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Fernandes, L. M. P., Freitas, E. D. C., Ball, M., Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Monteiro, C. M. B., Yahlali, N., et al. (2010). Primary and secondary scintillation measurements in a Xenon Gas Proportional Scintillation Counter. J. Instrum., 5, P09006–15pp.
Abstract: NEXT is a new experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay using a 100 kg radio-pure high-pressure gaseous xenon TPC. The detector requires excellent energy resolution, which can be achieved in a Xe TPC with electroluminescence readout. Hamamatsu R8520-06SEL photomultipliers are good candidates for the scintillation readout. The performance of this photomultiplier, used as VUV photosensor in a gas proportional scintillation counter, was investigated. Initial results for the detection of primary and secondary scintillation produced as a result of the interaction of 5.9 keV X-rays in gaseous xenon, at room temperature and at pressures up to 3 bar, are presented. An energy resolution of 8.0% was obtained for secondary scintillation produced by 5.9 keV X-rays. No significant variation of the primary scintillation was observed for different pressures (1, 2 and 3 bar) and for electric fields up to 0.8 V cm(-1) torr(-1) in the drift region, demonstrating negligible recombination luminescence. A primary scintillation yield of 81 +/- 7 photons was obtained for 5.9 keV X-rays, corresponding to a mean energy of 72 +/- 6 eV to produce a primary scintillation photon in xenon.
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Bouhova-Thacker, E., Kostyukhin, V., Koffas, T., Liebig, W., Limper, M., Piacquadio, G. N., et al. (2010). Expected Performance of Vertex Reconstruction in the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 57(2), 760–767.
Abstract: In the harsh environment of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (design luminosity of 10(34) cm(-2) s(-1)) efficient reconstruction of vertices is crucial for many physics analyses. Described in this paper is the expected performance of the vertex reconstruction used in the ATLAS experiment. The algorithms for the reconstruction of primary and secondary vertices as well as for finding photon conversions and vertex reconstruction in jets are described. The implementation of vertex algorithms which follows a very modular design based on object-oriented C++ is presented. A user-friendly concept allows event reconstruction and physics analyses to compare and optimize their choice among different vertex reconstruction strategies. The performance of implemented algorithms has been studied on a variety of Monte Carlo samples and results are presented.
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Cervantes-Cota, J. L., de Putter, R., & Linder, E. V. (2010). Induced gravity and the attractor dynamics of dark energy/dark matter. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 12(12), 019–20pp.
Abstract: Attractor solutions that give dynamical reasons for dark energy to act like the cosmological constant, or behavior close to it, are interesting possibilities to explain cosmic acceleration. Coupling the scalar field to matter or to gravity enlarges the dynamical behavior; we consider both couplings together, which can ameliorate some problems for each individually. Such theories have also been proposed in a Higgs-like fashion to induce gravity and unify dark energy and dark matter origins. We explore restrictions on such theories due to their dynamical behavior compared to observations of the cosmic expansion. Quartic potentials in particular have viable stability properties and asymptotically approach general relativity.
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Villaescusa-Navarro, F., & Dalal, N. (2011). Cores and cusps in warm dark matter halos. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 024–16pp.
Abstract: The apparent presence of large core radii in Low Surface Brightness galaxies has been claimed as evidence in favor of warm dark matter. Here we show that WDM halos do not have cores that are large fractions of the halo size: typically, r(core)/r(200) less than or similar to 10(-3). This suggests an astrophysical origin for the large cores observed in these galaxies, as has been argued by other authors.
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Mangano, G., Miele, G., Pastor, S., Pisanti, O., & Sarikas, S. (2011). Constraining the cosmic radiation density due to lepton number with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 035–18pp.
Abstract: The cosmic energy density in the form of radiation before and during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) is typically parameterized in terms of the effective number of neutrinos N-eff. This quantity, in case of no extra degrees of freedom, depends upon the chemical potential and the temperature characterizing the three active neutrino distributions, as well as by their possible non-thermal features. In the present analysis we determine the upper bounds that BBN places on N-eff from primordial neutrino-antineutrino asymmetries, with a careful treatment of the dynamics of neutrino oscillations. We consider quite a wide range for the total lepton number in the neutrino sector, eta(nu) = eta(nu e) + eta(nu mu) + eta(nu tau) and the initial electron neutrino asymmetry eta(in)(nu e), solving the corresponding kinetic equations which rule the dynamics of neutrino (antineutrino) distributions in phase space due to collisions, pair processes and flavor oscillations. New bounds on both the total lepton number in the neutrino sector and the nu(e)-(nu) over bar (e) asymmetry at the onset of BBN are obtained fully exploiting the time evolution of neutrino distributions, as well as the most recent determinations of primordial H-2/H density ratio and He-4 mass fraction. Note that taking the baryon fraction as measured by WMAP, the H-2/H abundance plays a relevant role in constraining the allowed regions in the eta(nu)-eta(in)(nu e) plane. These bounds fix the maximum contribution of neutrinos with primordial asymmetries to N-eff as a function of the mixing parameter theta(13), and point out the upper bound N-eff less than or similar to 3.4. Comparing these results with the forthcoming measurement of N-eff by the Planck satellite will likely provide insight on the nature of the radiation content of the universe.
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Gavela, M. B., Lopez Honorez, L., Mena, O., & Rigolin, S. (2010). Dark coupling and gauge invariance. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 11(11), 044–15pp.
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Belver, D., Cabanelas, P., Castro, E., Garzon, J. A., Gil, A., Gonzalez-Diaz, D., et al. (2010). Performance of the Low-Jitter High-Gain/Bandwidth Front-End Electronics of the HADES tRPC Wall. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 57(5), 2848–2856.
Abstract: A front-end electronics (FEE) chain for accurate time measurements has been developed for the new Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC)-based Time-of-Flight (TOF) wall of the High Acceptance Di-Electron Spectrometer (HADES). The wall covers an area of around 8 m(2) divided in 6 sectors. In total, 1122 4-gap timing RPC cells are read-out by 2244 time and charge sensitive channels. The FEE chain consists of 2 custom-made boards: a 4-channel Daughter BOard(DBO) and a 32-channel MotherBOard (MBO). The DBO uses a fast 2 GHz amplifier feeding a dual high-speed discriminator. The time and charge information are encoded, respectively, in the leading edge and the width of an LVDS signal. Each MBO houses up to 8 DBOs providing them regulated voltage supply, threshold values via DACs, test signals and, additionally, routing out a signal proportional to the channel multiplicity needed for a 1st level trigger decision. The MBO delivers LVDS signals to a multi-purpose Trigger Readout Board (TRB) for data acquisition. The FEE allows achieving a system resolution around 75 ps fulfilling comfortably the requirements of the HADES upgrade [1]. The commissioning of the whole RPC wall is finished and the 6 sectors are already mounted in their final position in the HADES spectrometer and ready to take data during the beam-times foreseen for 2010.
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Trotta, R., Johannesson, G., Moskalenko, I. V., Porter, T. A., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Strong, A. W. (2011). Constraints on Cosmic-Ray Propagation Models from a Global Bayesian Analysis. Astrophys. J., 729(2), 106–16pp.
Abstract: Research in many areas of modern physics such as, e. g., indirect searches for dark matter and particle acceleration in supernova remnant shocks rely heavily on studies of cosmic rays (CRs) and associated diffuse emissions (radio, microwave, X-rays, gamma-rays). While very detailed numerical models of CR propagation exist, a quantitative statistical analysis of such models has been so far hampered by the large computational effort that those models require. Although statistical analyses have been carried out before using semi-analytical models (where the computation is much faster), the evaluation of the results obtained from such models is difficult, as they necessarily suffer from many simplifying assumptions. The main objective of this paper is to present a working method for a full Bayesian parameter estimation for a numerical CR propagation model. For this study, we use the GALPROP code, the most advanced of its kind, which uses astrophysical information, and nuclear and particle data as inputs to self-consistently predict CRs, gamma-rays, synchrotron, and other observables. We demonstrate that a full Bayesian analysis is possible using nested sampling and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods (implemented in the SuperBayeS code) despite the heavy computational demands of a numerical propagation code. The best-fit values of parameters found in this analysis are in agreement with previous, significantly simpler, studies also based on GALPROP.
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Lopez Honorez, L., Reid, B. A., Mena, O., Verde, L., & Jimenez, R. (2010). Coupled dark matter-dark energy in light of near universe observations. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 09(9), 029–36pp.
Abstract: Cosmological analysis based on currently available observations are unable to rule out a sizeable coupling among the dark energy and dark matter fluids. We explore a variety of coupled dark matter-dark energy models, which satisfy cosmic microwave background constraints, in light of low redshift and near universe observations. We illustrate the phenomenology of different classes of dark coupling models, paying particular attention in distinguishing between effects that appear only on the expansion history and those that appear in the growth of structure. We find that while a broad class of dark coupling models are effectively models where general relativity (GR) is modified – and thus can be probed by a combination of tests for the expansion history and the growth of structure -, there is a class of dark coupling models where gravity is still GR, but the growth of perturbations is, in principle modified. While this effect is small in the specific models we have considered, one should bear in mind that an inconsistency between reconstructed expansion history and growth may not uniquely indicate deviations from GR. Our low redshift constraints arise from cosmic velocities, redshift space distortions and dark matter abundance in galaxy voids. We find that current data constrain the dimensionless coupling to be vertical bar xi vertical bar < 0.2, but prospects from forthcoming data are for a significant improvement. Future, precise measurements of the Hubble constant, combined with high-precision constraints on the growth of structure, could provide the key to rule out dark coupling models which survive other tests. We shall exploit as well weak equivalence principle violation arguments, which have the potential to highly disfavour a broad family of coupled models.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Aguilar, J. A. et al), Bigongiari, C., Dornic, D., Emanuele, U., Gomez-Gonzalez, J. P., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., et al. (2010). Zenith distribution and flux of atmospheric muons measured with the 5-line ANTARES detector. Astropart Phys., 34(3), 179–184.
Abstract: The ANTARES high-energy neutrino telescope is a three-dimensional array of about 900 photomultipliers distributed over 12 mooring lines installed in the Mediterranean Sea. Between February and November 2007 it acquired data in a 5-line configuration. The zenith angular distribution of the atmospheric muon flux and the associated depth-intensity relation are measured and compared with previous measurements and Monte Carlo expectations. An evaluation of the systematic effects due to uncertainties on environmental and detector parameters is presented.
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