMS pixel detector has more than 60 million channels. Our group has developed calibration and data acquisition software, and is now using it to commission and debug the detector. We are also developing new sensor technologies for the SLHC.

Trigger

Our Trigger group provides trigger monitoring software to both experts and shift crews, develops tools to monitor the acceptance/rejection ratio and timing of the various trigger paths, and is working on an enhancement for the electron trigger path. We also have provided tools such as an interim Level 1 trigger emulator and detector to physics converter.

EM Calorimeter

Cornell has a long history with CsI calorimeters in CLEO and is bringing that expertise to the CMS ECAL. We have developed the ECAL geometry description and assumed responsibility for geometry-related software associated with both the hadron and electromagnetic calorimeters. We are currently developing the software for aligning the ECAL.

Core Software

Cornell has been heavily involved in the design and implentation of the CMS software framework, called CMS SW. We are also designing and implementing the web services that allow physicists to access dataset information, and are collaborating with the Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing to build a toolset that is specifically suited to large data sets. We are also leading the development of the Fireworks event display.

Physics Challenges

In addition to these projects, we are developing analyses in preparation for the LHC data expected in 2009. We are interested in is "Beyond the Standard Model" physics such as Supersymmetry, extra dimension and the mystery of dark matter. CMS will also be a great place to study the top quark in great detail (which some of us are already doing at CDF at Fermilab) and looking for Higgs bosons, in either a Standard Model flavor or whatever new Higgs Nature throws at us. Specific topics that we're now working on include strategies for detecting Little Higgs production and distinguishing it from SUSY, the development of tools for SUSY discovery in a jets, leptons, and MET channel, and a search for the Higgs in the tau-tau final state.