Speaker
Description
The extraction of the neutron Electric Dipole Moment (EDM) is a high-precision measurement obtained through multiple analytical steps. Since these steps involve human analysis, they may be unintentionally biased by the analysts' expectations. To mitigate this bias in the n2EDM experiment, a randomly generated false EDM value is injected into the dataset.
The blinding program uses this false EDM value to calculate the number of spin-up UCN detection events to swap with spin-down events, thereby generating an asymmetry corresponding to the injected false EDM. This artificial modification must be indistinguishable from a genuine EDM signature. To ensure a coherent impact on spin counting, the current blinding algorithm accounts for all relevant experimental parameters, including electric and magnetic field directions and intensities, spin flipper states, RF field frequency, and more.
Before implementation in the n2EDM Data Acquisition System (DAQ), the blinding program must be tested to verify its expected behavior. Key validation questions include:
- Does the "sanity check" part properly discard unusable measurement cycles?
- Does EDM extraction from the blinded data correctly return the injected value?
- Do swapped events exhibit any distinguishable signature?
Answering these questions requires specific test datasets and analyses, which will be presented.
Depending on the progress of this ongoing work, additional insights into the DAQ implementation may also be shared.
(Note: As this is ongoing work, the final content presented in August may differ slightly.)