A fast method for particle tracking and triggering using small-radius silicon detectors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a highly efficient, rapid particle tracking algorithm suitable for implementation on silicon-based hardware, enabling fast triggers for detecting elusive particles like dark matter mediators in collider experiments.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, highly-parallelized graph algorithm for particle tracking that achieves over 99.95% efficiency and can be implemented on FPGA technology for real-time collider triggers.

Findings

Achieves >99.95% reconstruction efficiency

Compatible with FPGA implementation for real-time processing

Enables triggering on neutral particles via charged mediators

Abstract

We propose an algorithm, deployable on a highly-parallelized graph computing architecture, to perform rapid reconstruction of charged-particle trajectories in the high energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider and future colliders. We use software emulation to show that the algorithm can achieve an efficiency in excess of 99.95% for reconstruction with good accuracy. The algorithm can be implemented on silicon-based integrated circuits using field-programmable gate array technology. Our approach can enable a fast trigger for massive charged particles that decay invisibly in the tracking volume, as in some new-physics scenarios related to particulate dark matter. If production of dark matter or other new neutral particles is mediated by metastable charged particles and is not associated with other triggerable energy deposition in the detectors, our method would be useful for triggering on the charged mediators using the small-radius silicon detectors.