Methods for a blind analysis of isobar data collected by the STAR collaboration
Abstract
In 2018, the STAR collaboration collected data from and at GeV to search for the presence of the chiral magnetic effect in collisions of nuclei. The isobar collision species alternated frequently between and . In order to conduct blind analyses of studies related to the chiral magnetic effect in these isobar data, STAR developed a three-step blind analysis procedure. Analysts are initially provided a "reference sample" of data, comprised of a mix of events from the two species, the order of which respects time-dependent changes in run conditions. After tuning analysis codes and performing time-dependent quality assurance on the reference sample, analysts are provided a species-blind sample suitable for calculating efficiencies and corrections for individual -minute data-taking runs. For this sample, species-specific information is disguised, but individual output files contain data from a single isobar species. Only run-by-run corrections and code alteration subsequent to these corrections are allowed at this stage. Following these modifications, the "frozen" code is passed over the fully un-blind data, completing the blind analysis. As a check of the feasibility of the blind analysis procedure, analysts completed a "mock data challenge," analyzing data from collisions at GeV, collected in 2018. The data were prepared in the same manner intended for the isobar blind data. The details of the blind analysis procedure and results from the mock data challenge are presented.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1911.00596,
title = {Methods for a blind analysis of isobar data collected by the STAR collaboration},
author = {STAR Collaboration and J. Adam and L. Adamczyk and J. R. Adams and J. K. Adkins and G. Agakishiev and M. M. Aggarwal and Z. Ahammed and I. Alekseev and D. M. Anderson and A. Aparin and E. C. Aschenauer and M. U. Ashraf and F. G. Atetalla and A. Attri and G. S. Averichev and V. Bairathi and K. Barish and A. Behera and R. Bellwied and A. Bhasin and J. Bielcik and J. Bielcikova and L. C. Bland and I. G. Bordyuzhin and J. D. Brandenburg and A. V. Brandin and J. Butterworth and H. Caines and M. Calderón de la Barca Sánchez and D. Cebra and I. Chakaberia and P. Chaloupka and B. K. Chan and F-H. Chang and Z. Chang and N. Chankova-Bunzarova and A. Chatterjee and D. Chen and J. H. Chen and X. Chen and Z. Chen and J. Cheng and M. Cherney and M. Chevalier and S. Choudhury and W. Christie and H. J. Crawford and M. Csanád and M. Daugherity and T. G. Dedovich and I. M. Deppner and A. A. Derevschikov and L. Didenko and X. Dong and J. L. Drachenberg and J. C. Dunlop and T. Edmonds and N. Elsey and J. Engelage and G. Eppley and R. Esha and S. Esumi and O. Evdokimov and J. Ewigleben and O. Eyser and R. Fatemi and S. Fazio and P. Federic and J. Fedorisin and C. J. Feng and Y. Feng and P. Filip and E. Finch and Y. Fisyak and A. Francisco and L. Fulek and C. A. Gagliardi and T. Galatyuk and F. Geurts and A. Gibson and K. Gopal and D. Grosnick and W. Guryn and A. I. Hamad and A. Hamed and J. W. Harris and W. He and X. He and S. Heppelmann and S. Heppelmann and N. Herrmann and E. Hoffman and L. Holub and Y. Hong and S. Horvat and Y. Hu and H. Z. Huang and S. L. Huang and T. Huang and X. Huang and T. J. Humanic and P. Huo and G. Igo and D. Isenhower and W. W. Jacobs and C. Jena and A. Jentsch and Y. JI and J. Jia and K. Jiang and S. Jowzaee and X. Ju and E. G. Judd and S. Kabana and M. L. Kabir and S. Kagamaster and D. Kalinkin and K. Kang and D. Kapukchyan and K. Kauder and H. W. Ke and D. Keane and A. Kechechyan and M. Kelsey and Y. V. Khyzhniak and D. P. Kikoła and C. Kim and B. Kimelman and D. Kincses and T. A. Kinghorn and I. Kisel and A. Kiselev and A. Kisiel and M. Kocan and L. Kochenda and L. K. Kosarzewski and L. Kramarik and P. Kravtsov and K. Krueger and N. Kulathunga Mudiyanselage and L. Kumar and R. Kunnawalkam Elayavalli and J. H. Kwasizur and R. Lacey and S. Lan and J. M. Landgraf and J. Lauret and A. Lebedev and R. Lednicky and J. H. Lee and Y. H. Leung and C. Li and W. Li and W. Li and X. Li and Y. Li and Y. Liang and R. Licenik and T. Lin and Y. Lin and M. A. Lisa and F. Liu and H. Liu and P. Liu and P. Liu and T. Liu and X. Liu and Y. Liu and Z. Liu and T. Ljubicic and W. J. Llope and R. S. Longacre and N. S. Lukow and S. Luo and X. Luo and G. L. Ma and L. Ma and R. Ma and Y. G. Ma and N. Magdy and R. Majka and D. Mallick and S. Margetis and C. Markert and H. S. Matis and J. A. Mazer and N. G. Minaev and S. Mioduszewski and B. Mohanty and I. Mooney and Z. Moravcova and D. A. Morozov and M. Nagy and J. D. Nam and Md. Nasim and K. Nayak and D. Neff and J. M. Nelson and D. B. Nemes and M. Nie and G. Nigmatkulov and T. Niida and L. V. Nogach and T. Nonaka and G. Odyniec and A. Ogawa and S. Oh and V. A. Okorokov and B. S. Page and R. Pak and A. Pandav and Y. Panebratsev and B. Pawlik and D. Pawlowska and H. Pei and C. Perkins and L. Pinsky and R. L. Pintér and J. Pluta and J. Porter and M. Posik and N. K. Pruthi and M. Przybycien and J. Putschke and H. Qiu and A. Quintero and S. K. Radhakrishnan and S. Ramachandran and R. L. Ray and R. Reed and H. G. Ritter and J. B. Roberts and O. V. Rogachevskiy and J. L. Romero and L. Ruan and J. Rusnak and N. R. Sahoo and H. Sako and S. Salur and J. Sandweiss and S. Sato and W. B. Schmidke and N. Schmitz and B. R. Schweid and F. Seck and J. Seger and M. Sergeeva and R. Seto and P. Seyboth and N. Shah and E. Shahaliev and P. V. Shanmuganathan and M. Shao and F. Shen and W. Q. Shen and S. S. Shi and Q. Y. Shou and E. P. Sichtermann and R. Sikora and M. Simko and J. Singh and S. Singha and N. Smirnov and W. Solyst and P. Sorensen and H. M. Spinka and B. Srivastava and T. D. S. Stanislaus and M. Stefaniak and D. J. Stewart and M. Strikhanov and B. Stringfellow and A. A. P. Suaide and M. Sumbera and B. Summa and X. M. Sun and Y. Sun and Y. Sun and B. Surrow and D. N. Svirida and P. Szymanski and A. H. Tang and Z. Tang and A. Taranenko and T. Tarnowsky and J. H. Thomas and A. R. Timmins and D. Tlusty and M. Tokarev and C. A. Tomkiel and S. Trentalange and R. E. Tribble and P. Tribedy and S. K. Tripathy and O. D. Tsai and Z. Tu and T. Ullrich and D. G. Underwood and I. Upsal and G. Van Buren and J. Vanek and A. N. Vasiliev and I. Vassiliev and F. Videbæk and S. Vokal and S. A. Voloshin and F. Wang and G. Wang and J. S. Wang and P. Wang and Y. Wang and Y. Wang and Z. Wang and J. C. Webb and P. C. Weidenkaff and L. Wen and G. D. Westfall and H. Wieman and S. W. Wissink and R. Witt and Y. Wu and Z. G. Xiao and G. Xie and W. Xie and H. Xu and N. Xu and Q. H. Xu and Y. F. Xu and Y. Xu and Z. Xu and Z. Xu and C. Yang and Q. Yang and S. Yang and Y. Yang and Z. Yang and Z. Ye and Z. Ye and L. Yi and K. Yip and H. Zbroszczyk and W. Zha and D. Zhang and S. Zhang and S. Zhang and X. P. Zhang and Y. Zhang and Z. J. Zhang and Z. Zhang and J. Zhao and C. Zhong and C. Zhou and X. Zhu and Z. Zhu and M. Zurek and M. Zyzak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.00596},
year = {2019}
}