Alexander Richards

We use MasterCode to perform a frequentist analysis of the constraints on a phenomenological MSSM model with 11 parameters, the pMSSM11, including constraints from ~ 36/fb of LHC data at 13 TeV and PICO, XENON1T and PandaX-II searches for dark matter scattering, as well as previous accelerator and astrophysical measurements, presenting fits both with and without the $(g-2)_{\mu}$ constraint. The pMSSM11 is specified by the following parameters: 3 gaugino masses $M_{1,2,3}$, a common mass for the first-and second-generation squarks $m_{\tilde{q}}$ and a distinct third-generation squark mass $m_{\tilde{q}_3}$, a common mass for the first-and second-generation sleptons $m_{\tilde l}$ and a distinct third-generation slepton mass $m_{\tilde \tau}$, a common trilinear mixing parameter $A$, the Higgs mixing parameter $\mu$, the pseudoscalar Higgs mass $M_A$ and $\tan\beta$. In the fit including $(g-2)_{\mu}$, a Bino-like $\tilde\chi^0_1$ is preferred, whereas a Higgsino-like $\tilde \chi^0_1$ is favoured when the $(g-2)_{\mu}$ constraint is dropped. We identify the mechanisms that operate in different regions of the pMSSM11 parameter space to bring the relic density of the lightest neutralino, $\tilde\chi^0_1$, into the range indicated by cosmological data. In the fit including $(g-2)_{\mu}$, coannihilations with $\tilde \chi^0_2$ and the Wino-like $\tilde\chi^{\pm}_1$ or with nearly-degenerate first- and second-generation sleptons are favoured, whereas coannihilations with the $\tilde \chi^0_2$ and the Higgsino-like $\tilde\chi^{\pm}_1$ or with first- and second-generation squarks may be important when the $(g-2)_{\mu}$ constraint is dropped. Prospects remain for discovering strongly-interacting sparticles at the LHC as well as for discovering electroweakly-interacting sparticles at a future linear $e^+ e^-$ collider such as the ILC or CLIC.

We describe a likelihood analysis using MasterCode of variants of the MSSM in which the soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters are assumed to have universal values at some scale $$M_\mathrm{in}$$ below the supersymmetric grand unification scale $$M_\mathrm{GUT}$$ , as can occur in mirage mediation and other models. In addition to $$M_\mathrm{in}$$ , such ‘sub-GUT’ models have the 4 parameters of the CMSSM, namely a common gaugino mass $$m_{1/2}$$ , a common soft supersymmetry-breaking scalar mass $$m_0$$ , a common trilinear mixing parameter A and the ratio of MSSM Higgs vevs $$\tan \beta $$ , assuming that the Higgs mixing parameter $$\mu > 0$$ . We take into account constraints on strongly- and electroweakly-interacting sparticles from $$\sim 36$$ /fb of LHC data at 13 TeV and the LUX and 2017 PICO, XENON1T and PandaX-II searches for dark matter scattering, in addition to the previous LHC and dark matter constraints as well as full sets of flavour and electroweak constraints. We find a preference for $$M_\mathrm{in}\sim 10^5$$ to $$10^9 \,\, \mathrm {GeV}$$ , with $$M_\mathrm{in}\sim M_\mathrm{GUT}$$ disfavoured by $$\Delta \chi ^2 \sim 3$$ due to the $$\mathrm{BR}(B_{s, d} \rightarrow \mu ^+\mu ^-)$$ constraint. The lower limits on strongly-interacting sparticles are largely determined by LHC searches, and similar to those in the CMSSM. We find a preference for the LSP to be a Bino or Higgsino with $$m_{\tilde{\chi }^0_{1}} \sim 1 \,\, \mathrm {TeV}$$ , with annihilation via heavy Higgs bosons H / A and stop coannihilation, or chargino coannihilation, bringing the cold dark matter density into the cosmological range. We find that spin-independent dark matter scattering is likely to be within reach of the planned LUX-Zeplin and XENONnT experiments. We probe the impact of the $$(g-2)_\mu $$ constraint, finding similar results whether or not it is included.

We perform a likelihood analysis of the constraints from accelerator experiments and astrophysical observations on supersymmetric (SUSY) models with SU(5) boundary conditions on soft SUSY-breaking parameters at the GUT scale. The parameter space of the models studied has 7 parameters: a universal gaugino mass $m_{1/2}$, distinct masses for the scalar partners of matter fermions in five- and ten-dimensional representations of SU(5), $m_5$ and $m_{10}$, and for the $\mathbf{5}$ and $\mathbf{\bar 5}$ Higgs representations $m_{H_u}$ and $m_{H_d}$, a universal trilinear soft SUSY-breaking parameter $A_0$, and the ratio of Higgs vevs $\tan \beta$. In addition to previous constraints from direct sparticle searches, low-energy and flavour observables, we incorporate constraints based on preliminary results from 13 TeV LHC searches for jets + MET events and long-lived particles, as well as the latest PandaX-II and LUX searches for direct Dark Matter detection. In addition to previously-identified mechanisms for bringing the supersymmetric relic density into the range allowed by cosmology, we identify a novel ${\tilde u_R}/{\tilde c_R} - \tilde{\chi}^0_1$ coannihilation mechanism that appears in the supersymmetric SU(5) GUT model and discuss the role of ${\tilde \nu_\tau}$ coannihilation. We find complementarity between the prospects for direct Dark Matter detection and SUSY searches at the LHC.

Training devices to enhance golf swing technique are increasingly in demand. Golf swing biomechanics are typically assessed in a laboratory setting and not readily accessible. Inertial measurement units (IMUs) offer improved access as they are wearable, cost-effective, and user-friendly. This study investigates the accuracy of IMU-based golf swing kinematics of upper torso and pelvic rotation compared to lab-based 3D motion capture. Thirty-six male and female professional and amateur golfers participated in the study, nine in each sub-group. Golf swing rotational kinematics, including upper torso and pelvic rotation, pelvic rotational velocity, S-factor (shoulder obliquity), O-factor (pelvic obliquity), and X-factor were compared. Strong positive correlations between IMU and 3D motion capture were found for all parameters; Intraclass Correlations ranged from 0.91 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.89, 0.93) for O-factor to 1.00 (95% CI: 1.00, 1.00) for upper torso rotation; Pearson coefficients ranged from 0.92 (95% CI: 0.92, 0.93) for O-factor to 1.00 (95% CI: 1.00, 1.00) for upper torso rotation (p < 0.001 for all). Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated good agreement between the two methods; absolute mean differences ranged from 0.61 to 1.67 degrees. Results suggest that IMUs provide a practical and viable alternative for golf swing analysis, offering golfers accessible and wearable biomechanical feedback to enhance performance. Furthermore, integrating IMUs into golf coaching can advance swing analysis and personalized training protocols. In conclusion, IMUs show significant promise as cost-effective and practical devices for golf swing analysis, benefiting golfers across all skill levels and providing benchmarks for training.

This paper describes the development of a two-axis silicon micromirror for a 480 x 480 optical cross-connect (OXC).The micromirror is an electromagnetically actuated, analog silicon mirror.The range of motion for the micromirror is ±8 °.Full range of motion open-loop moves have been demonstrated in under 5 ms, which enables a full 480 x480 switch reconfiguration in 10 ms.The micromirror and OXC have been optimized for low loss.The average optical insertion loss is -2.5 db at 1550 nm and -2.9 db at 1310 nm, the two primary wavelengths in fiber optic data transmission.SONET data at 2.4 Obits/sec has been transmitted through the OXC with no loss penalty.The preliminary life and environmental validation data for the NxN Micromirror is reported.Bare micromirror samples have passed both the GR-63-Core vibration specification (1-100 Hz 0.50, 3-axis; 100-500 Hz, 30, 3-axis) and temperature extreme specification (-40 °C to 70 °C) for devices in their shipping containers.We also have shock tested a small sample of micromirrors to failure.These fail at 800-9000 shock.Micromirrors have been cycled to full deflection for 30 million cycles (6x specified life for the product) with no change in performance.

Golf swing generates power through coordinated rotations of the pelvis and upper torso, which are highly consistent among professionals. Currently, golf performance is graded on handicap, length-of-shot, and clubhead-speed-at-impact. No performance indices are grading the technique of pelvic and torso rotations. As an initial step toward developing a performance index, we collected kinematic metrics of swing rotational biomechanics and hypothesized that a set of these metrics could differentiate between amateur and pro players. The aim of this study was to develop a single-score index of rotational biomechanics based on metrics that are consistent among pros and could be derived in the future using inertial measurement units (IMU).Golf swing rotational biomechanics was analyzed using 3D kinematics on eleven professional (age 31.0 ± 5.9 years) and five amateur (age 28.4 ± 6.9 years) golfers. Nine kinematic metrics known to be consistent among professionals and could be obtained using IMUs were selected as candidate variables. Oversampling was used to account for dataset imbalances. All combinations, up to three metrics, were tested for suitability for factor analysis using Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin tests. Principal component analysis was performed, and the logarithm of Euclidean distance of principal components between golf swings and the average pro vector was used to classify pro vs. amateur golf swings employing logistic regression and leave-one-out cross-validation. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was used to determine the optimal set of kinematic metrics.A single-score index calculated using peak pelvic rotational velocity pre-impact, pelvic rotational velocity at impact, and peak upper torso rotational velocity post-impact demonstrated strong predictive performance to differentiate pro (mean ± SD:100 ± 10) vs. amateur (mean ± SD:82 ± 4) golfers with an AUC of 0.97 and a standardized mean difference of 2.12.In this initial analysis, an index derived from peak pelvic rotational velocity pre-impact, pelvic rotational velocity at impact, and peak upper torso rotational velocity post-impact demonstrated strong predictive performance to differentiate pro from amateur golfers. Swing Performance Index was developed using a limited sample size; future research is needed to confirm results. The Swing Performance Index aims to provide quantified feedback on swing technique to improve performance, expedite training, and prevent injuries.

The GridPP consortium in the UK is currently testing a multi-VO DIRAC service aimed at non-LHC VOs. These VOs (Virtual Organisations) are typically small and generally do not have a dedicated computing support post. The majority of these represent particle physics experiments (e.g. NA62 and COMET), although the scope of the DIRAC service is not limited to this field. A few VOs have designed bespoke tools around the EMI-WMS & LFC, while others have so far eschewed distributed resources as they perceive the overhead for accessing them to be too high. The aim of the GridPP DIRAC project is to provide an easily adaptable toolkit for such VOs in order to lower the threshold for access to distributed resources such as Grid and cloud computing. As well as hosting a centrally run DIRAC service, we will also publish our changes and additions to the upstream DIRAC codebase under an open-source license. We report on the current status of this project and show increasing adoption of DIRAC within the non-LHC communities.

A job submission and management tool is one of the necessary components in any distributed computing system. Such a tool should provide a user-friendly interface for physics production groups and ordinary analysis users to access heterogeneous computing resources, without requiring knowledge of the underlying grid middleware. Ganga, with its common framework and customizable plug-in structure is such a tool. This paper will describe how experiment-specific job management tools for BESIII and SuperB were developed as Ganga plug-ins to meet their own unique requirements, discuss and contrast their challenges met and lessons learned.

The Ganga project was originally developed for use by LHC experiments and has been used extensively throughout Run1 in both LHCb and ATLAS. This document describes some the most recent developments within the Ganga project. There have been improvements in the handling of large scale computational tasks in the form of a new GangaTasks infrastructure. Improvements in file handling through using a new IGangaFile interface makes handling files largely transparent to the end user. In addition to this the performance and usability of Ganga have both been addressed through the development of a new queues system allows for parallel processing of job related tasks.

Ganga is the main end-user distributed analysis tool for the ATLAS and LHCb experiments and provides the foundation layer for the HammerCloud system, used by the LHC experiments for validation and stress testing of their numerous distributed computing facilities. Here we illustrate recent developments and demonstrate how tools that were initially developed for a specific user community have been migrated into the Ganga core, and so can be exploited by a wider user-base. Similarly, examples will be given where Ganga components have been adapted for use by communities in their custom analysis packages.

This document presents the result of recent developments within Ganga[1] project to support users from new communities outside of HEP. In particular I will examine the case of users from the Large Scale Survey Telescope (LSST) group looking to use resources provided by the UK based GridPP[2][3] DIRAC[4][5] instance. An example use case is work performed with users from the LSST Virtual Organisation (VO) to distribute the workflow used for galaxy shape identification analyses. This work highlighted some LSST specific challenges which could be well solved by common tools within the HEP community.

A description is given of a broadband ratio pyrometer suitable for measuring the temperature of aluminium during processing. Each band, one using a Ge detector and the other a PbS detector, was also used independently as a brightness pyrometer. This tri-modal pyrometer (TMP) has intrinsic precisions of 1 degrees C for the ratio pyrometer, 0.4 and 0.3 degrees C respectively for the Ge and PbS brightness pyrometers over the spectral radiance temperature range of 250 to 600 degrees C. However, for aluminium processing in both rolling and extrusion processes, much greater uncertainties result from the various factors affecting emissivity, e.g. the nature of the process in the plant, the aluminium alloy, the shape of the surface and the temperature of the product. It was found that for some applications the ratio pyrometer was preferable to the brightness pyrometers, but in general it was possible to establish by experiment emissivity functions that allowed the temperature of aluminium to be measured with at least one of the TMP modes with an uncertainty of less than +or-10 degrees C.

The GridPP consortium provides computing support to many high energy physics projects in the UK. As part of this GridPP offers access to a large amount of highly distributed resources across the UK for multiple collaborations. The userbase supported by GridPP includes hundreds of users spanning multiple virtual organisations with many different computing requirements. In order to provide a common interface to these distributed a centralised DIRAC instance has been setup at Imperial College London. This paper describes the experiences learnt from deploying this DIRAC instance and the modifications that have made to support the GridPP use case.

Abstract To help solve the navigational problem, i.e., being able to successfully locate a circuit for probing or editing without destroying chip functionality, a near-infrared (NIR), near-ultraviolet (NUV), and visible spectrum camera system was developed that attaches to most focused ion beam (FIB) or scanning electron microscope vacuum chambers. This paper reviews the details of the design and implementation of the NIR/NUV camera system, as instantiated upon the FEI FIB 200, with a particular focus on its use for the visualization of buried structures, and also for non-destructive real time area of interest location and end point detection. It specifically considers the use of the micro-optical camera system for its benefit in assisting with frontside and backside circuit edit, as well as other typical FIB milling activities. The quality of the image obtained by the IR camera rivals or exceeds traditional optical based imaging microscopy techniques.

Updates to the ATLAS fast simulation software are presented which improve the flexibility of its calorimeter and reconstructor objects allowing the easy implementation of new and unforeseen detector effects. Both hot and dead cell types are studied as initial examples and can be seen to be working as expected. A suite of jet finding algorithms known as ‘FastJet’ is introduced and linked into the ATLAS code framework to help unify the description of jets between fast and full simulations as well as in the reconstruction of data. Preparations for an early-data supersymmetry search in the 0-lepton, jets and ETmiss T channel are presented which, in the absence of a study of the background systematics, show the validity of the channel in detecting the ‘SU3’ mSUGRA benchmark point above the combined standard model background. The most up-to-date publication observes good agreement between the simulated SM background and data up to values of ETmiss ~100 GeV and Meff ~1500 GeV showing a good understanding of both detector and physics simulation and that the real ATLAS detector is performing as expected. The first ATLAS inclusive measurement of charged particle multiplicities in events with nch ≥ 1 within the kinematic range pT > 500 GeV and |η| < 2.5 is discussed. With a measured charged particle multiplicity per event and per unit of pseudorapidity at η = 0 of 1.333 ± 0.003(stat.) ±0.040(syst.) being some 5-15% higher than predicted, clear differences are evident between the Monte Carlo predictions and what is observed in the data. Contributions from the author including trigger efficiency studies, a ‘Rivet’ analysis routine, a simple simulation of the MBTS as well as the creation of a fast trigger simulation of the MBTS triggers L1_MBTS_1, L1_MBTS_2 and L1_MBTS_1_1 are detailed.

Those of us in the overhead line business are constantly checking out lines and structures as we travel. Our distraction with our craft undoubtedly amuses and annoys our families. What do you see when you drive around? We take pride because we understand that the electric grid is ‘the largest machine in the world’ and that power delivery is critical life-line infrastructure. We appreciate the size and complexity of power line projects, we admire unique solutions and we notice examples of excellent execution. Far too often, however, we see sloppy and neglected installations. It makes us question how the design was originally conceived and wonder how it can stay in service much longer. If it is something we notice and ponder, how do these neglected lines impact the general public? Should we turn a blind eye to haphazard conductor arrangements and leaning poles? Or, should we put forth our best effort to keep the grid looking organized, professional, and tidy? This paper will explore the responsibility engineers have to consider aesthetics and the functional benefits that can result by examining ASCE Policy 117 on aesthetics as it applies to power line projects. Attention to good cable management designing power lines has parallels to an electrician routing electric or data cable, leaving an elegant, safe, and easy to maintain installation. Further, the human response to organization or disorganization ultimately affects public opinion and acceptance to power lines. As we invest and maintain our overhead lines and structures, making design decisions with the mindset of being right and tight will result in improved public safety, grid reliability, and visual quality. We should take inspiration from the beauty and functionality displayed by thoughtfully executed cable management and strive to impress upon the greater pubic the professionalism and attention to detail that is pervasive in our industry.

LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a Dark Matter experiment based at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, USA. It is currently under construction and aims to start data taking in 2020. Its computing model stipulates two independent data centres, one in the USA and one in the UK. Both data centres will hold a complete copy of the experiment’s data and are expected to handle all aspects of data processing and user analysis. Here we discuss the set-up of the UK data centre within the context of the existing UK Grid infrastructure and show that a mature distributed computing system such as the Grid can be extended to serve as a central data centre for a reasonably large non-LHC experiment.

We present the prototype of an open source data transfer tool kit. It provides an easy to use ‘drag-and-drop’ web interface for users to transfer files between institutions that do not have a grid infrastructure in place. The underlying technology leverages standard grid technologies. e.g. automatic generation of X.509 certificates, but remains completely hidden from the user.

As educators, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations persist as career outcomes. However, educators are often asked to contribute to their workplace through tasks not directly related to students and student outcomes. These non-teaching workloads can result in a lack of intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction for faculty in high technology areas where non-teaching workloads are especially high. Coupled with a demand for the support of STEM, applied and career-focused baccalaureate education from industry it becomes crucial to support these faculty in their endeavors to educate the future of their respective industry. This qualitative research sought to investigate the particular circumstances surrounding faculty in high-technology programs. The study found nearly all the participants shared a common desire and intrinsic motivation to support students and their program to the best of their ability. The study also concluded that faculty often see these non-teaching workloads as detracting from students' classroom experiences or the instructor's own classroom efficacy. These experiences often were discussed as having a demotivating effect on faculty and frequently resulted in negative feelings towards administration and administrative practices at each institution. The study recommends a thorough investigation into how workloads, especially non-teaching workloads, are distributed to faculty members in these high-demand areas.