Related papers: Projections of Discovery Potentials from Expected …
The frequentist definition of sensitivity of a search for new phenomena proposed in arXiv:0308063 has been utilized in a number of published experimental searches. In most cases, the simple approximate formula for the common problem of…
The objective Bayesian treatment of a model representing two independent Poisson processes, labelled as "signal" and "background" and both contributing additively to the total number of counted events, is considered. It is shown that the…
The model representing two independent Poisson processes, labelled as "signal" and "background" and both contributing at the same time to the total number of counted events, is considered from a Bayesian point of view. This is a widely used…
A frequentist definition of sensitivity of a search for new phenomena is discussed, that has several useful properties. It is based on completely standard concepts, is generally applicable, and has a very clear interpretation. It is…
We describe a method for estimation of the discovery potential on new physics in planned experiments. The effective significance of signal for given probability of observation is proposed for planned experiments instead of the usual…
We construct uncertainty intervals for weak Poisson signals in the presence of background. We consider the case where a primary experiment yields a realization of the signal plus background, and a second experiment yields a realization of…
Searches for faint signals in counting experiments are often encountered in particle physics and astrophysics, as well as in other fields. Many problems can be reduced to the case of a model with independent and Poisson-distributed signal…
Neutrinoless double-beta decay (\(0\nu\beta\beta\)) is a sensitive probe of lepton-number violation and the Majorana nature of neutrinos. In xenon-based experiments, the expected signal rate inside the region of interest (ROI) is extremely…
Several experiments in high-energy physics and astrophysics can be treated as on/off measurements, where an observation potentially containing a new source or effect ("on" measurement) is contrasted with a background-only observation free…
A Bayesian analysis of the probability of a signal in the presence of background is developed, and criteria are proposed for claiming evidence for, or the discovery of a signal. The method is general and in particular applicable to sparsely…
Searches for new astrophysical phenomena often involve several sources of non-random uncertainties which can lead to highly misleading results. Among these, model-uncertainty arising from background mismodelling can dramatically compromise…
Machine-learning techniques have become fundamental in high-energy physics and, for new physics searches, it is crucial to know their performance in terms of experimental sensitivity, understood as the statistical significance of the…
The problem of detecting new signals in the presence of an unknown background is ubiquitous in scientific discoveries and is especially prominent in the physical sciences. Most solutions proposed thus far to address the problem focus on…
The projected discovery and exclusion capabilities of particle physics and astrophysics/cosmology experiments are often quantified using the median expected $p$-value or its corresponding significance. We argue that this criterion leads to…
This article describes an efficient procedure for computing approximate confidence levels for searches for new particles where the expected signal and background levels are small enough to require the use of Poisson statistics. The results…
A method is described, which computes from an observed sample of events upper limits for production rates of particles, or, in case of appearance of a signal, the probability for an upwards fluctuation of the background. For any candidate,…
In classical information theory, both the form and performance of the optimal detector for additive noise channels can be precisely derived, based on the assumption that the channel noise follows a specific probability distribution or a…
Several statistics used by physicists to declare the signal observability over the background are compared. It is shown that the frequentist method of testing a precise hypothesis allows one to estimate the power value of criteria with…
Assume that we observe a sample of size n composed of p-dimensional signals, each signal having independent entries drawn from a scaled Poisson distribution with an unknown intensity. We are interested in estimating the sum of the n unknown…
Studying the effects of one-way variation of any number of parameters on any number of output probabilities quickly becomes infeasible in practice, especially if various evidence profiles are to be taken into consideration. To provide for…