NEXT Collaboration, Carcel, S., Carrion, J. V., Felkai, R., Kekic, M., Lopez-March, N., et al. (2020). Mitigation of backgrounds from cosmogenic Xe-137 in xenon gas experiments using He-3 neutron capture. J. Phys. G, 47(7), 075001–17pp.
Abstract: Xe-136 is used as the target medium for many experiments searching for 0 nu beta beta. Despite underground operation, cosmic muons that reach the laboratory can produce spallation neutrons causing activation of detector materials. A potential background that is difficult to veto using muon tagging comes in the form of Xe-137 created by the capture of neutrons on Xe-136. This isotope decays via beta decay with a half-life of 3.8 min and a Q(beta) of similar to 4.16 MeV. This work proposes and explores the concept of adding a small percentage of He-3 to xenon as a means to capture thermal neutrons and reduce the number of activations in the detector volume. When using this technique we find the contamination from Xe-137 activation can be reduced to negligible levels in tonne and multi-tonne scale high pressure gas xenon neutrinoless double beta decay experiments running at any depth in an underground laboratory.
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AGATA Collaboration(Lalovic, N. et al), Gadea, A., & Domingo-Pardo, C. (2018). Study of isomeric states in Pb-198, Pb-200, Pb-202, Pb-206 and Hg-206 populated in fragmentation reactions. J. Phys. G, 45(3), 035105–27pp.
Abstract: Isomeric states in isotopes in the vicinity of doubly-magic Pb-208 were populated following reactions of a relativistic Pb-208 primary beam impinging on a Be-9 fragmentation target. Secondary beams of Pb-198,Pb-200,Pb-202,Pb-206 and Hg-206 were isotopically separated and implanted in a passive stopper positioned in the focal plane of the GSI Fragment Separator. Delayed gamma rays were detected with the Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA). Decay schemes were reevaluated and interpreted with shell-model calculations. The momentum-dependent population of isomeric states in the two-nucleon hole nuclei Pb-206/Hg-206 was found to differ from the population of multi neutron-hole isomeric states in Pb-198,Pb-200,Pb-202.
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Feng, J. L. et al, Garcia Soto, A., & Hirsch, M. (2023). The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC. J. Phys. G, 50(3), 030501–410pp.
Abstract: High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe standard model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the standard model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF's physics potential.
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Becker, P., Davesne, D., Meyer, J., Pastore, A., & Navarro, J. (2015). Tools for incorporating a D-wave contribution in Skyrme energy density functionals. J. Phys. G, 42(3), 034001–19pp.
Abstract: The possibility of adding a D-wave term to the standard Skyrme effective interaction has been widely considered in the past. Such a term has been shown to appear in the next-to-next-to-leading order of the Skyrme pseudo-potential. The aim of the present article is to provide the necessary tools to incorporate this term in a fitting procedure: first, a mean-field equation written in spherical symmetry in order to describe spherical nuclei and second, the response function to detect unphysical instabilities. With these tools it will be possible to build a new fitting procedure to determine the coupling constants of the new functional.
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Agostini, P. et al, & Mandal, S. (2021). The Large Hadron-Electron Collider at the HL-LHC. J. Phys. G, 48(11), 110501–364pp.
Abstract: The Large Hadron-Electron Collider (LHeC) is designed to move the field of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) to the energy and intensity frontier of particle physics. Exploiting energy-recovery technology, it collides a novel, intense electron beam with a proton or ion beam from the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The accelerator and interaction region are designed for concurrent electron-proton and proton-proton operations. This report represents an update to the LHeC's conceptual design report (CDR), published in 2012. It comprises new results on the parton structure of the proton and heavier nuclei, QCD dynamics, and electroweak and top-quark physics. It is shown how the LHeC will open a new chapter of nuclear particle physics by extending the accessible kinematic range of lepton-nucleus scattering by several orders of magnitude. Due to its enhanced luminosity and large energy and the cleanliness of the final hadronic states, the LHeC has a strong Higgs physics programme and its own discovery potential for new physics. Building on the 2012 CDR, this report contains a detailed updated design for the energy-recovery electron linac (ERL), including a new lattice, magnet and superconducting radio-frequency technology, and further components. Challenges of energy recovery are described, and the lower-energy, high-current, three-turn ERL facility, PERLE at Orsay, is presented, which uses the LHeC characteristics serving as a development facility for the design and operation of the LHeC. An updated detector design is presented corresponding to the acceptance, resolution, and calibration goals that arise from the Higgs and parton-density-function physics programmes. This paper also presents novel results for the Future Circular Collider in electron-hadron (FCC-eh) mode, which utilises the same ERL technology to further extend the reach of DIS to even higher centre-of-mass energies.
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