Related papers: Objective Bayesian analysis of "on/off" measuremen…
In this paper we propose a procedure to evaluate Bayesian confidence intervals in counting experiments where both signal and background fluctuations are described by the Poisson statistics. The results obtained when the method is applied to…
We derive a closed photo-counting formula, including noise counts and a finite quantum efficiency, for photon number resolving detectors based on on-off detectors. It applies to detection schemes such as array detectors and multiplexing…
Prompt isolated leptons are essential in many analyses in high-energy particle physics but are subject to fake-lepton background, i.e. objects that mimic the lepton signature. The fake-lepton background is difficult to estimate from…
In optical metrological protocols to measure physical quantities, it is, in principle, always beneficial to increase photon number to improve measurement precision. However, practical constraints prevent arbitrary increase of n due to the…
Detection of point sources in images is a fundamental operation in astrophysics, and is crucial for constraining population models of the underlying point sources or characterizing the background emission. Standard techniques fall short in…
These notes aim at presenting an overview of Bayesian statistics, the underlying concepts and application methodology that will be useful to astronomers seeking to analyse and interpret a wide variety of data about the Universe. The level…
A commonly used measure to summarize the nature of a photon spectrum is the so-called Hardness Ratio, which compares the number of counts observed in different passbands. The hardness ratio is especially useful to distinguish between and…
We investigate Bayesian and frequentist approaches to resonance searches using a toy model based on an ATLAS search for the Higgs boson in the diphoton channel. We draw pseudo-data from the background only model and background plus signal…
Optimal estimation of signal amplitude, background level, and photocentre location is crucial to the combined extraction of astrometric and photometric information from focal plane images, and in particular from the one-dimensional…
Importance sampling is a popular technique in Bayesian inference: by reweighting samples drawn from a proposal distribution we are able to obtain samples and moment estimates from a Bayesian posterior over latent variables. Recent work,…
Bayesian inference provides a principled way of estimating the parameters of a stochastic process that is observed discretely in time. The overdamped Brownian motion of a particle confined in an optical trap is generally modelled by the…
A suggestion is made for improving the Feldman Cousins method of estimating signal counts in the presence of background. The method concentrates on finding essential information about the signal and ignoring extraneous information about…
Statistical models can involve implicitly defined quantities, such as solutions to nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs), that unavoidably need to be numerically approximated in order to evaluate the model. The approximation…
The estimation of the polarization $P$ of extragalactic compact sources in Cosmic Microwave Background images is a very important task in order to clean these images for cosmological purposes -- as, for example, to constrain the…
Flux estimates for faint sources or transients are systematically biased high because there are far more truly faint sources than bright. Corrections which account for this effect are presented as a function of signal-to-noise ratio and the…
The Bayesian Block algorithm, originally developed for applications in astronomy, can be used to improve the binning of histograms in high energy physics. The visual improvement can be dramatic, as shown here with two simple examples. More…
We present a general probabilistic formalism for cross-identifying astronomical point sources in multiple observations. Our Bayesian approach, symmetric in all observations, is the foundation of a unified framework for object matching,…
Hypothesis tests for the presence of new sources of Poisson counts amidst background processes are frequently performed in high energy physics (HEP), gamma ray astronomy (GRA), and other branches of science. While there are conceptual…
A common problem in astrophysics is determining how bright a source could be and still not be detected. Despite the simplicity with which the problem can be stated, the solution involves complex statistical issues that require careful…
Rigorously quantifying the information in high contrast imaging data is important for informing follow-up strategies to confirm the substellar nature of a point source, constraining theoretical models of planet-disk interactions, and…