Abstract: We propose a novel statistical method to extend Fermi-LAT catalogues of highlatitude -y-ray sources below their nominal threshold. To do so, we rely on the determination of the differential source -count distribution of sub -threshold sources which only provides the statistical flux distribution of faint sources. By simulating ensembles of synthetic skies, we assess quantitatively the likelihood for pixels in the sky with relatively low -test statistics to be due to sources, therefore complementing the source -count distribution with spatial information. Besides being useful to orient efforts towards multi -messenger and multi -wavelength identification of new -y-ray sources, we expect the results to be especially advantageous for statistical applications such as cross -correlation analyses.

Abstract: The T2K experiment widely uses plastic scintillator as a target for neutrino interactions and an active medium for the measurement of charged particles produced in neutrino interactions at its near detector complex. Over 10 years of operation the measured light yield recorded by the scintillator based subsystems has been observed to degrade by 0.9-2.2% per year. Extrapolation of the degradation rate through to 2040 indicates the recorded light yield should remain above the lower threshold used by the current reconstruction algorithms for all subsystems. This will allow the near detectors to continue contributing to important physics measurements during the T2K-II and Hyper-Kamiokande eras. Additionally, work to disentangle the degradation of the plastic scintillator and wavelength shifting fibres shows that the reduction in light yield can be attributed to the ageing of the plastic scintillator. The long component of the attenuation length of the wavelength shifting fibres was observed to degrade by 1.3-5.4% per year, while the short component of the attenuation length did not show any conclusive degradation.

Abstract: In this paper, the formulation of Quantum Mechanics in terms of fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets is explored. A result by Pykacz, which establishes a correspondence between (quantum) logics (lattices with certain properties) and certain families of fuzzy sets, is applied to the Birkhoff-von Neumann logic, the lattice of projectors of a Hilbert space. Three cases are considered: the qubit, two qubits entangled, and a qutrit 'nested' inside the two entangled qubits. The membership functions of the fuzzy sets are explicitly computed and all the connectives of the fuzzy sets are interpreted as operations with these particular membership functions. In this way, a complete picture of the standard quantum logic in terms of fuzzy sets is obtained for the systems considered.

Abstract: The framed standard model (FSM), constructed to explain the empirical mass and mixing patterns (including CP phases) of quarks and leptons, in which it has done quite well, gives otherwise the same result as the standard model (SM) in almost all areas in particle physics where the SM has been successfully applied, except for a few specified deviations such as the W mass and the g-2 of muons, that is, just where experiment is showing departures from what SM predicts. It predicts further the existence of a hidden sector of particles some of which may function as dark matter. In this paper, we first note that the above results involve, surprisingly, the FSM undergoing a vacuum transition (VTR1) at a scale of around 17MeV, where the vacuum expectation values of the colour framons (framed vectors promoted into fields) which are all nonzero above that scale acquire some vanishing components below it. This implies that the metric pertaining to these vanishing components would vanish also. Important consequences should then ensue, but these occur mostly in the unknown hidden sector where empirical confirmation is hard at present to come by, but they give small reflections in the standard sector, some of which may have already been seen. However, one notes that if, going off at a tangent, one imagines colour to be embedded, Kaluza-Klein (KK) fashion, into a higher-dimensional space-time, then this VTR1 would cause 2 of the compactified dimensions to collapse. This might mean then that when the universe cooled to the corresponding temperature of 1011 K when it was about 10-3 s old, this VTR1 collapse would cause the three spatial dimensions of the universe to expand to compensate. The resultant expansion is estimated, using FSM parameters previously determined from particle physics, to be capable, when extrapolated backwards in time, of bringing the present universe back inside the then horizon, solving thus formally the horizon problem. Besides, VTR1 being a global phenomenon in the FSM, it would switch on and off automatically and simultaneously over all space, thus requiring seemingly no additional strategy for a graceful exit. However, this scenario has not been checked for consistency with other properties of the universe and is to be taken thus not as a candidate solution of the horizon problem but only as an observation from particle physics which might be of interest to cosmologists and experts in the early universe. For particle physicists also, it might serve as an indicator for how relevant this VTR1 can be, even if the KK assumption is not made.

Abstract: We show that, after resolving what was thought to be an ambiguity in the Higgs coupling, the FSM gives, apart from two extra terms (i) and (ii) to be specified below, an effective action in the standard sector which has the same form as the SM action, the two differing only in the values of the mass and mixing parameters of quarks and leptons which the SM takes as Finputs from experiment while the FSM obtains as a result of a fit with a few parameters. Hence, to the accuracy that these two sets of parameters agree in value, and they do to a good extent as shown in earlier work,' the FSM should give the same result as the SM in all the circumstances where the latter has been successfully applied, except for the noted modifications due to (i) and (ii). If so, it would be a big step forward for the FSM. The correction terms are: (i) a mixing between the SM's gamma – Z with a new vector boson in the hidden sector, (ii) a mixing between the standard Higgs with a new scalar boson also in the hidden sector. And these have been shown a few years back to lead to (i') an enhancement of the W mass over the SM value,(2) – and (ii') effects consistent with the g – 2 and some other anomalies,(3) precisely the two deviations from the SM reported by experiments(4,5) recently much in the news.