n_TOF Collaboration(Praena, J. et al), Domingo-Pardo, C., Giubrone, G., Tain, J. L., & Tarifeño-Saldivia, A. (2018). Preparation and characterization of S-33 samples for S-33(n,alpha)Si-30 cross-section measurements at the n_TOF facility at CERN. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 890, 142–147.
Abstract: Thin S-33 samples for the study of the S-33(n,alpha)Si-30 cross-section at the n_TOF facility at CERN were made by thermal evaporation of S-33 powder onto a dedicated substrate made of kapton covered with thin layers of copper, chromium and titanium. This method has provided for the first time bare sulfur samples a few centimeters in diameter. The samples have shown an excellent adherence with no mass loss after few years and no sublimation in vacuum at room temperature. The determination of the mass thickness of S-33 has been performed by means of Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. The samples have been successfully tested under neutron irradiation.
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Campanario, F., Kerner, M., & Zeppenfeld, D. (2018). Z gamma production in vector-boson scattering at next-to-leading order QCD. J. High Energy Phys., 01(1), 160–19pp.
Abstract: Cross sections and differential distributions for Z gamma production in association with two jets via vector boson fusion are presented at next-to-leading order in QCD. The leptonic decays of the Z boson with full off-shell effects and spin correlations are taken into account. The uncertainties due to different scale choices and pdf sets are studied. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of including anomalous quartic gauge couplings at NLO QCD.
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NEXT Collaboration(Azevedo, C. D. R. et al), Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Alvarez, V., Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., Botas, A., Carcel, S., et al. (2018). Microscopic simulation of xenon-based optical TPCs in the presence of molecular additives. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 877, 157–172.
Abstract: We introduce a simulation framework for the transport of high and low energy electrons in xenon-based optical time projection chambers (OTPCs). The simulation relies on elementary cross sections (electron-atom and electron-molecule) and incorporates, in order to compute the gas scintillation, the reaction/quenching rates (atom-atom and atom-molecule) of the first 41 excited states of xenon and the relevant associated excimers, together with their radiative cascade. The results compare positively with observations made in pure xenon and its mixtures with CO2 and CF4 in a range of pressures from 0.1 to 10 bar. This work sheds some light on the elementary processes responsible for the primary and secondary xenon-scintillation mechanisms in the presence of additives, that are of interest to the OTPC technology.
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Izadi, A., Shacker, S. S., Olmo, G. J., & Banerjee, R. (2018). Observational effects of varying speed of light in quadratic gravity cosmological models. Int. J. Geom. Methods Mod. Phys., 15(5), 1850084–16pp.
Abstract: We study different manifestations of the speed of light in theories of gravity where metric and connection are regarded as independent fields. We find that for a generic gravity theory in a frame with locally vanishing affine connection, the usual degeneracy between different manifestations of the speed of light is broken. In particular, the space-time causal structure constant (c(ST)) may become variable in that local frame. For theories of the form f(R, R-mu nu R-mu nu), this variation in c(ST) has an impact on the definition of the luminosity distance (and distance modulus), which can be used to confront the predictions of particular models against Supernovae type Ia (SN Ia) data. We carry out this test for a quadratic gravity model without cosmological constant assuming (i) a constant speed of light and (ii) a varying speed of light (VSL), and find that the latter scenario is favored by the data.
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Escudero, M., Lopez-Honorez, L., Mena, O., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Villanueva-Domingo, P. (2018). A fresh look into the interacting dark matter scenario. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 06(6), 007–35pp.
Abstract: The elastic scattering between dark matter particles and radiation represents an attractive possibility to solve a number of discrepancies between observations and standard cold dark matter predictions, as the induced collisional damping would imply a suppression of small-scale structures. We consider this scenario and confront it with measurements of the ionization history of the Universe at several redshifts and with recent estimates of the counts of Milky Way satellite galaxies. We derive a conservative upper bound on the dark matter photon elastic scattering cross section of sigma gamma DM < 8 x 10(-10) sigma(T) (m(DM)/GeV) at 95% CL, about one order of magnitude tighter than previous constraints from satellite number counts. Due to the strong degeneracies with astrophysical parameters, the bound on the dark matter-photon scattering cross section derived here is driven by the estimate of the number of Milky Way satellite galaxies. Finally, we also argue that future 21 cm probes could help in disentangling among possible non-cold dark matter candidates, such as interacting and warm dark matter scenarios. Let us emphasize that bounds of similar magnitude to the ones obtained here could be also derived for models with dark matter-neutrino interactions and would be as constraining as the tightest limits on such scenarios.
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Kuehn, S. et al, Bernabeu, J., Lacasta, C., Marco-Hernandez, R., Rodriguez Rodriguez, D., Santoyo, D., et al. (2018). Prototyping of petalets for the Phase-II upgrade of the silicon strip tracking detector of the ATLAS experiment. J. Instrum., 13, T03004–22pp.
Abstract: In the high luminosity era of the Large Hadron Collider, the instantaneous luminosity is expected to reach unprecedented values, resulting in about 200 proton-proton interactions in a typical bunch crossing. To cope with the resultant increase in occupancy, bandwidth and radiation damage, the ATLAS Inner Detector will be replaced by an all-silicon system, the Inner Tracker (ITk). The ITk consists of a silicon pixel and a strip detector and exploits the concept of modularity. Prototyping and testing of various strip detector components has been carried out. This paper presents the developments and results obtained with reduced-size structures equivalent to those foreseen to be used in the forward region of the silicon strip detector. Referred to as petalets, these structures are built around a composite sandwich with embedded cooling pipes and electrical tapes for routing the signals and power. Detector modules built using electronic flex boards and silicon strip sensors are glued on both the front and back side surfaces of the carbon structure. Details are given on the assembly, testing and evaluation of several petalets. Measurement results of both mechanical and electrical quantities are shown. Moreover, an outlook is given for improved prototyping plans for large structures.
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Luo, X. L. et al, Agramunt, J., Egea, F. J., Gadea, A., & Huyuk, T. (2018). Pulse pile-up identification and reconstruction for liquid scintillator based neutron detectors. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 897, 59–65.
Abstract: The issue of pulse pile-up is frequently encountered in nuclear experiments involving high counting rates, which will distort the pulse shapes and the energy spectra. A digital method of off-line processing of pile-up pulses is presented. The pile-up pulses were firstly identified by detecting the downward-going zero-crossings in the first-order derivative of the original signal, and then the constituent pulses were reconstructed based on comparing the pile-up pulse with four models that are generated by combining pairs of neutron and.. standard pulses together with a controllable time interval. The accuracy of this method in resolving the pile-up events was investigated as a function of the time interval between two pulses constituting a pile-up event. The obtained results show that the method is capable of disentangling two pulses with a time interval among them down to 20 ns, as well as classifying them as neutrons or gamma rays. Furthermore, the error of reconstructing pile-up pulses could be kept below 6% when successive peaks were separated by more than 50 ns. By applying the method in a high counting rate of pile-up events measurement of the NEutron Detector Array (NEDA), it was empirically found that this method can reconstruct the pile-up pulses and perform neutron-gamma discrimination quite accurately. It can also significantly correct the distorted pulse height spectrum due to pile-up events.
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Sanchis-Lozano, M. A., & Sarkisyan-Grinbaum, E. K. (2018). Searching for new physics with three-particle correlations in pp collisions at the LHC. Phys. Lett. B, 781, 505–509.
Abstract: New phenomena involving pseudorapidity and azimuthal correlations among final-state particles in pp collisions at the LHC can hint at the existence of hidden sectors beyond the Standard Model. In this paper we rely on a correlated-cluster picture of multiparticle production, which was shown to account for the ridge effect, to assess the effect of a hidden sector on three-particle correlations concluding that there is a potential signature of new physics that can be directly tested by experiments using well-known techniques.
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Consiglio, R., de Salas, P. F., Mangano, G., Miele, G., Pastor, S., & Pisanti, O. (2018). PArthENoPE reloaded. Comput. Phys. Commun., 233, 237–242.
Abstract: We describe the main features of a new and updated version of the program PArthENoPE, which computes the abundances of light elements produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. As the previous first release in 2008, the new one, PArthENoPE2.0, is publicly available and distributed from the code site, http://parthenope.na.infn.it . Apart from minor changes, which will be also detailed, the main improvements are as follows. The powerful, but not freely accessible, NAG routines have been substituted by ODEPACK libraries, without any significant loss in precision. Moreover, we have developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) which allows a friendly use of the code and a simpler implementation of running for grids of input parameters. New Version program summary Program Title: PArthENoPE2.0 Program Files doi : http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/wvgr7d8yt9.1 Licensing provisions: GPLv3 Programming language: Fortran 77 and Python Supplementary material: User Manual available on the web page http://parthenope.na.infn.it Journal reference of previous version: Comput. Phys. Commun. 178 (2008) 956 971 Does the new version supersede the previous version?: Yes Reasons for the new version: Make the code more versatile and user friendly Summary of revisions: (1) Publicly available libraries (2) GUI for configuration Nature of problem: Computation of yields of light elements synthesized in the primordial universe Solution method: Livermore Solver for Ordinary Differential Equations (LSODE) for stiff and nonstiff systems
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Vento, V. (2018). Skyrmions at high density. Phys. Part. Nuclei Lett., 15(4), 367–370.
Abstract: The phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics is conjectured to have a rich structure containing at least three forms of matter: hadronic nuclear matter, quarkyonic matter and quark gluon plasma. We describe its formulation in terms of Skyrme crystals and justify the origin of the quarkyonic phase transition in a chiral-quark model.
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