Crystal Ball function

Examples of the Crystal Ball function.

The Crystal Ball function, named after the Crystal Ball Collaboration (hence the capitalized initial letters), is a probability density function commonly used to model various lossy processes in high-energy physics. It consists of a Gaussian core portion and a power-law low-end tail, below a certain threshold. The function itself and its first derivative are both continuous.

The Crystal Ball function is given by:

$f(x;\alpha,n,\bar x,\sigma) = N \cdot \begin{cases} \exp(- \frac{(x - \bar x)^2}{2 \sigma^2}), & \mbox{for }\frac{x - \bar x}{\sigma} > -\alpha \\ A \cdot (B - \frac{x - \bar x}{\sigma})^{-n}, & \mbox{for }\frac{x - \bar x}{\sigma} \leqslant -\alpha \end{cases}$

where

$A = \left(\frac{n}{\left| \alpha \right|}\right)^n \cdot \exp\left(- \frac {\left| \alpha \right|^2}{2}\right)$,

$B = \frac{n}{\left| \alpha \right|} - \left| \alpha \right|$,

N is a normalization factor and α, n, $\bar x$ and σ are parameters which are fitted with the data.

External links

• J. E. Gaiser, Appendix-F Charmonium Spectroscopy from Radiative Decays of the J/Psi and Psi-Prime, Ph.D. Thesis, SLAC-R-255 (1982). (This is a 205 page document in .pdf form – the function is defined on p. 178.)
• M. J. Oreglia, A Study of the Reactions psi prime --> gamma gamma psi, Ph.D. Thesis, SLAC-R-236 (1980), Appendix D.
• T. Skwarnicki, Ph.D Thesis, DESY F31-86-02(1986), Appendix E.