TauSpinner program for studies on spin effect in tau production at the LHC

Abstract

Final states involving tau leptons are important components of searches for new particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A proper treatment of tau spin effects in the Monte Carlo (MC) simulations is important for understanding the detector acceptance as well as for the measurements of tau polarization and tau spin correlations. In this note we present a TauSpinner package designed to simulate the spin effects. It relies on the four-momenta of the taus and their decay products, which are available both in simulated and experimental data. The flavor and the four-momentum of the boson decaying to the τ ⁻ τ ⁺ or τ ^± ν pair need to be known. In the Z/γ ^∗ case the initial state quark configuration is attributed from the intermediate boson kinematics, and the parton distribution functions (PDF’s). TauSpinner is the first algorithm suitable for emulation of tau spin effects in tau-embedded samples. It is also the first tool that offers the user the flexibility to simulate a desired spin effect at the analysis level. An algorithm to attribute tau helicity states to a previously generated sample is also provided.