Simple Limit Calculator


This page allows you to calculate a cross section limit using the prescription of DØ Note 3476 (successor to 2775A). The code has recently been upgraded using a numerical integration for the cross section (G. Landsberg) and an analytic form for the significannce (S. Jain).

It is assumed that the errors on the acceptance, background and luminosity are uncorrelated. This prescription also fails if any relative error is larger than roughly 30%. If either of these are not met, do not use this calculator.
Number of data events:
Background: Error:
Acceptance : Error:
Luminosity : Error:
This will take a few minutes

Source code and running the code other ways

The cross section limit code and significance code has been released in the D0RunII library. The cvs package is limit_calculators. Instructions for using the code as
  1. a root macro
  2. a standalone command line program
  3. called from DZero code
come with the cvs d0 package, limit_calculators
Greg Landsberg, Supriya Jain, John Hobbs