Albaladejo, M. (2022). T-cc(+) coupled channel analysis and predictions. Phys. Lett. B, 829, 137052–13pp.
Abstract: A coupled channel analysis of the D*D-+(0) and D*D-0(+) system is performed to study the doubly charmed T-cc(+) state recently discovered by the LHCb collaboration. We use a simple model for the scattering amplitude and production mechanism that allows us to describe well the experimental spectrum, and obtain the T-cc(+) pole in the coupled channel T-matrix. We find that this bound state has a large molecular component. The isospin (I = 0 or I = 1) of the state cannot be inferred from the (DD0)-D-0 pi(+) spectrum alone, although there is some experimental evidence that points to the I = 0 interpretation. Therefore, we use the same formalism to predict other DD pi spectra. In the case the T-cc(+) has I = 1, we also predict the location of the other two members (T-cc(+) and T-cc(0)) of the triplet. Finally, using Heavy-Quark Spin Symmetry, we predict the location of possible heavier D*D* (I = 0 or I= 1) partners.
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Roser, J., Barrientos, L., Bernabeu, J., Borja-Lloret, M., Muñoz, E., Ros, A., et al. (2022). Joint image reconstruction algorithm in Compton cameras. Phys. Med. Biol., 67(15), 155009–15pp.
Abstract: Objective. To demonstrate the benefits of using an joint image reconstruction algorithm based on the List Mode Maximum Likelihood Expectation Maximization that combines events measured in different channels of information of a Compton camera. Approach. Both simulations and experimental data are employed to show the algorithm performance. Main results. The obtained joint images present improved image quality and yield better estimates of displacements of high-energy gamma-ray emitting sources. The algorithm also provides images that are more stable than any individual channel against the noisy convergence that characterizes Maximum Likelihood based algorithms. Significance. The joint reconstruction algorithm can improve the quality and robustness of Compton camera images. It also has high versatility, as it can be easily adapted to any Compton camera geometry. It is thus expected to represent an important step in the optimization of Compton camera imaging.
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Albiol, A., Albiol, F., Paredes, R., Plasencia-Martinez, J. M., Blanco Barrio, A., Garcia Santos, J. M., et al. (2022). A comparison of Covid-19 early detection between convolutional neural networks and radiologists. Insights Imaging, 13(1), 122–12pp.
Abstract: Background The role of chest radiography in COVID-19 disease has changed since the beginning of the pandemic from a diagnostic tool when microbiological resources were scarce to a different one focused on detecting and monitoring COVID-19 lung involvement. Using chest radiographs, early detection of the disease is still helpful in resource-poor environments. However, the sensitivity of a chest radiograph for diagnosing COVID-19 is modest, even for expert radiologists. In this paper, the performance of a deep learning algorithm on the first clinical encounter is evaluated and compared with a group of radiologists with different years of experience. Methods The algorithm uses an ensemble of four deep convolutional networks, Ensemble4Covid, trained to detect COVID-19 on frontal chest radiographs. The algorithm was tested using images from the first clinical encounter of positive and negative cases. Its performance was compared with five radiologists on a smaller test subset of patients. The algorithm's performance was also validated using the public dataset COVIDx. Results Compared to the consensus of five radiologists, the Ensemble4Covid model achieved an AUC of 0.85, whereas the radiologists achieved an AUC of 0.71. Compared with other state-of-the-art models, the performance of a single model of our ensemble achieved nonsignificant differences in the public dataset COVIDx. Conclusion The results show that the use of images from the first clinical encounter significantly drops the detection performance of COVID-19. The performance of our Ensemble4Covid under these challenging conditions is considerably higher compared to a consensus of five radiologists. Artificial intelligence can be used for the fast diagnosis of COVID-19.
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Otal, A., Celada, F., Chimeno, J., Vijande, J., Pellejero, S., Perez-Calatayud, M. J., et al. (2022). Review on Treatment Planning Systems for Cervix Brachytherapy (Interventional Radiotherapy): Some Desirable and Convenient Practical Aspects to Be Implemented from Radiation Oncologist and Medical Physics Perspectives. Cancers, 14(14), 3467–15pp.
Abstract: Simple Summary There are no brachytherapy treatment planning systems (TPS) exclusively for the treatment of cervical tumours, so general-purpose TPSs are used. However, these treatments have some particular features concerning the treatment of other pathologies, especially in the case of exclusive use of MRI as an imaging modality and the presence of gynaecological applicators in combination with an interstitial part. That is why it is essential to review the latest versions of commercial TPSs to find the potential features to improve with the help of a group of experimented medical physicists and radiation oncologists. Furthermore, after reviewing the recent literature for advances applicable to cervical brachytherapy and through his own clinical experience, possible improvements are proposed to software providers for the development of new tools. Intracavitary brachytherapy (BT, Interventional Radiotherapy, IRT), plays an essential role in the curative intent of locally advanced cervical cancer, for which the conventional approach involves external beam radiotherapy with concurrent chemotherapy followed by BT. This work aims to review the different methodologies used by commercially available treatment planning systems (TPSs) in exclusive magnetic resonance imaging-based (MRI) cervix BT with interstitial component treatments. Practical aspects and improvements to be implemented into the TPSs are discussed. This review is based on the clinical expertise of a group of radiation oncologists and medical physicists and on interactive demos provided by the software manufacturers. The TPS versions considered include all the new tools currently in development for future commercial releases. The specialists from the supplier companies were asked to propose solutions to some of the challenges often encountered in a clinical environment through a questionnaire. The results include not only such answers but also comments by the authors that, in their opinion, could help solve the challenges covered in these questions. This study summarizes the possibilities offered nowadays by commercial TPSs, highlighting the absence of some useful tools that would notably improve the planning of MR-based interstitial component cervix brachytherapy.
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De Romeri, V., Puerta, M., & Vicente, A. (2022). Dark matter in a charged variant of the Scotogenic model. Eur. Phys. J. C, 82(7), 623–16pp.
Abstract: Scotogenic models are among the most popular possibilities to link dark matter and neutrino masses. In this work we discuss a variant of the Scotogenic model that includes charged fermions and a doublet with hypercharge 3/2. Neutrino masses are induced at the one-loop level thanks to the states belonging to the dark sector. However, in contrast to the standard Scotogenic model, only the scalar dark matter candidate is viable in this version. After presenting the model and explaining some particularities about neutrino mass generation, we concentrate on its dark matter phenomenology. We show that the observed dark matter relic density can be correctly reproduced in the usual parameter space regions found for the standard Scotogenic model or the Inert Doublet model. In addition, the presence of the charged fermions opens up new viable regions, not present in the original scenarios, provided some tuning of the parameters is allowed.
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Hueso-Gonzalez, F., Casaña Copado, J. V., Fernandez Prieto, A., Gallas Torreira, A., Lemos Cid, E., Ros Garcia, A., et al. (2022). A dead-time-free data acquisition system for prompt gamma-ray measurements during proton therapy treatments. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 1033, 166701–9pp.
Abstract: In cancer patients undergoing proton therapy, a very intense secondary radiation is produced during the treatment, which lasts around one minute. About one billion prompt gamma-rays are emitted per second, and their detection with fast scintillation detectors is useful for monitoring a correct beam delivery. To cope with the expected count rate and pile-up, as well as the scarce statistics due to the short treatment duration, we developed an eidetic data acquisition system capable of continuously digitizing the detector signal with a high sampling rate and without any dead time. By streaming the fully unprocessed waveforms to the computer, complex pile-up decomposition algorithms can be applied and optimized offline. We describe the data acquisition architecture and the multiple experimental tests designed to verify the sustained data throughput speed and the absence of dead time. While the system is tailored for the proton therapy environment, the methodology can be deployed in any other field requiring the recording of raw waveforms at high sampling rates with zero dead time.
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Coloma, P., Hernandez, P., & Urrea, S. (2022). New bounds on axion-like particles from MicroBooNE. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 025–25pp.
Abstract: Neutrino experiments lie at the edge of the intensity frontier and therefore can be exploited to search for new light particles weakly coupled to the visible sector. In this work we derive new constraints on axion-like particles (ALPs) using data from the MicroBooNE experiment, from a search for e(+)e(-) pairs pointing in the direction of the NuMI absorber. In particular, we consider the addition of higher-dimensional effective operators coupling the ALP to the electroweak gauge bosons. These would induce K -> pi a from kaon decay at rest in the NuMI absorber, as well as ALP decays into pairs of leptons or photons. We discuss in detail and compare various results obtained for the decay width K -> pi a in previous literature. For the operator involving the Higgs, MicroBooNE already sets competitive bounds (comparable to those of NA62) for ALP masses between 100 and 200 MeV. We also compute the expected sensitivities from the full NuMI dataset recorded at MicroBooNE. Our results show that a search for a -> gamma gamma signal may be able to improve over current constraints from beam-dump experiments on the operator involving the ALP coupling to the W.
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Albaladejo, M., & Nieves, J. (2022). Compositeness of S-wave weakly-bound states from next-to-leading order Weinberg's relations. Eur. Phys. J. C, 82(8), 724–12pp.
Abstract: We discuss a model-independent estimator of the likelihood of the compositeness of a shallow S-wave bound or virtual state. The approach is based on an extension of Weinberg's relations in Weinberg (Phys Rev 137:B672, 1965) and it relies only on the proximity of the energy of the state to the two-hadron threshold to which it significantly couples. The scheme only makes use of the experimental scattering length and the effective range low energy parameters, and it is shown to be fully consistent for predominantly molecular hadrons. As explicit applications, we analyse the case of the deuteron, the S-1(0) nucleon virtual state and the exotic D-so(*)(2317)(+/-) , and find strong support to the molecular interpretation in all cases. Results are less conclusive for the D* (s0)(2317)+/-, since the binding energy of this state would be significantly higher than that of the deuteron, and the approach employed here is at the limit of its applicability. We also qualitatively address the case of the recently discovered T + cc state, within the isospin limit to avoid the complexity of the very close thresholds (DD)-D-0*+ and D + D*(0), which could mask the ingredients of the approach proposed in this work.
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Sanchis-Lozano, M. A. (2022). Stringy Signals from Large-Angle Correlations in the Cosmic Microwave Background? Universe, 8(8), 396–13pp.
Abstract: We interpret the lack of large-angle temperature correlations and the even-odd parity imbalance observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by COBE, WMAP and Planck satellite missions as a possible stringy signal ultimately stemming from a composite inflaton field (e.g., a fermionic condensate). Based on causality arguments and a Fourier analysis of the angular two-point correlation function, two infrared cutoffs k(min)(even,odd) (satisfying k(min)(even) similar or equal to 2k(min)(odd)) are introduced to the CMB power spectrum associated, respectively, with periodic and antiperiodic boundary conditions of the fermionic constituents (echoing the Neveu-Schwarz-Ramond model in superstring theory), without resorting to any particular model.
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Martinez de Lejarza, J. J., Cieri, L., & Rodrigo, G. (2022). Quantum clustering and jet reconstruction at the LHC. Phys. Rev. D, 106(3), 036021–16pp.
Abstract: Clustering is one of the most frequent problems in many domains, in particular, in particle physics where jet reconstruction is central in experimental analyses. Jet clustering at the CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is computationally expensive and the difficulty of this task will increase with the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). In this paper, we study the case in which quantum computing algorithms might improve jet clustering by considering two novel quantum algorithms which may speed up the classical jet clustering algorithms. The first one is a quantum subroutine to compute a Minkowski-based distance between two data points, whereas the second one consists of a quantum circuit to track the maximum into a list of unsorted data. The latter algorithm could be of value beyond particle physics, for instance in statistics. When one or both of these algorithms are implemented into the classical versions of well-known clustering algorithms (K-means, affinity propagation, and k(T) -jet) we obtain efficiencies comparable to those of their classical counterparts. Even more, exponential speed-up could be achieved, in the first two algorithms, in data dimensionality and data length when the distance algorithm or the maximum searching algorithm are applied.
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