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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Fernandez, P., Izmaylov, A., & Novella, P. (2019). Search for neutral-current induced single photon production at the ND280 near detector in T2K. J. Phys. G, 46(8), 08LT01–16pp.
Abstract: Neutrino neutral-current (NC) induced single photon production is a sub-leading order process for accelerator-based neutrino beam experiments including T2K. It is, however, an important process to understand because it is a background for electron (anti)neutrino appearance oscillation experiments. Here, we performed the first search of this process below 1 GeV using the fine-grained detector at the T2K ND280 off-axis near detector. By reconstructing single photon kinematics from electron-positron pairs, we achieved 95% pure gamma ray sample from 5.738 x 10(20) protons-on-targets neutrino mode data. We do not find positive evidence of NC induced single photon production in this sample. We set the model-dependent upper limit on the cross-section for this process, at 0.114 x 10(-38) cm(2) (90% C.L.) per nucleon, using the J-PARC off-axis neutrino beam with an average energy of < E-v > similar to 0.6 GeV. This is the first limit on this process below 1 GeV which is important for current and future oscillation experiments looking for electron neutrino appearance oscillation signals.
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SuperNEMO Collaboration(Argyriades, J. et al), Carcel, S., Diaz, J., Monrabal, F., Serra, L., & Yahlali, N. (2010). Results of the BiPo-1 prototype for radiopurity measurements for the SuperNEMO double beta decay source foils. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 622(1), 120–128.
Abstract: The development of BiPo detectors is dedicated to the measurement of extremely high radiopurity in (TI)-T-208 and Bi-214 for the SuperNEMO double beta decay source foils. A modular prototype, called BiPo-1, with 0.8 m(2) of sensitive surface area, has been running in the Modane Underground Laboratory since February, 2008. The goal of BiPo-1 is to measure the different components of the background and in particular the surface radiopurity of the plastic scintillators that make up the detector. The first phase of data collection has been dedicated to the measurement of the radiopurity in (TI)-T-208. After more than one year of background measurement, a surface activity of the scintillators of A((TI)-T-208) = 1.5 μBq/m(2) is reported here. Given this level of background, a larger BiPo detector having 12 m(2) of active surface area, is able to qualify the radiopurity of the SuperNEMO selenium double beta decay foils with the required sensitivity of A((TI)-T-208) <2 μBq/kg (90% CL.) with a six month measurement.
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Super-Kamiokande Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), & Molina Sedgwick, S. (2022). Neutron tagging following atmospheric neutrino events in a water Cherenkov detector. J. Instrum., 17(10), P10029–41pp.
Abstract: We present the development of neutron-tagging techniques in Super-Kamiokande IV using a neural network analysis. The detection efficiency of neutron capture on hydrogen is estimated to be 26%, with a mis-tag rate of 0.016 per neutrino event. The uncertainty of the tagging efficiency is estimated to be 9.0%. Measurement of the tagging efficiency with data from an Americium-Beryllium calibration agrees with this value within 10%. The tagging procedure was performed on 3,244.4 days of SK-IV atmospheric neutrino data, identifying 18,091 neutrons in 26,473 neutrino events. The fitted neutron capture lifetime was measured as 218 +/- 9 μs.
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Stuhl, L., Krasznahorkay, A., Csatlos, M., Algora, A., Gulyas, J., Kalinka, G., et al. (2014). A neutron spectrometer for studying giant resonances with (p,n) reactions in inverse kinematics. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 736, 1–9.
Abstract: A neutron spectrometer, the European Low-Energy Neutron Spectrometer (ELENS), has been constructed to study exotic nuclei in inverse-kinematics experiments. The spectrometer, which consists of plastic scintillator bars, can be operated in the neutron energy range of 100 keV-10 MeV. The neutron energy is determined using the time-of-flight technique, while the position of the neutron detection is deduced from the time-difference information from photomultipliers attached to both ends of each bar. A novel wrapping method has been developed for the plastic scintillators. The array has a larger than 25% detection efficiency for neutrons of approximately 500 keV in kinetic energy and an angular resolution of less than 1 degrees. Details of the design, construction and experimental tests of the spectrometer will be presented.
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Strege, C., Bertone, G., Feroz, F., Fornasa, M., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Trotta, R. (2013). Global fits of the cMSSM and NUHM including the LHC Higgs discovery and new XENON100 constraints. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 013–40pp.
Abstract: We present global fits of the constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (cMSSM) and the Non-Universal Higgs Model (NUHM), including the most recent CMS constraint on the Higgs boson mass, 5.8 fb(-1) integrated luminosity null Supersymmetry searches by ATLAS, the new LHCb measurement of B R ((B) over bar (s) -> mu(+) mu(-)) and the 7-year WMAP dark matter relic abundance determination. We include the latest dark matter constraints from the XENON100 experiment, marginalising over astrophysical and particle physics uncertainties. We present Bayesian posterior and profile likelihood maps of the highest resolution available today, obtained from up to 350M points. We find that the new constraint on the Higgs boson mass has a dramatic impact, ruling out large regions of previously favoured cMSSM and NUHM parameter space. In the cMSSM, light sparticles and predominantly gaugino-like dark matter with a mass of a few hundred GeV are favoured. The NUHM exhibits a strong preference for heavier sparticle masses and a Higgsino-like neutralino with a mass of 1 TeV. The future ton-scale XENON1T direct detection experiment will probe large portions of the currently favoured cMSSM and NUHM parameter space. The LHC operating at 14 TeV collision energy will explore the favoured regions in the cMSSM, while most of the regions favoured in the NUHM will remain inaccessible. Our best-fit points achieve a satisfactory quality-of-fit, with p-values ranging from 0.21 to 0.35, so that none of the two models studied can be presently excluded at any meaningful significance level.
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Strege, C., Bertone, G., Besjes, G. J., Caron, S., Ruiz de Austri, R., Strubig, A., et al. (2014). Profile likelihood maps of a 15-dimensional MSSM. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 081–59pp.
Abstract: We present statistically convergent profile likelihood maps obtained via global fits of a phenomenological Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with 15 free parameters (the MSSM-15), based on over 250M points. We derive constraints on the model parameters from direct detection limits on dark matter, the Planck relic density measurement and data from accelerator searches. We provide a detailed analysis of the rich phenomenology of this model, and determine the SUSY mass spectrum and dark matter properties that are preferred by current experimental constraints. We evaluate the impact of the measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (g – 2) on our results, and provide an analysis of scenarios in which the lightest neutralino is a subdominant component of the dark matter. The MSSM-15 parameters are relatively weakly constrained by current data sets, with the exception of the parameters related to dark matter phenomenology (M-1, M-2, mu), which are restricted to the sub-TeV regime, mainly due to the relic density constraint. The mass of the lightest neutralino is found to be < 1.5TeV at 99% C.L., but can extend up to 3 TeV when excluding the g – 2 constraint from the analysis. Low-mass bino-like neutralinos are strongly favoured, with spin-independent scattering cross-sections extending to very small values, similar to 10(-20) pb. ATLAS SUSY null searches strongly impact on this mass range, and thus rule out a region of parameter space that is outside the reach of any current or future direct detection experiment. The best-fit point obtained after inclusion of all data corresponds to a squark mass of 2.3 TeV, a gluino mass of 2.1 TeV and a 130 GeV neutralino with a spin-independent cross-section of 2.4 x 10(-10) pb, which is within the reach of future multi-ton scale direct detection experiments and of the upcoming LHC run at increased centre-of-mass energy.
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Stoppa, F., Vreeswijk, P., Bloemen, S., Bhattacharyya, S., Caron, S., Johannesson, G., et al. (2022). AutoSourceID-Light Fast optical source localization via U-Net and Laplacian of Gaussian. Astron. Astrophys., 662, A109–8pp.
Abstract: Aims. With the ever-increasing survey speed of optical wide-field telescopes and the importance of discovering transients when they are still young, rapid and reliable source localization is paramount. We present AutoSourceID-Light (ASID-L), an innovative framework that uses computer vision techniques that can naturally deal with large amounts of data and rapidly localize sources in optical images. Methods. We show that the ASID-L algorithm based on U-shaped networks and enhanced with a Laplacian of Gaussian filter provides outstanding performance in the localization of sources. A U-Net network discerns the sources in the images from many different artifacts and passes the result to a Laplacian of Gaussian filter that then estimates the exact location. Results. Using ASID-L on the optical images of the MeerLICHT telescope demonstrates the great speed and localization power of the method. We compare the results with SExtractor and show that our method outperforms this more widely used method. ASID-L rapidly detects more sources not only in low- and mid-density fields, but particularly in areas with more than 150 sources per square arcminute. The training set and code used in this paper are publicly available.
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Stoppa, F., Ruiz de Austri, R., Vreeswijk, P., Bhattacharyya, S., Caron, S., Bloemen, S., et al. (2023). AutoSourceID-FeatureExtractor Optical image analysis using a two-step mean variance estimation network for feature estimation and uncertainty characterisation. Astron. Astrophys., 680, A108–14pp.
Abstract: Aims. In astronomy, machine learning has been successful in various tasks such as source localisation, classification, anomaly detection, and segmentation. However, feature regression remains an area with room for improvement. We aim to design a network that can accurately estimate sources' features and their uncertainties from single-band image cutouts, given the approximated locations of the sources provided by the previously developed code AutoSourceID-Light (ASID-L) or other external catalogues. This work serves as a proof of concept, showing the potential of machine learning in estimating astronomical features when trained on meticulously crafted synthetic images and subsequently applied to real astronomical data.Methods. The algorithm presented here, AutoSourceID-FeatureExtractor (ASID-FE), uses single-band cutouts of 32x32 pixels around the localised sources to estimate flux, sub-pixel centre coordinates, and their uncertainties. ASID-FE employs a two-step mean variance estimation (TS-MVE) approach to first estimate the features and then their uncertainties without the need for additional information, for example the point spread function (PSF). For this proof of concept, we generated a synthetic dataset comprising only point sources directly derived from real images, ensuring a controlled yet authentic testing environment.Results. We show that ASID-FE, trained on synthetic images derived from the MeerLICHT telescope, can predict more accurate features with respect to similar codes such as SourceExtractor and that the two-step method can estimate well-calibrated uncertainties that are better behaved compared to similar methods that use deep ensembles of simple MVE networks. Finally, we evaluate the model on real images from the MeerLICHT telescope and the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) to test its transfer learning abilities.
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Stoppa, F., Bhattacharyya, S., Ruiz de Austri, R., Vreeswijk, P., Caron, S., Zaharijas, G., et al. (2023). AutoSourceID-Classifier Star-galaxy classification using a convolutional neural network with spatial information. Astron. Astrophys., 680, A109–16pp.
Abstract: Aims. Traditional star-galaxy classification techniques often rely on feature estimation from catalogs, a process susceptible to introducing inaccuracies, thereby potentially jeopardizing the classification's reliability. Certain galaxies, especially those not manifesting as extended sources, can be misclassified when their shape parameters and flux solely drive the inference. We aim to create a robust and accurate classification network for identifying stars and galaxies directly from astronomical images.Methods. The AutoSourceID-Classifier (ASID-C) algorithm developed for this work uses 32x32 pixel single filter band source cutouts generated by the previously developed AutoSourceID-Light (ASID-L) code. By leveraging convolutional neural networks (CNN) and additional information about the source position within the full-field image, ASID-C aims to accurately classify all stars and galaxies within a survey. Subsequently, we employed a modified Platt scaling calibration for the output of the CNN, ensuring that the derived probabilities were effectively calibrated, delivering precise and reliable results.Results. We show that ASID-C, trained on MeerLICHT telescope images and using the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) morphological classification, is a robust classifier and outperforms similar codes such as SourceExtractor. To facilitate a rigorous comparison, we also trained an eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model on tabular features extracted by SourceExtractor. While this XGBoost model approaches ASID-C in performance metrics, it does not offer the computational efficiency and reduced error propagation inherent in ASID-C's direct image-based classification approach. ASID-C excels in low signal-to-noise ratio and crowded scenarios, potentially aiding in transient host identification and advancing deep-sky astronomy.
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Staub, F., Porod, W., & Herrmann, B. (2010). The electroweak sector of the NMSSM at the one-loop level. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 040–50pp.
Abstract: We present the electroweak spectrum for the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model at the one-loop level, e. g. the masses of Higgs bosons, sleptons, charginos and neutralinos. For the numerical evaluation we present a mSUGRA variant with non-universal Higgs mass parameters squared and we compare our results with existing ones in the literature. Moreover, we briefly discuss the implications of our results for the calculation of the relic density.
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