Lesgourgues, J., & Pastor, S. (2012). Neutrino Mass from Cosmology. Adv. High. Energy Phys., 2012, 608515–34pp.
Abstract: Neutrinos can play an important role in the evolution of the universe, modifying some of the cosmological observables. In this contribution we summarize the main aspects of cosmological relic neutrinos, and we describe how the precision of present cosmological data can be used to learn about neutrino properties, in particular their mass, providing complementary information to beta decay and neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments. We show how the analysis of current cosmological observations, such as the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background or the distribution of large-scale structure, provides an upper bound on the sum of neutrino masses of order 1 eV or less, with very good perspectives from future cosmological measurements which are expected to be sensitive to neutrino masses well into the sub-eV range.
|
Gil, A., Blanco, A., Castro, E., Diaz, J., Garzon, J. A., Gonzalez-Diaz, D., et al. (2012). The slow control system of the HADES RPC wall. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 661, S118–S120.
Abstract: The control and monitoring system for the new HADES RPC time of flight wall installed at GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung GmbH (Darmstadt, Germany), is described. The slow control system controls/monitors about 6000 variables from different physical devices via a distributed architecture, which uses intensively the 1-wire (R) bus. The software implementation is based on the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) software tool kit providing low cost, reliability and adaptability without requiring large hardware resources. The control and monitoring system attends five different subsystems: front-end electronics, low voltage, high voltage, gases, and detector. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
|
Blanco, A., Belver, D., Cabanelas, P., Diaz, J., Fonte, P., Garzon, J. A., et al. (2012). RPC HADES-TOF wall cosmic ray test performance. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 661, S114–S117.
Abstract: In this work we present results concerning the cosmic ray test, prior to the final installation and commissioning of the new Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) Time of Flight (TOF) wall for the High-Acceptance DiElectron Spectrometer (HADES) at GSI. The TOF wall is composed of six equal sectors, each one constituted by 186 individual 4-gaps glass-aluminium shielded RPC cells distributed in six columns and 31 rows in two partially overlapping layers, covering an area of 1.26 m(2). All sectors were tested with the final Front End Electronic (FEE) and Data AcQuisition system (DAQ) together with Low Voltage (LV) and High Voltage (HV) systems. Results confirm a very uniform average system time resolution of 77 ps sigma together with an average multi-hit time resolution of 83 ps. Crosstalk levels below 1% (in average), moderate timing tails along with an average longitudinal position resolution of 8.4 mm sigma are also confirmed.
|
Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2012). Antennas for the detection of radio emission pulses from cosmic-ray induced air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory. J. Instrum., 7, P10011–49pp.
Abstract: The Pierre Auger Observatory is exploring the potential of the radio detection technique to study extensive air showers induced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays. The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) addresses both technological and scientific aspects of the radio technique. A first phase of AERA has been operating since September 2010 with detector stations observing radio signals at frequencies between 30 and 80 MHz. In this paper we present comparative studies to identify and optimize the antenna design for the final configuration of AERA consisting of 160 individual radio detector stations. The transient nature of the air shower signal requires a detailed description of the antenna sensor. As the ultra-wideband reception of pulses is not widely discussed in antenna literature, we review the relevant antenna characteristics and enhance theoretical considerations towards the impulse response of antennas including polarization effects and multiple signal reflections. On the basis of the vector effective length we study the transient response characteristics of three candidate antennas in the time domain. Observing the variation of the continuous galactic background intensity we rank the antennas with respect to the noise level added to the galactic signal.
|
Belver, D., Blanco, A., Cabanelas, P., Diaz, J., Fonte, P., Garzon, J. A., et al. (2012). Analysis of the space-time microstructure of cosmic ray air showers using the HADES RPC TOF wall. J. Instrum., 7, P10007–9pp.
Abstract: Cosmic rays have been studied, since they were discovered one century ago, with a very broad spectrum of detectors and techniques. However, never the properties of the extended air showers (EAS) induced by high energy primary cosmic rays had been analysed at the Earth surface with a high granularity detector and a time resolution at the 0.1 ns scale. The commissioning of the timing RPC (Resistive Plate Chambers) time of flight wall of the HADES spectrometer with cosmic rays, at the GSI (Darmstadt, Germany), opened up that opportunity. During the last months of 2009, more than 500 millions of cosmic ray events were recorded by a stack of two RPC modules, of about 1.25 m(2) each, able to measure swarms of up to similar to 100 particles with a time resolution better than 100 ps. In this document it is demonstrated how such a relative small two-plane, high-granularity timing RPC setup may provide significant information about the properties of the shower and hence about the primary cosmic ray properties.
|
