JANUARY

To finish up with our data, first we had to make the necessary cuts the data that we had with 100,000 events, since there is so much. I decided to look at the charge, since we only wanted to look at particles that are negative. In doing this, it means that the event is Z with two particles, because a Z has a positive and a negative charge. When having a negative and positive charge, this makes the total charge, or Q1 x Q2 -1. I also decided to make a cut with just the total energy over mass, because as I explained earlier in a post, this means that there is no momentum, or that the two "particles" that the detector is picking up has the same momentum, therefore canceling each other out, and becoming zero. I started making very specific cuts with phi, and this got me into trouble. As you can see in the graph below, there are barely any events at all, because I made such a small cut on phi when I don't know what the actual cut is, I am taking out data that I need. Therefore, I need to start over again and start off with things I know cuts too, such as charge, back to back with E/M, and so on. Below is a graph of a few cuts, (E/M and then phi sum). With this cut, there is obviously some data that aren't cosmic ray events because we only have back to back events. To make a finer cut, I need to think of a way to see that it is just coming straight up and down in the detector. This graph shows events that are back to back going in every direction in the detector, not just up and down. I know that making a cut from phi1 and phi2 will give me this effect around pi over two, but I now have to think of a way to do so without taking out too much or too little data.



This graph above is showing a bigger cut of phi1 and phi2 added together. Because I couldn't find a way to make the particles come down straight up and down, they are all particles that are back to back, that equal zero. There is also a charge q=-1, because the particles have to different charges, and a positive times a negative is negative. With these cuts I was able to make this graph. I also made a lot of cuts, but this graph only had around 20 cosmic rays, and so I tried to make sure I was cutting the data.



Here is the same data, but I am showing the cut I had with the total energy over mass. I am glad that with the cuts I made with phi, Almost all are around one. This means that they are back to back events because there's no momentum.

Our group has found four ways of cutting the data for looking at cosmic rays. They are : phi1+phi2 E/M 1.57 Charge With these cuts in mind, I was able to work on further continuing my search for cosmic rays, and continue finding different and unique ways to cut and manipulate data.