The Use of Minimal Spanning Trees in Particle Physics

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential application of minimal spanning trees (MSTs), a tool used in cosmology, to particle physics for classifying and distinguishing different types of collider events.

Contribution

It introduces MSTs to particle physics, demonstrating their properties and potential for event classification in collider experiments.

Findings

MSTs can effectively distinguish different event classes.

MSTs have promising applications in collider data analysis.

Abstract

Minimal spanning trees (MSTs) have been used in cosmology and astronomy to distinguish distributions of points in a multi-dimensional space. They are essentially unknown in particle physics, however. We briefly define MSTs and illustrate their properties through a series of examples. We show how they might be applied to study a typical event sample from a collider experiment and conclude that MSTs may prove useful in distinguishing different classes of events.