This glossary is meant to be a resource for students coming into the DUNE/Q-Pix group. Any words, phrases or acronyms should be defined here. If you cannot find something you have heard being discussed, please take a second to add it, along with a quick sentence definition, and finally a link to more information. If you do not have access to it, or do not know how to use WordPress, please ask one of the senior students to do it for you, or better yet show you how to do it yourself.
Q-Pix: short for Q-Pixel, which stands for charge pixel. Designed by UTA’s Dr. David Nygren, it is a proposed upgrade to the current DUNE readout electronics.
Charge Integrate-Reset (CIR): part of the circuitry behind Q-Pix. Responsible for integrating electrons that reach the detector wall and converting them into resets, which can be output to DAQ
Schmitt Trigger: a comparator circuit that outputs a pulse when an input threshold has been reached
ASIC: the clock portion of the Q-Pix electronics
qpixg4: Q-Pix’s software package that uses Geant4 to simulate particle events in a standard DUNE APA
qpixrtd: Q-Pix’s software package that uses the output from qpixg4 to simulate the detector response to particle events in a standard DUNE APA
qpixar: Q-Pix’s software package used to read the output of qpixrtd and put it in a format usable with python
genie: a neutrino event generator that specializes in higher energy neutrino events (used for beam neutrino events)
marley: acronym for Model of Argon Reaction Low Energy Yields; a neutrino event generator that specializes in low energy interactions (used for supernova neutrino events)
Geant4: a particle interaction simulation software
reset: a pulse output by the Schmitt Trigger in the CIR of the Q-Pix electronics when the pixel has integrated enough charge to put it over the charge threshold. It lasts until the transistor is able to drop the current back below the lower threshold. We use these resets as “data” and can perform analysis and event reconstruction from them.
tslr: time since last reset; the time between resets, used to calculate current
stick: a colloquial term used to describe neater regions of an event. Parts of the event where there are no extra interactions, and are characterized by lengths of simply deposited ionization energy.
boom: a colloquial term used to describe messier regions of an event. Parts of the event where there are extra interactions, causing branches, closely lying tracks, and other stuff beyond simple energy deposited by ionization along a single particle track.
Neutral Current: a type of weak force interaction in which charge is not transferred by the boson (interactions occur via Z bosons). In neutrino events, these type of events usually result in hadronic shower-esque patterns
Charge Current: a type of weak force interaction in which charge is transferred by the boson (interactions occur via W+ and W- bosons). In neutrino events, these type of interactions usually result in an emitted final-state lepton (electron, muon or tau, however taus do not survive long enough to see)