Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Monte Carlo Studies

Student: Aiden Boyer

School: Duquesne University

Mentored By: Harut Avagyan and Fatiha Benmokhtar

In Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS), a lepton beam is scattered off a nuclear target and detected in coincidence with a high momentum ejected hadron. Unlike Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS), SIDIS allows additional nuclear structure information to be obtained via kinematic distributions and asymmetries found within them. In recent years, SIDIS has become a featured experimental technique at Jefferson Lab, prompting a need to further our understanding of SIDIS processes through simulation. This can be accomplished by simulating SIDIS interactions using Monte Carlo (MC) event generators, based on the Lund Fragmentation mechanism. The simulated SIDIS data can be compared to experimental results from the CLAS12 spectrometer to confirm that particle production probabilities match that of the theory. Experimental CLAS12 data and MC generated data for proton electro-production was combined into a single data file and read through analysis scripts to produce overlayed kinematic distributions for direct comparison. The effectiveness of new MC energy loss corrections were also assessed.

[Watch the presentation on YouTube]