Neutral Pions identification in PHOS

PHOS Geometrical Acceptance

The acceptance of the detector ( 5 modules) to the two decay photons of Pi0 and Eta's has been studied. Pi0 and Eta's has been simulated from the  ALICE interacting point, with angles 0 < Phi < 360 and rapidity's -0.5 < y < 0.5.  Both particles are represented in two different energy ranges. The result is shown in this figure.
(As the detector will have 4 modules, it has to be redone )

Invariant Mass Analysis

The Pi0 identification efficiency with the invariant mass analysis is presented. A Pi0's flat spectrum of energies from 0.5 to 100 GeV has been simulated over the PHOS modules (only Pi0's that decay the two photons in PHOS are simulated). In the real experiment some cuts will be applied to identify correctly the Pi0. This cuts has been applied although they have few sense in flat distribution but useful if we want to compare with the real case distribution (HIJING) , that will be done later.

Hard Pi0 identification

Hard Pi0 in Photon PCA

The same Pi0 simulation as in the previous paragraph is again analyzed, but now we only look for one reconstructed particle, the two decay photons are very close (mainly great part of the particles with E > 30 GeV) and they can not be resolved separately. These simulated events with both photons overlapped as one reconstructed particle were passed through the photon PCA criterionPCA plots for reconstructed energy of 30, 50, 70 and 90 GeV Pi0's are shown. The 3 photon ellipses can be seen in the figures and it represents where are supposed to be the photons in this PCA analysis.  At not very hard energies this ellipse is not including the Pi0, but at greater energies, they overlap too much.

Hard Pi0  PCA

To estimate the misidentification probability of photons as pi0 at high energy, one has to define PCA for the pi0's. A new PCA analysis has been done. Now the particles to be identified are the Hard energy Pi0. The procedure is the same as in the photons case.  For the hard Pi0's, the ellipse parameters dependence on the energy is shown. Also available some examples with the 3 fitted ellipses to the PCA analysis of the Pi0's. Photon contamination to the pi0 spectrum can be defined by passing the photons through the pi0's PCA. Figure Photons in PCA for Pi0's shows the principal components of the photon events calculated with the PCA of the pi0. Three ellipses show the pi0 principal components with 1-, 2- and 3-sigma.
 

Identification Efficiency of Pi0 and Photon in both PCA


Both PCA analysis (the one for photons and the one for pi0's) have been applied for hard photons and pi0's. In the following pictures is shown the ratio defined by the pi0 or photon spectrum reconstructed as one reconstructed point and identified as a photon or pi0 (by the 3 ellipses cuts), to the spectrum of all pi0's or photons reconstructed as one reconstructed point.

The increase of the pi0 misidentification, observed in the figures, is explained by the fact that high energy pi0 have a very similar shower shape to that of a single photon. The best photon / pi0 separation will be achieved when the ratio of the pi0 misidentification probability to the photon true identification probability is minimized. This leads to the necessity to decrease the photon identification efficiency at high p_T in order to increase the pi0 suppression power. The smooth degrading of the PCA ellipse from 1 sigma at 50 GeV to, e.g. A*sigma at 100 GeV (A<1) will do it.
 

Identification Efficiency of Pi0 in HIJING

High energy pi0's, flat energy distribution, the ones used previously, are merged with  HIJING simulations, and the efficiency of reconstructing high energy neutral pions in heavy ion environment is studied. As with the photons section, the study is made following the different cuts, and with both PCA analysis. This are the results:
  In ALICE/PHOS internal note "Predictions for high Pt and Pi0 production ALICE/LHC" (ALICE reference number: ALICE-INT-2002-02 V 1.0), there is a prediction of the Pi0 spectrum to be observed in PHOS/ALICE for a full year of ALICE running, in the 10% most central Pb+Pb collisions at 5.5 TeV, which were derived from binary scaling of p+p collisions. This spectrum is shown in the following figure, corrected by the High Purity efficiency detection by our identification procedure.
 
 
 

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