Internal review of

“The Complete Search for Lightly Ionizing Particles in the LUX Experiment”

Alex Murphy, David Woodward, Jingke Xu

Jan 2022

Summary:

The paper presents a search for Lightly Ionising Particles, LIPs, a.k.a. Fractionally Charged
Particles (FCPs), with LUX. The manuscript pulls together two analyses covering different
levels of fractional charge and has recently been re-written following earlier drafts.

We find that this draft still is not ready for publication. There are some serious issues, but it
may be that these can be addressed relatively quickly. At present, some of the analysis is
unconvincing and lacks coherence. Some further work is required to show that certain
important effects do not invalidate conclusions. The quality of the English also needs to be
addressed.

Detailed comments.

The paper includes both a low fractional charge and high fractional charge analysis, bringing
together thesis work of two different students. There is logic in this scientifically, as one
analysis is based on continuous tracks while the other is based on tracks formed from a line
of distinct energy depositions. Logistically too this makes sense given that effort available
for further work is so limited. Whereas this is to be commended, our focus here will
inevitably be on areas where improvement is required.

 For both low-charge and high-charge analysis, cuts are applied to the data but there
is inadequate justification for why these cuts have been chosen, nor why the precise
parameter associated with each cut has the value it does, Some examples are the
40us pulse length threshold for chopping in the high charge analysis [I added
something latex line~294 that others were investigated and this had lower incidence
of false s1 - I don't know why that's the case but it was the motivator, is this too
vague?], the 1000 phd threshold for the first pulse, the decision of cut all waveforms
into 100 segments (rather than e.g. fixed chopping width)[added mention of 0.5 cm
drift spacing in latex line ~101 - in context of having 100 pulse files, 100 pulses in the
chopped version then becomes obvious; not sure what they mean by 'fixed chop
width' because that's what I had.], the 1 phd/sample minimum pulse average height,
etc. Were alternate choices explored and these values found to be optimal? Often
but perhaps not always

 Also for both analyses, but affecting the high charge analysis more, is that the LIP
signal model produced by LUXSim does not include e-trains. This is important
because this is the main background for a LIP search in LUX data. The paper should
have a dedicated discussion of what biases might be being introduced by the analysis
cuts, and what mitigation strategies were used to avoid biases. Is it possible for
instance that the cut that specifically targets e-trains might well be removing real LIP
 interactions from data without the appropriate accounting for the loss of signal
efficiency?

o The high charge analysis would be looking for pulses which are larger in
phd/sample than the size associated with e-train pulses. (I need to address
more)

 For the high charge analysis only, there is a statement that “a test set of data from
15-31 May 2013 was assumed to have no signal and served as background”. This is
flawed because LIP signals cannot be turned off in LUX data. Cuts designed to
remove all events in this test data may thus be removing LIPs; the corollary is that
surviving these cuts can say nothing about the LIP nature of events. The logic of this
approach should be revisited.

o Why is this an issue for the high charge portion only? The low charge analysis
made a similar assumption; see paragraph starting with line 440. Would you
prefer it be rephrased (either statement)?

o Need more discussion of logic and ref to papers which have previously done
this sort of thing.

o I changed some of the language.

 A further concern with the high charge analysis is that later discussions with the
analysis teams have identified several specific examples in which the stated analysis
routines have not worked correctly, i.e. there appear to be cases where the cuts did
not identifying events as expected. Although this is for a minority of events, it
challenges our expectation for the rigour of the analysis.

o I don't quite follow this statement (i.e. "...cuts did not identifying events...").
Did you mean 'did not identify events' in reference to simulated events?

 The two analyses are not presented together on the same plot, showing the overall
limit across the full range of fractional charges covered. One would expect such a
plot to help justify why two analyses were needed (scientifically, as opposed to the
logistics of LUX having two separate teams working on similar topics).

o Not sure I follow the comment: the combined analysis with a unified plot is in
figure 13. Do mean that you want the results for each individually presented
on that graph as well?

o Added new figure 13 having both individually and with the overall limit.
Added mention in the text that just as the high charge falls off, we start having
good eff in the low charge range.

Slightly in contrast to the impression given above, it is worth mentioning that Ibles Olcina
Samblas, who is conducting a similar analysis searching for multiply interacting massive
particles (MIMPs), has also looked at the manuscript (both analyses). His impression is that
the analysis is fundamentally reasonable, and that some of the more major issues identified
above might well be resolved with relatively little additional effort coupled to more careful
presentation.

Recommendation: Further analysis is required before the LIP paper can proceed to journal
submission. While several weaknesses in the present analysis have been identified there
is reasonable hope that limited new effort, estimated as being of order 1-2 months
focussed effort by an experienced LUX analyst, should be able to address the main
outstanding issues.