Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Track Reconstruction in SoLID

Student: Sonal Nanda

School: Carnegie Mellon University

Mentored By: Jens-Ole Hansen

The Solenoidal Large Intensity Device or SoLID is a project that is currently in the planning stage for Jefferson Lab's Hall A. The SoLID apparatus will use gas electron multiplier (GEM) chambers for track detection. Preliminary track reconstruction software has been developed using a recursive algorithm known as TreeSearch. The goal of this project was to study the performance of this algorithm in the SoLID environment and to gain insight into the feasibility of doing track reconstruction under realistic background conditions. It was found that the efficiency of the reconstruction is 90% in the case of no background, and 62% at 10% background level. With no background, the two dominant contributions to the overall efficiency were the single hit efficiency and the cut placed on tracks' chi-squared. The results of the study suggest that track reconstruction with GEMs for SoLID will present a significant challenge.