Tasks and Responsibilities of the Physics area

This area is in charge of two main aspects:

1) The refined and optimised reconstruction of physics objects (electrons, muons, taus, photon jets, b-jets, missing ET, etc.) . This is organized and addressed, as it is today, in the framework of Combined Performance WGs. It should be noted that the first reconstruction of the above-mentioned physics objects is performed in the context of the Data Preparation area, where these objects are used to understand the detector performance and for calibration and alignment purposes.

Examples of the tasks of the Combined Performance groups are:

• Develop a more refined reconstruction of the physics objects, which goes beyond their use for alignment and calibration purposes, i.e. having in mind also efficiency, purity, etc.
• Study, compare and optimize different combined reconstruction algorithms for a given object, e.g. algorithms with different performance in terms of efficiency and background contamination. Evaluate in detail the detector performance for these algorithms.
• Develop also more specialized algorithms following the specific requests of the various Physics WGs. It is the task of the Physics Coordination to make sure that the number of requests does not diverge.
• Address global performance issues, like the determination of the absolute energy scales of the experiment (electron scale, muon scale, jet scale, etc.)

The above studies must be carried out with both real and simulated data.

There is some (unavoidable) overlap between the Data Preparation area and the Combined Performance groups in the work related to the combined reconstruction of physics objects. Coherence between these efforts, and minimization of work duplication, is ensured by the fact that the Data Preparation Coordinator sits in the Physics Coordination and that the convenors of the Combined Performance groups are appointed by the systems which are also very active in the Data Preparation area.

2) Data analysis to extract physics results. These activities are organized and addressed, as it is today, within the context of Physics WGs. Since the main tasks of these groups are quite obvious, and will be the natural evolution of the present ones, we don’t describe them further here. We only stress that the Physics WGs will play a crucial role in the approval procedure of physics results for conferences and publication, as discussed in a Physics policy document (in preparation). Some general policy issues related to physics analysis are also presented in the same document.

The role and composition of the Physics Coordination are described here.

-- FabiolaGianotti - 21 Sep 2005