Jueid, A., Kip, J., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Skands, P. (2023). Impact of QCD uncertainties on antiproton spectra from dark-matter annihilation. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 068–15pp.
Abstract: Dark-matter particles that annihilate or decay can undergo complex sequences of processes, including strong and electromagnetic radiation, hadronisation, and hadron de-cays, before particles that are stable on astrophysical time scales are produced. Antiprotons produced in this way may leave footprints in experiments such as AMS-02. Several groups have reported an excess of events in the antiproton flux in the rigidity range of 10-20 GV. However, the theoretical modeling of baryon production is not straightforward and relies in part on phenomenological models in Monte Carlo event generators. In this work, we assess the impact of QCD uncertainties on the spectra of antiprotons from dark-matter annihila-tion. As a proof-of-principle, we show that for a two-parameter model that depends only on the thermally-averaged annihilation cross section ((o -v)) and the dark-matter mass (Mx), QCD uncertainties can affect the best-fit mass by up to ti 14% (with large uncertainties for large DM masses), depending on the choice of Mx and the annihilation channel (bb over bar or W+W-), and (o -v) by up to ti 10%. For comparison, changes to the underlying diffusion parameters are found to be within 1%-5%, and the results are also quite resilient to the choice of cosmic-ray propagation model. These findings indicate that QCD uncertainties need to be included in future DM analyses. To facilitate full-fledged analyses, we provide the spectra in tabulated form including QCD uncertainties and code snippets to perform mass interpolations and quick DM fits. The code can be found in this GitHub [1] repository.
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Jaworski, G., Palacz, M., Nyberg, J., de Angelis, G., de France, G., Di Nitto, A., et al. (2012). Monte Carlo simulation of a single detector unit for the neutron detector array NEDA. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 673, 64–72.
Abstract: A study of the dimensions and performance of a single detector of the future neutron detector array NEDA was performed by means of Monte Carlo simulations, using GEANT4. Two different liquid scintillators were evaluated: the hydrogen based BC501A and the deuterated BC537. The efficiency and the probability that one neutron will trigger a signal in more than one detector were investigated as a function of the detector size. The simulations were validated comparing the results to experimental measurements performed with two existing neutron detectors, with different geometries, based on the liquid scintillator BC501.
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Caron, S., Gomez-Vargas, G. A., Hendriks, L., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2018). Analyzing gamma rays of the Galactic Center with deep learning. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 058–24pp.
Abstract: We present the application of convolutional neural networks to a particular problem in gamma ray astronomy. Explicitly, we use this method to investigate the origin of an excess emission of GeV gamma rays in the direction of the Galactic Center, reported by several groups by analyzing Fermi-LAT data. Interpretations of this excess include gamma rays created by the annihilation of dark matter particles and gamma rays originating from a collection of unresolved point sources, such as millisecond pulsars. We train and test convolutional neural networks with simulated Fermi-LAT images based on point and diffuse emission models of the Galactic Center tuned to measured gamma ray data. Our new method allows precise measurements of the contribution and properties of an unresolved population of gamma ray point sources in the interstellar diffuse emission model. The current model predicts the fraction of unresolved point sources with an error of up to 10% and this is expected to decrease with future work.
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n_TOF Collaboration(Zugec, P. et al), Domingo-Pardo, C., Giubrone, G., & Tain, J. L. (2014). GEANT4 simulation of the neutron background of the C6D6 set-up for capture studies at n_TOF. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 760, 57–67.
Abstract: The neutron sensitivity of the Cr6D6 detector setup used at nTOF facility for capture measurements has been studied by means of detailed GEANT4 simulations. A realistic software replica of the entire nTOF experimental hall, including the neutron beam line, sample, detector supports and the walls of the experimental area has been implemented in the simulations. The simulations have been analyzed in the same manner as experimental data, in particular by applying the Pulse Height Weighting Technique. The simulations have been validated against a measurement of the neutron background performed with a(nat)-C sample, showing an excellent agreement above 1 keV. At lower energies, an additional component in the measured C-nat yield has been discovered, which prevents the use of C-nat data for neutron background estimates at neutron energies below a few hundred eV. The origin and time structure of the neutron background have been derived from the simulations. Examples of the neutron background for two different samples are demonstrating the important role of accurate simulations of the neutron background in capture cross-section measurements.
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Villaescusa-Navarro, F. et al, & Villanueva-Domingo, P. (2023). The CAMELS Project: Public Data Release. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 265(2), 54–14pp.
Abstract: The Cosmology and Astrophysics with Machine Learning Simulations (CAMELS) project was developed to combine cosmology with astrophysics through thousands of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and machine learning. CAMELS contains 4233 cosmological simulations, 2049 N-body simulations, and 2184 state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations that sample a vast volume in parameter space. In this paper, we present the CAMELS public data release, describing the characteristics of the CAMELS simulations and a variety of data products generated from them, including halo, subhalo, galaxy, and void catalogs, power spectra, bispectra, Lya spectra, probability distribution functions, halo radial profiles, and X-rays photon lists. We also release over 1000 catalogs that contain billions of galaxies from CAMELS-SAM: a large collection of N-body simulations that have been combined with the Santa Cruz semianalytic model. We release all the data, comprising more than 350 terabytes and containing 143,922 snapshots, millions of halos, galaxies, and summary statistics. We provide further technical details on how to access, download, read, and process the data at .
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Jordan, D., Algora, A., & Tain, J. L. (2016). An event generator for simulations of complex beta-decay experiments. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 828, 52–57.
Abstract: This article describes a Monte Carlo event generator for the design, optimization and performance characterization of beta decay spectroscopy experimental set-ups. The event generator has been developed within the Geant4 simulation architecture and provides new features and greater flexibility in comparison with the current available decay generator.
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AGATA Collaboration(Crespi, F. C. L. et al), & Gadea, A. (2013). Response of AGATA segmented HPGe detectors to gamma rays up to 15.1 MeV. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 705, 47–54.
Abstract: The response of AGATA segmented HPGe detectors to gamma rays in the energy range 2-15 MeV was measured. The 15.1 MeV gamma rays were produced using the reaction d(B-11,n gamma)C-12 at E-beam=19.1 MeV, while gamma rays between 2 and 9 MeV were produced using an Am-Be-Fe radioactive source. The energy resolution and linearity were studied and the energy-to-pulse-height conversion resulted to be linear within 0.05%.Experimental interaction multiplicity distributions are discussed and compared with the results of Geant4 simulations. It is shown that the application of gamma-ray tracking allows a suppression of background radiation caused by n-capture in Ge nuclei. Finally the Doppler correction for the 15.1 MeV gamma line, performed using the position information extracted with Pulse-shape analysis is discussed.
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Arina, C., Di Mauro, M., Fornengo, N., Heisig, J., Jueid, A., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2024). CosmiXs: cosmic messenger spectra for indirect dark matter searches. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 035–41pp.
Abstract: The energy spectra of particles produced from dark matter (DM) annihilation or decay are one of the fundamental ingredients to calculate the predicted fluxes of cosmic rays and radiation searched for in indirect DM detection. We revisit the calculation of the source spectra for annihilating and decaying DM using the VINCIA shower algorithm in PYTHIA to include QED and QCD final state radiation and diagrams for the EW corrections with massive bosons, not present in the default PYTHIA shower model. We take into account the spin information of the particles during the entire EW shower and the off -shell contributions from massive gauge bosons. Furthermore, we perform a dedicated tuning of the VINCIA and PYTHIA parameters to LEP data on the production of pions, photons, and hyperons at the Z resonance and discuss the underlying uncertainties. To enable the use of our results in DM studies, we provide the tabulated source spectra for the most relevant cosmic messenger particles, namely antiprotons, positrons, gamma rays and the three neutrino flavors, for all the fermionic and bosonic channels and DM masses between 5 GeV and 100 TeV, on github.
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de Salas, P. F., Gariazzo, S., Lesgourgues, J., & Pastor, S. (2017). Calculation of the local density of relic neutrinos. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 09(9), 034–24pp.
Abstract: Nonzero neutrino masses are required by the existence of flavour oscillations, with values of the order of at least 50 meV. We consider the gravitational clustering of relic neutrinos within the Milky Way, and used the N – one-body simulation technique to compute their density enhancement factor in the neighbourhood of the Earth with respect to the average cosmic density. Compared to previous similar studies, we pushed the simulation down to smaller neutrino masses, and included an improved treatment of the baryonic and dark matter distributions in the Milky Way. Our results are important for future experiments aiming at detecting the cosmic neutrino background, such as the Princeton Tritium Observatory for Light, Early-universe, Massive-neutrino Yield (PTOLEMY) proposal. We calculate the impact of neutrino clustering in the Milky Way on the expected event rate for a PTOLEMY-like experiment. We find that the effect of clustering remains negligible for the minimal normal hierarchy scenario, while it enhances the event rate by 10 to 20% (resp. a factor 1.7 to 2.5) for the minimal inverted hierarchy scenario (resp. a degenerate scenario with 150 meV masses). Finally we compute the impact on the event rate of a possible fourth sterile neutrino with a mass of 1.3 eV.
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De Romeri, V., Majumdar, A., Papoulias, D. K., & Srivastava, R. (2024). XENONnT and LUX-ZEPLIN constraints on DSNB-boosted dark matter. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 028–34pp.
Abstract: We consider a scenario in which dark matter particles are accelerated to semirelativistic velocities through their scattering with the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background. Such a subdominant, but more energetic dark matter component can be then detected via its scattering on the electrons and nucleons inside direct detection experiments. This opens up the possibility to probe the sub -GeV mass range, a region of parameter space that is usually not accessible at such facilities. We analyze current data from the XENONnT and LUX-ZEPLIN experiments and we obtain novel constraints on the scattering cross sections of sub -GeV boosted dark matter with both nucleons and electrons. We also highlight the importance of carefully taking into account Earth's attenuation effects as well as the finite nuclear size into the analysis. By comparing our results to other existing constraints, we show that these effects lead to improved and more robust constraints.
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