Selection step

A selection step or (somewhat colloquially) cut is a requirement applied to a sample of events or objects. Only the events or objects satisfying the requirement ("passing the cut") are kept. An example of a selection step would be: keep events that have at least one jet with a transverse momentum of at least 50 GeV.

Selection steps are applied to enrich the sample in those events or objects that one is interested in for producing results. Together, a sequence of steps forms a selection.

Selection steps can be arbitrarily simple or complicated, depending only on what is possible and meets the analysis needs.