Analytical calculations in high energy physics by computer

With the development of the new generation of High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments, huge amounts of data are being generated. Efficient parallel algorithms/frameworks and High IO throughput are key to meet the scalability and performance requirements of HEP offline data analysis. Though Hadoop has gained a lot of attention from scientific community for its scalability and parallel computing framework for large data sets, it’s still difficult to make HEP data processing tasks run directly on Hadoop. In this paper we investigate the application of Hadoop to make HEP jobs run on it transparently. Particularly, we discuss a new mechanism to support HEP software to random access data in HDFS. Because HDFS is streaming data stored only supporting sequential write and append. It cannot satisfy HEP jobs to random access data. This new feature allows the Map/Reduce tasks to random read/write on the local file system on data nodes instead of using Hadoop data streaming interface. This makes HEP jobs run on Hadoop possible. We also develop diverse MapReduce model for HEP jobs such as Corsika simulation, ARGO detector simulation and Medea++ reconstruction. And we develop a toolkit for users to submit/query/remove jobs. In addition, we provide cluster monitoring and account system to benefit to the system availability. This work has been in production for HEP experiment to gain about 40,000 CPU hours per month since September, 2016.

Yoshio Yamaguchi, an icon of postwar Japanese high-energy physics and a strong advocate of international collaboration, died of pneumonia on 12 August 2016 in Tokyo. Yoshio Yamaguchi AKIKO YAMAGUCHI, 2010PPT|High resolutionBorn on 29 January 1926 in Takefu, Japan, Yamaguchi received his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1947 and a doctor of science degree in physics in 1953 from the University of Tokyo. His dissertation was entitled “Phenomenological analysis of meson processes.”In 1949 Yamaguchi joined Osaka City University as a cofounder of its particle-physics theory group. His proposal that the newly discovered particles in cosmic-ray collisions are created in pairs led to the eventual understanding of strange particles. Yamaguchi started his international career in 1953 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; during his two years there, he proposed a separable nuclear potential.In 1957 Yamaguchi was invited to the theory division at CERN. At the time, CERN was in its infancy, and the newly created theory division was attracting numerous superb physicists, with whom Yamaguchi had deep and fruitful interactions and developed close, lasting friendships. His experience during that period greatly influenced Yamaguchi’s passion for international collaboration throughout the rest of his life.Yamaguchi played a vital role in evaluating and consulting on experimental programs at CERN. According to local legend, anyone seeking to get a new research experiment approved first had to convince him to support it. His four years at the organization convinced him that experimental study and verification by means of accelerators were crucial to advancing high-energy physics. While at CERN, he also laid the groundwork for a theory on SU(3) and other flavor symmetries in particle physics.After leaving CERN, Yamaguchi went to the Institute for Nuclear Study (INS) at the University of Tokyo as head of the theory group. In 1968 he moved to the university’s physics department, where he taught and supervised many students. He was not only an excellent researcher but also a dedicated educator. His enthusiasm for and deep knowledge of high-energy physics inspired many young scientists. As one of his students, I witnessed lively discussions every week during and after his High Energy Physics lectures, which attracted many students and staff members.Yamaguchi strongly believed that significant progress can be achieved only if experimental and theoretical physics researchers work hand in hand. He made great efforts to establish experimental high-energy physics by introducing high-energy proton accelerators in Japan. He was instrumental in the creation of the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics and of KEK, the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization.An excellent manager, Yamaguchi returned to the INS as director in 1983 until his retirement in 1986. He was a cofounder and chair of the International Committee for Future Accelerators, which promoted a worldwide network of collaborations. As a member of the Scientific Policy Committee at CERN, he was responsible for, among other things, further promoting international collaborations. He served as president of the Physical Society of Japan in 1986–87. In 1993 he became the first person from Japan to be elected president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Yamaguchi contributed a great deal to the creation of the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies and the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics.Yamaguchi had a tasteful knowledge of the culture of Japan and the world, especially of the classical period. He often impressed colleagues with his memory of his many intellectual conversations with them. His talks were full of wit and humor, which was somewhat exceptional for a Japanese person. Some years ago his friends and students had a chance to listen to his stories about physics and physicists from the early days of postwar Japan; the stories were so vivid that they left a lasting impression. Many of us pray sincerely that Yamaguchi’s hope and enthusiasm for international collaboration and high-energy physics will inspire the coming generation of researchers in Japan and around the world.© 2017 American Institute of Physics.

This research program in high energy physics is carried out under the general supervision of a committee which is composed of G.W. Brandenburg, G.J. Feldman, M.E. Franklin, R.J. Glauber, K. Kinoshita, F.M. Pipkin, K. Strauch, R. Wilson, and H. Yamamoto. Professor G.J. Feldman currently serves as chair of this committee. Dr. Brandenburg is the Director of the High Energy Physics Laboratory and administers the DOE high energy physics contract. In the fall of 1991 S. Mishra will join this committee. Harvard is planning to make one or two additional senior faculty appointments in experimental high energy physics over the next two years. The principal goals of the work described here are to carry out forefront programs in high energy physics research and to provide first rate educational opportunities for students. The experimental program supported through HEPL is carried out at the major accelerator centers in the world and addresses some of the most important questions in high energy physics. Harvard`s educational efforts are concentrated in graduate education, where they are currently supporting thirteen research students. In addition, undergraduate students work in projects at HEPL during the academic year and over summers. These budget projections cover all of the Harvard based high energy physics experimental activities. The {open_quotes}umbrella{close_quotes} nature of this contract greatly simplifies support of essential central technical and computer services and helps the group to take advantage of new physics opportunities and to respond to unexpected needs. The funding for the operation of the HEPL facility is shared proportionally by the experimental groups. Harvard financially supports this high energy physics research program in many ways.

High energy physics (HEP) experiments are facing unprecedented challenges to deal with huge volumes of data. Grid is the excellent technology for it. However, Incompatibility of a variety of grid middewares is an obstacle to exploit the resources on multiple grid infrastructures. This paper firstly introduces HEP experiments and HEP grid, and then reviews the solutions for grid interoperability and interoperations. Because current HEP applications are tightly with gLite middleware, this paper highlights a gateway approach to interoperate with gLite and described it in detail. Direct access to gLite storage system is very important, and a dedicated tool for HEP data sharing is then proposed and implemented. Finally, the implementation of the interoperability of GOS and gLite is introduced.

Data processing in high energy physics experiments is a multi-tiered process in which raw detector signals are first processed locally into physics objects, and then collated into event records which can be scrutinized by a fast online trigger system. The resulting selection of events are reconstructed and pass through a number of software filters before arriving at a final offline analysis where hard physical constants are extracted. Although sophisticated statistical data analysis techniques are routinely employed high energy physics, the use of statistical signal processing in the field is has until now been rare. Our paper will begin with an overview of a typical high energy physics data acquisition system, outlining the technologies and tradeoffs involved at each stage. We will then proceed to argue that the dominant roles of model dependence and systematic errors in final physics analyses render statistical signal processing techniques largely inapplicable at this level. We observe, however, that at the low-level pattern recognition and event reconstruction levels, statistical signal processing techniques have been making inroads in high energy physics for a number of years, and examples from the literature will be cited. The viability of the technique for second level triggers will be assessed. Parallels to other other approaches, such as neural networks, will also be drawn. It will be argued that the falling cost of computing hardware favors the growth of statistical signal processing methods in high energy physics

The modern security landscape for distributed computing in High Energy Physics (HEP) includes a wide range of threats employing different attack vectors. The nature of these threats is such that the most effective method for dealing with them is to work collaboratively, both within the HEP community and with partners further afield - these can, and should, include institutional and campus security teams. In parallel with this work, an appropriate technology stack is essential, incorporating current work on Big Data analytics. The work of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) Security Operations Center (SOC) Working Group (WG) [1] is to pursue these goals to form a reference design (or guidelines) for WLCG sites of different types. The strategy of the group is to identify necessary components - starting with threat intelligence (MISP [2]) and network intrusion detection (Bro [3]), building a working model over time. We present on the progress of the working group thus far, in particular on the programme of workshops now underway. These workshops give an opportunity to engage with sites to allow the development of advice and procedures for deployment, as well as facilitating wider discussions on how to best work with trust groups at different levels. These trust groups vary in scope but can include institutes, National Grid Infrastructures and the WLCG as a whole.

Particle tracking in physical systems is a well known simulation challenge in many domains. In particular, High Energy Physics (HEP) demand efficient simulations of charged particles moving throughout complex detector geometries in a magnetic field. Quantized State Systems (QSS) is a modern family of hybrid numerical methods that provides attractive performance features for these problems. Its state-of-the-art implementation is the general-purpose QSS Solver toolkit. Meanwhile, Geant4 is the most widely used platform for computational particle physics, embedding vast amounts of physics domain knowledge. Yet, Geant4 relies rigidly on classic discrete time numerical methods. In this work we present a robust co-simulation technique to apply QSS in the simulation of HEP experiments, thus leveraging the best of both toolkits. We obtained speedups of up to three times in synthetic, yet representative scenarios, and a competitive performance in a difficult benchmark modeled after the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) particle detector at CERN.

Software and Computing (S&C) are essential to all High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments and many theoretical studies. The size and complexity of S&C are now commensurate with that of experimental instruments, playing a critical role in experimental design, data acquisition/instrumental control, reconstruction, and analysis. Furthermore, S&C often plays a leading role in driving the precision of theoretical calculations and simulations. Within this central role in HEP, S&C has been immensely successful over the last decade. This report looks forward to the next decade and beyond, in the context of the 2021 Particle Physics Community Planning Exercise ("Snowmass") organized by the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) of the American Physical Society.

The availability of low-power, radiation-resistant components has an enormous importance in the development of the electronic systems for modern detectors in a High Energy Physics (HEP) experiment. This paper describes the characterization in terms of radiation effects of two serializer blocks within a high speed transmitter, prior developed with the objective of achieving a power consumption of less than 30 mW at the operating speed of 4.8 Gbit/sec. Within the first serializer, called “simple TMR”, a traditional solution, based on the hardware redundancy, has been implemented. In the second case a new architecture, less power consuming, called “code protected”, has been proposed. The tests previously performed shown an average consumption of ∼30 mW and ∼19 mW, respectively, for a bit rate of 4.8 Gbit/sec but do not fully clarify if the blocks are suitable for working under extremely high radiation levels. Hence, a deep radiation hardness investigation has been performed and presented here to confirm the availability of these blocks in a HEP electronic system. SEU sensitivities are measured and bit error rates better than 2 E-15 are obtained, confirming that the “code protected” solution assures reliable communications in HEP experiments environment with a smaller power consumption. These blocks have also been designed and tested to cope with a total ionizing dose of 100 Mrad over 10 years of operation.

Does HEP still hold challenges for computer science?

Caltech High Energy Physics (HEP) has a broad program in both experimental and theoretical physics. We are known for our creativity and leadership. The future is uncertain and we strive to be involved in all the major areas of experimental and theoretical HEP physics so no matter where the important discoveries occur we are well positioned to play an important role. An outstanding group of postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, staff scientists, and technical and administrative personnel support our efforts in experimental and theoretical physics. The PI’s on this grant are involved in the following program of experimental and theoretical activities: I) EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS Our CMS group, led by Harvey Newman and Maria Spiropulu, has played a key role in the discovery and interpretation of the Higgs boson and in searches for new physics. They have important hardware responsibilities in both ECAL and HCAL and are also involved in the upgrades needed for the High Luminosity LHC. Newman's group also develops and operates Grid-based computing, networking, and collaborative systems for CMS and the US HEP community. The charged lepton (Mu2e) and quark BaBar flavor physics group is led by David Hitlin and Frank Porter. On Mu2e they have been instrumental in the design of the calorimeter. Construction responsibilities include one third of the crystals and associated readout as well as the calibration system. They also will have responsibility for a major part of the online system software. Although data taking ceased in 2008 the Caltech BaBar group is active on several new forefront analyses. The neutrino group is led by Ryan Patterson. They are central to NOvA's core oscillation physics program, to calibration, and to detector readiness being responsible for the production and installation of 12,000 APD arrays. They have key roles in neutrino appearance and disappearance analysis in MINOS and MINOS+. Sunil Golwala leads the dark matter direct detection effort. Areas of activity include: CDMS II data analysis, contributions to SuperCDMS Soudan operations and analysis, R&D towards SuperCDMS SNOLAB, development of a novel screener for radiocontamination (the BetaCage), and development of new WIMP detector concepts. Ren-Yuan Zhu leads the HEP crystal laboratory for the advanced detector R&D effort. The crystal lab is involved in development of novel scintillating crystals and has proposed several crystal based detector concepts for future HEP experiments at the energy and intensity frontiers. Its current research effort is concentrated on development of fast crystal scintillators with good radiation hardness and low cost. II) THEORETICAL PHYSICS The main theme of Sergei Gukov's current research is the relation between the geometry of quantum group invariants and their categorification, on the one hand, and the physics of supersymmetric gauge theory and string theory, on the other. Anton Kapustin's research spans a variety of topics in non-perturbative Quantum Field Theory (QFT). His main areas of interest are supersymmetric gauge theories, non-perturbative dualities in QFT, disorder operators, Topological Quantum Field Theory, and non-relativistic QFT. He is also interested in the foundations and possible generalizations of Quantum Mechanics. Hirosi Ooguri's current research has two main components. One is to find exact results in Calabi-Yau compactification of string theory. Another is to explore applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence. He also plans to continue his project with Caltech postdoctoral fellows on BPS spectra of supersymmetric gauge theories in diverse dimensions. John Preskill works on quantum information science. This field may lead to important future technologies, and also lead to new understanding of issues in fundamental physics John Schwarz has been exploring a number of topics in superstring theory/M-theory, supersymmetric gauge theory, and their AdS/CFT relationships. Much of the motivation for these studies is the desire to gain a deeper understanding of superstring theory and M-theory. The research interests of Mark Wise span particle physics, cosmology and nuclear physics. His recent work has centered on extensions of the standard model where baryon number and lepton number are gauged and extensions of the standard model that have novel sources of baryon number violation and new sources of charged lepton flavor violation

High Energy Physics (HEP) is a very data intensive and trivially parallelizable science discipline. HEP is probing nature at increasingly finer details requiring ever increasing computational resources to process and analyze experimental data. In this paper, we discuss how HEP provisioned resources so far using Grid technologies, how HEP is starting to include new resource providers like commercial Clouds and HPC installations, and how HEP is transparently provisioning resources at these diverse providers.

Computers in High-Energy Physics

This annual report of the Physics, Computer Science and Mathematics Division describes the scientific research and other work carried out within the Division during 1977. The Division is concerned with work in experimental and theoretical physics, with computer science and applied mathematics, and with the operation of a computer center. The major physics research activity is in high-energy physics, although there is a relatively small program of medium-energy research. The High Energy Physics research program in the Physics Division is concerned with fundamental research which will enable man to comprehend the nature of the physical world. The major effort is now directed toward experiments with positron-electron colliding beam at PEP. The Medium Energy Physics program is concerned with research using mesons and nucleons to probe the properties of matter. This research is concerned with the study of nuclear structure, nuclear reactions, and the interactions between nuclei and electromagnetic radiation and mesons. The Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Department engages in research in a variety of computer science and mathematics disciplines. Work in computer science and applied mathematics includes construction of data bases, computer graphics, computational physics and data analysis, mathematical modeling, and mathematical analysis of differential and integral equations resulting from physical problems. The Computer Center provides large-scale computational support to LBL's scientific programs. Descriptions of the various activities are quite short; references to published results are given. 24 figures. (RWR)

The principal goals of this work are to carry out forefront programs in high energy physics research and to provide first rate educational opportunities for students. The experimental program supported through HEPL is carried out at the major accelerator centers in the world and addresses some of the most important questions in high energy physics. The program is based at Harvard's High Energy Physics Laboratory, which has offices, computing facilities, and engineering support, and both electronics and machine shops.