Cosmic muon simulation with a new HCal prototype geometry at LDMX

Sammanfattning

The light dark matter experiment (LDMX) is a planned experiment to search for dark matter (DM) in the partly unexplored lower region of the mass range motivated by the thermal freeze-out mechanism. Electrons will be accelerated toward a tungsten target, and as they scatter off a nucleus, production of DM may occur, which will be inferred from a significant amount of missing energy in the detector. Therefore, a detector capable of detecting and measuring all incoming and outgoing particles, together with a thorough understanding of its performance, is necessary. Measurements, as well as simulations, of cosmic muon interactions with prototypes of the detector's different subsystems is one approach that will contribute to a deeper understanding. The aim of this thesis is to create a geometry description of the hadronic calorimeter (HCal) components of a test-stand that will be used for cosmic-muon measurements, integrate it into the LDMX software framework, and simulate cosmic muons passing through it. The work carried out in this project includes the description of the HCal prototype geometry in a GDML file, adaptation of a Python file that supplies detector information to the software, and modifications of the employed cosmic muon generator. Data obtained directly from simulation and after mimicking real data acquisition are analyzed. When the new geometry is incorporated into the software, data received directly from simulation provide reasonable results, while issues appear to arise in the digitization or reconstruction process. In addition, different parts of the detector are observed to receive an unequal amount of hits. Most likely, more changes must be made to the software to successfully digitize and reconstruct the simulated data obtained when using the new geometry.