# Analysis of Central Diffractive Events with the CMS Precision Proton Spectrometer (PPS)

- Institution: CERN
- Department: Summer Student Lecture Programme General
- Speaker: Ash Samra
- Year: 2025
- Language: English
- Subjects: Mathematics
- Source: [CERN](https://videos.cern.ch/record/3023276)
- Licence: [CERN](http://copyright.web.cern.ch)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

Hello! My name is Ash, I am a physics bachelors student from Canada entering my final year of studies.

In this talk, I present an analysis of central diffractive events in proton–proton collisions using the CMS Precision Proton Spectrometer (PPS). By tagging protons and reconstructing vertex positions via timing detectors, we explore a class of photon-mediated interactions in a non-perturbative QCD regime. We study kinematic distributions in data and simulation, applying event selection, timing correlations, event mixing, and sideband subtraction to estimate and separate background. This is among the first physics analyses using PPS to study central diffraction at LHC energies, providing new insights into a poorly modeled process..

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## Lectures

1. [Analysis of Central Diffractive Events with the CMS Precision Proton Spectrometer (PPS)](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/cern/3023276/c028da8c9fff), 14 min (CERN's player)