Baeza-Ballesteros, J., Donini, A., & Nadal-Gisbert, S. (2022). Dynamical measurements of deviations from Newton's 1/r(2) law. Eur. Phys. J. C, 82(2), 154–30pp.
Abstract: In Ref. Donini and Marimon (Eur Phys J C 76:696, arXiv:1609.05654, 2016), an experimental setup aiming at the measurement of deviations from the Newtonian 1/r(2) distance dependence of gravitational interactions was proposed. The theoretical idea behind this setup was to study the trajectories of a “Satellite” with a mass m(S) similar to O(10(-9)) g around a “Planet” with mass m(P) is an element of [10(-7), 10(-5)] g, looking for precession of the orbit. The observation of such feature induced by gravitational interactions would be an unambiguous indication of a gravitational potential with terms different from 1/r and, thus, a powerful tool to detect deviations from Newton's 1/r(2) law. In this paper we optimize the proposed setup in order to achieve maximal sensitivity to look for such Beyond-Newtonian corrections. We then study in detail possible background sources that could induce precession and quantify their impact on the achievable sensitivity. We finally conclude that a dynamical measurement of deviations from newtonianity can test Yukawa-like corrections to the 1/r potential with strength as low as alpha similar to 10(-2) for distances as small as lambda similar to 10 μm.
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Magan, D. L. P., Caballero, L., Domingo-Pardo, C., Agramunt-Ros, J., Albiol, F., Casanovas, A., et al. (2016). First tests of the applicability of gamma-ray imaging for background discrimination in time-of-flight neutron capture measurements. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 823, 107–119.
Abstract: In this work we explore for the first time the applicability of using gamma-ray imaging in neutron capture measurements to identify and suppress spatially localized background. For this aim, a pinhole gamma camera is assembled, tested and characterized in terms of energy and spatial performance. It consists of a monolithic CeBr3 scintillating crystal coupled to a position-sensitive photomultiplier and readout through an integrated circuit AMIC2GR. The pinhole collimator is a massive carven block of lead. A series of dedicated measurements with calibrated sources and with a neutron beam incident on a Au-197 sample have been carried out at n_TOF, achieving an enhancement of a factor of two in the signal-to-background ratio when selecting only those events coming from the direction of the sample.
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Modamio, V., Valiente-Dobon, J. J., Jaworski, G., Huyuk, T., Triossi, A., Egea, J., et al. (2015). Digital pulse-timing technique for the neutron detector array NEDA. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 775, 71–76.
Abstract: A new digital pulse-timing algorithm, to be used with the future neutron detector array NEDA, has been developed and tested. The time resolution of four 5 in diameter photomultiplier tubes (XP4512, R4144, R11833-100, and ET9390-kb), coupled to a cylindrical 5 in by 5 in BC501A liquict scintillator detector was measured by employing digital sampling electronics and a constant fraction discriminator (CFD) algorithm. The zero crossing of the CM algorithm was obtained with a cubic spline interpolation, which was continuous up to the second derivative. The performance of the algorithm was studied at sampling rates of 500 MS/s and 200 MS/s. The time resolution obtained with the digital electronics was compared to the values acquired with a standard analog CFD. The result of this comparison shows that the time resolution from the analog and the digital measurements at 500 MS/s and at 200 MS/s are within 15% for all the tested photomultiplier tubes.
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Baeza-Ballesteros, J., Hernandez, P., & Romero-Lopez, F. (2022). A lattice study of pi pi scattering at large N-c. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 049–39pp.
Abstract: We present the first lattice study of pion-pion scattering with varying number of colors, N-c. We use lattice simulations with four degenerate quark flavors, N-f = 4, and N-c= 3 – 6. We focus on two scattering channels that do not involve vacuum diagrams. These correspond to two irreducible representations of the SU(4) flavor group: the fully symmetric one, SS, and the fully antisymmetric one, AA. The former is a repulsive channel equivalent to the isospin-2 channel of SU(2). By contrast, the latter is attractive and only exists for N-f >= 4. A representative state is (vertical bar D-s(+) pi(+)> – vertical bar D+ K+ >) /root 2. Using Lfischer's formalism, we extract the near-threshold scattering amplitude and we match our results to Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) at large N-c. For this, we compute the analytical U(N-f) ChPT prediction for two-pion scattering, and use the lattice results to constrain the N-c scaling of the relevant low-energy couplings.
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Baeza-Ballesteros, J., Bijnens, J., Husek, T., Romero-Lopez, F., Sharpe, S. R., & Sjo, M. (2024). The three-pion K-matrix at NLO in ChPT. J. High Energy Phys., 03(3), 048–43pp.
Abstract: The three-particle K-matrix, K-df,K-3, is a scheme-dependent quantity that parametrizes short-range three-particle interactions in the relativistic-field-theory three-particle finite-volume formalism. In this work, we compute its value for systems of three pions in all isospin channels through next-to-leading order in Chiral Perturbation Theory, generalizing previous work done at maximum isospin. We obtain analytic expressions through quadratic order (or cubic order, in the case of zero isospin) in the expansion about the three-pion threshold.
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