[Clascomment] OPT-IN: A search for baryon- and lepton-number violating decays of Lambda hyperons using the CLAS detector at Jeff erson Laboratory

[Michael McCracken]

Dear Daniel,
	I wanted to write back to address a few of the comments that you made on the references for this article.  Matt spent some time last night cleaning up this section; your comments on formatting were quite helpful.  Thank you.
	You had concerns about a few of the specific references, two of which Matt addresses below.  (We have fixed the other specific issues that you mentioned.)

DC:  I would have liked to have seen the inclusion of a recent reference for the M/AM ratio based on data.
MB:  As far as we know, there are no recent references for this. The order of magnitude is all I see. I (Matt) was just at a workshop on Baryon- and Lepton-Number Violation last month and there were no updated measurements of this. Just the comment that the SM is off by 9-10 orders of magnitude when it comes to explaining the M/AM asymmetry. 

DC: I would have liked to have seen a more recent reference instead of [7] which is from 1985. Surely there is something from your lifetime.
MB: This is the canonical paper on the only BNV process that exists in the Standard Model, the sphaleron process. The paper has 2000+ citations. This is borne out by the references to it by most of the theorists at the BNV conference.

Again, many thanks.
Best regards,
Mike

-------------------------------------------
Michael E McCracken, Ph.D.
Physics Department
Washington & Jefferson College
Washington, PA 15301
724.223.6148
-------------------------------------------




> On Jun 3, 2015, at 11:32 AM, Daniel Carman <carman at jlab.org> wrote:
> 
> Dear Mike and Matt,
> 
> I have read through your draft of the "rare" Lambda decay branching ratios based on the draft
> of May 26. I have enjoyed watching this analysis proceed from your Working Group presentations,
> especially as this is definitely a bit of a novel idea and not one of our "usual" CLAS papers.
> My comments are included below. If you have any questions, let me know.
> 
> 
> 					        Regards,
> 						
> 						Daniel
> 
> ************************************************************************************
> Physics/Presentation Comment.
> - The title of this paper is "... baryon- and lepton-number violating decays". The "BNV" aspects
>   are quantified and discussed, but the "LNV" aspects are not mentioned after the first page.
>   In my reading I found this lack of discussion of lepton-number violation problematic given the
>   title and the introduction. I think this needs some attention both in the analysis discussion 
>   and in the summary/conclusions section.
> 
> General.
> - Your color figures should have "(Color Online)" in the caption.
> - You have tense issues throughout. What I mean is that the analysis steps tend in your manuscript
>   to be discussed in the present tense when the past tense is most appropriate. For example, you
>   use "For this analysis we make use of the CLAS drift chambers ..." when it is more appropriate
>   to use "For this analysis we made use of the CLAS drift chambers ...". The tense issues began
>   in Section II and continued through the analysis/results section.
> 
> Page 1.
> - Abstract. Line 2. I suggest "... using the CLAS detector at Jefferson Laboratory."
> - Line 14. I think you mean "conception" not "inception".
> - Line 18. Here you use Refs.[4,5] (publication dates in 2004 and 1976) as data that motivated
>   Sakharov's work in Ref.[6] published in 1967. This violates causality.
> - Line 26. Use "... interactions that violate ...".
> - Line 48. Use "... calculations that constrain ...".
> - Line 79. Use "... \bar{\Lambda}$), which then undergoes ...".
> 
> Page 2.
> - Line 135. Use "... decays, the expected backgrounds ...".
> - Line 148. Use "... by CEBAF (Continuous ...".
> - Line 160. Use "4 m".
> - Line 166. Use "... can be found in [28]." If there are other references that are relevant for the reader
>   beyond [28], list them explicitly.
> 
> Page 3.
> - Line 183. 3e6 MC events seems too small for a reasonable study by a factor of 10 to 50 in my opinion for
>   such a large phase space. Why such a small number?
> - Line 183. Use "... \Lambda$ events, and weighted ...".
> - Line 191. Use "... model the CLAS acceptance, ...".
> - Line 213. I suggest "... through the magnetic field of CLAS) ...".
> - Line 216. I suggest "... $d$ is the path length of the track from the vertex to the TOF system, ...".
> - Eq.(3). Use a period after this equation, not a comma.
> - Line 228. Use "... Monte Carlo events is shown ...".
> 
> Page 4.
> - Line 237. Use "... hyperons that include ...".
> - Line 239. Use "... apply geometrical fiducial ...".
> - Line 257. For your number $N_{rec}$, what is the relevant photon energy range for the analysis? Seems like
>   this should be listed here with the mention that it is a brem spectrum.
> - Line 266. Use "... and kinematics, we separate ...".
> - Line 281. Use "... MM^2$, as well as ...".
> 
> Page 5.
> - Line 288. Use "... for a potentially small ...".
> - Line 300. Use "We have tuned our cuts ...".
> - Line 302. Use "... plots that would ...".
> - Line 305. Use "... of all of our data points until ... of the analysis cuts, ...".
> - Line 311. Use "... to the measured ...".
> - Line 326. I suggest "... order as the dimensions of CLAS and ...".
> 
> Page 6.
> - Fig. 4. Your x-axis labels overlap the axis values. Also the axis values at the ends of the plots
>   overlap and are partially cut off.
> - Fig. 4 caption. Line 1. Use "... boundaries of the PID ..."
> - Eq.(10). Wrong units.
> - Line 396. I suggest "... there are significant numbers of ...".
> 
> Page 7.
> - Fig. 5 caption. Line 4. Use "... of the optimal cuts, ...".
> 
> Page 8.
> - Line 447. Missing units on $w_2$.
> - Line 450. Use "... to identify the signal.".
> - Line 456. Missing units on $w_2$.
> - Line 462. Use "... of the background in the signal ...".
> - Line 469. 5e5 again seems way too low of a number of generated events.
> 
> References:
> - Problem with formatting of nearly all references as there are no spaces between the different
>   parts of the journal names (e.g. Phys.Rev.Lett. vs. Phys. Rev. Lett.).
> - I would have liked to have seen the inclusion of a recent reference for the M/AM ratio based on
>   data.
> - I would have liked to have seen a more recent reference instead of [7] which is from 1985. Surely
>   there is something from your lifetime.
> - For published papers, do not include the preprint numbers.
> - Ref.[20]. With a long author list, use first author and then "et al.".
> - Ref.[21] has some kind of problem. Who is S.-K. Collaboration?
> - Ref.[22] is incomplete.
> - Ref.[27] is not a CLAS Collaboration paper. First author is "B.A. Mecking".
> - Ref.[28]. First author only and then "et al.".
> - Ref.[30]. I have no idea what eConf C030908 MODT002 is. This reads like some kooky hexadecimal code!
> 
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