Lauren Wills

The primary objective of my study was to analyze the behavior of the ECal of the LDMX detector, which will allow for easier interpretation of results once the detector is operational. My initial task was to simulate events with varying beam energies and create energy distributions. These distributions were histograms displaying the total energy deposited by each event in the ECal versus the frequency of appearance. We noticed a deviation from the expected normal distribution in the cases of the lower beam energies. Specifically, the ECal recorded energies lower than anticipated, indicating that low-energy events were being incorrectly reconstructed. To investigate the discrepancy, a series of histograms were generated, focusing on the energy deposition patterns across the ECal layers. The breakthrough came upon analyzing events that deposited minimal amounts of energy in the first three layers of the ECal. The energy distribution of such events exhibited non-normal trends and were not centered on the expected mean value. This behavior was absent from the higher beam energy cases. This observation allowed us to conclude that the early layers of the ECal may be inaccurately interpreting low-energy events. This is likely attributable to incorrect weights assigned to these early layers. We now know that these weights must be optimized to rectify this issue in order to accurately interpret low-energy events in the LDMX detector.