Morales, A. I., & Tuzon, P. (2022). Misconceptions, Knowledge, and Attitudes Towards the Phenomenon of Radioactivity. Sci. Educ., 31, 405–426.
Abstract: The teaching of the phenomenon of radioactivity is considered a key ingredient in the path towards developing critical thinking skills in many secondary science education curricula. Despite being one of the basic concepts in general physics courses, the scientific teaching literature of the last 40 years reports a great deal of misconceptions and conceptual errors related to radioactivity that seemingly appear regardless of the educational level and context. This study reports the first cross-sectional diagnostic study in Spain to secondary education students and pre-service teachers. Data were collected in the year 2019 through a questionnaire adapted from a previously validated one to explore the main misconceptions, attitudes, and knowledge status on the topic on a sample of 191 secondary school students and 29 Physics-and-Chemistry trainee teachers in the Spanish region of Valencia. Open and closed questions were used to categorize the entity itself, its properties, and the main misconceptions related to radioactivity. The responses were analysed using conventional statistical methods. The results indicate an evolution from a widespread dissenting notion on the phenomenon, which is staunchly related to danger, hazard, and destruction in the lowest educational levels, towards a more rational, relative, and multidimensional perspective in the highest ones. On the other hand, the ideas, emotions, and attitudes of the inquired individuals are in good agreement with the main misconceptions reported in the literature.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Garcia Martin, L. M., Henry, L., Jashal, B. K., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., et al. (2020). Search for the doubly charmed baryon Xi(+)(cc). Sci. China-Phys. Mech. Astron., 63(2), 221062–15pp.
Abstract: A search for the doubly charmed baryon.+ cc is performed through its decay to the.+ c K- p+ final state, using proton-proton collision data collected with the LHCb detector at centre-of-mass energies of 7, 8 and 13 TeV. The data correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 9 fb-1. No significant signal is observed in the mass range from 3.4 to 3.8 GeV/c2. Upper limits are set at 95% credibility level on the ratio of the.+ cc production cross-section times the branching fraction to that of.+ c and.++ cc baryons. The limits are determined as functions of the.+ cc mass for di fferent lifetime hypotheses, in the rapidity range from 2.0 to 4.5 and the transverse momentum range from 4 to 15 GeV/c.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Jashal, B. K., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., & Ruiz Vidal, J. (2021). Search for the doubly charmed baryon Omega(+)(cc). Sci. China-Phys. Mech. Astron., 64(10), 101062–12pp.
Abstract: A search for the doubly charmed baryon Omega(+)(cc) with the decay mode Omega(+)(cc) -> Xi K-+(c)-pi(+) is performed using proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the LHCb experiment from 2016 to 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb(-1). No significant signal is observed within the invariant mass range of 3.6 to 4.0GeV/c(2). Upper limits are set on the ratio R of the production cross-section times the total branching fraction of the Omega(+)(cc) -> Xi K-+(c)-pi(+) decay with respect to the Xi(++)(cc) -> Lambda K-+(c)-pi(+)pi(+) decay. Upper limits at 95% credibility level for R in the range 0.005 to 0.11 are obtained for different hypotheses on the Omega(+)(cc) mass and lifetime in the rapidity range from 2.0 to 4.5 and transverse momentum range from 4 to 15 GeV/c.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Garcia Martin, L. M., Henry, L., Jashal, B. K., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., et al. (2020). Observation of structure in the J/psi-pair mass spectrum. Sci. Bull., 65(23), 1983–1993.
Abstract: Using proton-proton collision data at centre-of-mass energies of root s = 7, 8 and 13 TeV recorded by the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9 fb(-1), the invariant mass spectrum of J/psi pairs is studied. A narrow structure around 6.9 GeV/c(2) matching the line-shape of a resonance and a broad structure just above twice the J/psi mass are observed. The deviation of the data from nonresonant J/psi-pair production is above five standard deviations in the mass region between 6.2 and 7.4 GeV/c(2), covering predicted masses of states composed of four charm quarks. The mass and natural width of the narrow X(6900) structure are measured assuming a Breit-Wigner lineshape.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Henry, L., Jashal, B. K., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., et al. (2021). Evidence of a J/psi Lambda structure and observation of excited Xi(-) states in the Xi(-)(b) -> J/psi Lambda K- decay. Sci. Bull., 66(13), 1278–1287.
Abstract: First evidence of a structure in the J/psi Lambda invariant mass distribution is obtained from an amplitude analysis of Xi(-)(b) -> J/psi Lambda K- decays. The observed structure is consistent with being due to a charmonium pentaquark with strangeness with a significance of 3.1r including systematic uncertainties and lookelsewhere effect. Its mass and width are determined to be 4458.8 +/- 2.9(-1.1)(+4.7) MeV and 17.3 +/- 6.5(-5.7)(+8.0) MeV, respectively, where the quoted uncertainties are statistical and systematic. The structure is also consistent with being due to two resonances. In addition, the narrow excited Xi(-) states, Xi(-)(1690) and Xi(-)(1820)(-), are seen for the first time in a Xi(-)(b) decay, and their masses and widths are measured with improved precision. The analysis is performed using pp collision data corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 9 fb(-1), collected with the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies of 7, 8 and 13 TeV.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Jashal, B. K., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., & Ruiz Vidal, J. (2022). Measurement of the lifetimes of promptly produced Omega(0)(c) and Xi(9)(c) baryons. Sci. Bull., 67(5), 479–487.
Abstract: A measurement of the lifetimes of the Omega(0)(c) and Xi(0)(c) baryons is reported using proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb(-1) collected by the LHCb experiment. The Omega(0)(c) and Xi(0)(c) baryons are produced directly from proton interactions and reconstructed in the pK(-)K(-)pi(+) final state. The Omega(0)(c) lifetime is measured to be 276.5 +/- 13.4 +/- 4.4 +/- 0.7 fs, and the Xi(0)(c) lifetime is measured to be 148.0 +/- 2.3 +/- 2.2 +/- 0.2 fs, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic, and the third due to the uncertainty on the D-0 lifetime. These results confirm previous LHCb measurements based on semileptonic beauty-hadron decays, which disagree with earlier results of a four times shorter Omega(c)0 lifetime, and provide the single most precise measurement of the Omega(0 )(c)lifetime.
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Ji, T., Dong, X. K., Albaladejo, M., Du, M. L., Guo, F. K., Nieves, J., et al. (2023). Understanding the 0(++) and 2(++) charmonium(-like) states near 3.9 GeV. Sci. Bull., 68(7), 688–697.
Abstract: We propose that the X(3915) observed in the J/psi x channel is the same state as the chi(c2)(3930), and the X(3960), observed in the Ds+Ds- channel, is an S-wave Ds+Ds- hadronic molecule. In addition, the J(PC) = 0(++) component in the B+ -> D+D-K+ assigned to the X(3915) in the current Review of Particle Physics has the same origin as the X(3960), which has a mass around 3.94 GeV. To check the proposal, the available data in the D (D) over bar and Ds+Ds- channels from both B decays and gamma gamma fusion reaction are analyzed considering both the D (D) over bar -D-s(D) over bar (s)-D*(D) over bar*-D-s*(D) over bar (s)* coupled channels with 0(++) and a 2(++) state introduced additionally. It is found that all the data in different processes can be simultaneously well reproduced, and the coupled-channel dynamics produce four hidden-charm scalar molecular states with masses around 3.73, 3.94, 3.99 and 4.23 GeV, respectively. The results may deepen our understanding of the spectrum of charmonia as well as of the interactions between charmed hadrons.
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Masud, M., Bishai, M., & Mehta, P. (2019). Extricating New Physics Scenarios at DUNE with Higher Energy Beams. Sci Rep, 9, 352–9pp.
Abstract: The proposed Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) utilizes a wide-band on-axis tunable muon-(anti) neutrino beam with a baseline of 1300 km to search for CP violation with high precision. Given the long baseline, DUNE is also sensitive to effects due to matter induced non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) which can interfere with the standard three-flavor oscillation paradigm. Hence it is desirable to design strategies to disentangle effects due to NSI from standard oscillations. In this article, we exploit the tunability of the DUNE neutrino beam over a wide-range of energies to devise an experimental strategy for separating oscillation effects due to NSI from the standard three-flavor oscillation scenario. Using chi(2) analysis, we obtain an optimal combination of beam tunes and distribution of run times in neutrino and anti-neutrino modes that would enable DUNE to isolate new physics scenarios from the standard. We can distinguish scenarios at 3 sigma (5 sigma) level for almost all (similar to 50%) values of delta. To the best of our knowledge, our strategy is entirely new and has not been reported elsewhere.
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Hatifi, M., Di Molfetta, G., Debbasch, F., & Brachet, M. (2019). Quantum walk hydrodynamics. Sci Rep, 9, 2989–7pp.
Abstract: A simple Discrete-Time Quantum Walk (DTQW) on the line is revisited and given an hydrodynamic interpretation through a novel relativistic generalization of the Madelung transform. Numerical results show that suitable initial conditions indeed produce hydrodynamical shocks and that the coherence achieved in current experiments is robust enough to simulate quantum hydrodynamical phenomena through DTQWs. An analytical computation of the asymptotic quantum shock structure is presented. The non-relativistic limit is explored in the Supplementary Material (SM).
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Arrighi, P., Di Molfetta, G., Marquez-Martin, I., & Perez, A. (2019). From curved spacetime to spacetime-dependent local unitaries over the honeycomb and triangular Quantum Walks. Sci Rep, 9, 10904–10pp.
Abstract: A discrete-time Quantum Walk (QW) is an operator driving the evolution of a single particle on the lattice, through local unitaries. In a previous paper, we showed that QWs over the honeycomb and triangular lattices can be used to simulate the Dirac equation. We apply a spacetime coordinate transformation upon the lattice of this QW, and show that it is equivalent to introducing spacetime-dependent local unitaries-whilst keeping the lattice fixed. By exploiting this duality between changes in geometry, and changes in local unitaries, we show that the spacetime-dependent QW simulates the Dirac equation in (2 + 1)-dimensional curved spacetime. Interestingly, the duality crucially relies on the non linear-independence of the three preferred directions of the honeycomb and triangular lattices: The same construction would fail for the square lattice. At the practical level, this result opens the possibility to simulate field theories on curved manifolds, via the quantum walk on different kinds of lattices.
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