|
Herrero, V., Toledo, J., Catala, J. M., Esteve, R., Gil, A., Lorca, D., et al. (2012). Readout electronics for the SiPM tracking plane in the NEXT-1 prototype. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 695, 229–232.
Abstract: NEXT is a new experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay using a 100 kg radio-pure high-pressure gaseous xenon TPC with electroluminescence readout. A large-scale prototype with a SiPM tracking plane has been built. The primary electron paths can be reconstructed from time-resolved measurements of the light that arrives to the SiPM plane. Our approach is to measure how many photons have reached each SiPM sensor each microsecond with a gated integrator. We have designed and tested a 16-channel front-end board that includes the analog paths and a digital section. Each analog path consists of three different stages: a transimpedance amplifier, a gated integrator and an offset and gain control stage. Measurements show good linearity and the ability to detect single photoelectrons.
|
|
|
Gil, A., Diaz, J., Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Herrero, V., Rodriguez, J., Serra, L., et al. (2012). Front-end electronics for accurate energy measurement of double beta decays. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 695, 407–409.
Abstract: NEXT, a double beta decay experiment that will operate in Canfranc Underground Laboratory (Spain), aims at measuring the neutrinoless double-beta decay of the 136Xe isotope using a TPC filled with enriched Xenon gas at high pressure operated in electroluminescence mode. One technological challenge of the experiment is to achieve resolution better than 1% in the energy measurement using a plane of UV sensitive photomultipliers readout with appropriate custom-made front-end electronics. The front-end is designed to be sensitive to the single photo-electron to detect the weak primary scintillation light produced in the chamber, and also to be able to cope with the electroluminescence signal (several hundred times higher and with a duration of microseconds). For efficient primary scintillation detection and precise energy measurement of the electroluminescent signals the front-end electronics features low noise and adequate amplification. The signal shaping provided allows the digitization of the signals at a frequency as low as 40 MHz.
|
|
|
T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Cervera-Villanueva, A., Escudero, L., Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Hansen, C., Monfregola, L., et al. (2012). Measurements of the T2K neutrino beam properties using the INGRID on-axis near detector. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 694, 211–223.
Abstract: Precise measurement of neutrino beam direction and intensity was achieved based on a new concept with modularized neutrino detectors. INGRID (Interactive Neutrino GRID) is an on-axis near detector for the T2K long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. INGRID consists of 16 identical modules arranged in horizontal and vertical arrays around the beam center. The module has a sandwich structure of iron target plates and scintillator trackers. INGRID directly monitors the muon neutrino beam profile center and intensity using the number of observed neutrino events in each module. The neutrino beam direction is measured with accuracy better than 0.4 mrad from the measured profile center. The normalized event rate is measured with 4% precision. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
Agarwalla, S. K., & Hernandez, P. (2012). Probing the neutrino mass hierarchy with Super-Kamiokande. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 086–14pp.
Abstract: We show that for recently discovered large values of theta(13), a superbeam with an average neutrino energy of similar to 5 GeV, such as those being proposed at CERN, if pointing to Super-Kamiokande (L similar or equal to 8770 km), could reveal the neutrino mass hierarchy at 5 sigma in less than two years irrespective of the true hierarchy and CP phase. The measurement relies on the near resonant matter effect in the nu(mu) -> nu(e) oscillation channel, and can be done counting the total number of appearance events with just a neutrino beam.
|
|
|
ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo Gimenez, V., Costa, M. J., Ferrer, A., Fiorini, L., et al. (2012). Evidence for the associated production of a W boson and a top quark in ATLAS at root s=7 TeV. Phys. Lett. B, 716(1), 142–159.
Abstract: This Letter presents evidence for the associated production of a W boson and a top quark using 2.05 fb(-1) of pp collision data at root s = 7 TeV accumulated with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The analysis is based on the selection of the dileptonic final states with events featuring two isolated leptons, electron or muon, with significant transverse missing momentum and at least one jet. An approach based on boosted decision trees has been developed to improve the discrimination of single top-quark Wt events from background. A template fit to the final classifier distributions is performed to determine the cross-section. The result is incompatible with the background-only hypothesis at the 3.3 sigma level, the expected sensitivity assuming the Standard Model production rate being 3.4 sigma. The corresponding cross-section is determined and found to be sigma(wt) = 16.8 +/- 2.9 (stat) +/- 4.9 (syst) pb, in good agreement with the Standard Model expectation. From this result the CKM matrix element vertical bar V-tb vertical bar = 1.03(-0.19)(+0.16) is derived assuming that the Wt production through vertical bar V-ts vertical bar and vertical bar V-td vertical bar is small. (C) 2012 CERN. Published by Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.
|
|
|
Vilella, E., Alonso, O., Trenado, J., Vila, A., Casanova, R., Vos, M., et al. (2012). A test beam setup for the characterization of the Geiger-mode avalanche photodiode technology for particle tracking. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 694, 199–204.
Abstract: It is well known that avalanche photodiodes operated in the Geiger mode above the breakdown voltage offer a virtually infinite gain and time accuracy in the picosecond range that can be used for single photon detection. However, their performance in particle detection still remains unexplored. In this contribution, we are going to expose different steps that we have taken in order to prove the efficiency of the Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes in the aforementioned field. In particular, we will present a setup for the characterization of these sensors in a test beam. The expected results of the test beam at DESY and CERN have been simulated with Geant4 and will also be exposed.
|
|
|
Bordes, J., Dominguez, C. A., Moodley, P., Peñarrocha, J., & Schilcher, K. (2012). Corrections to the SU(3) x SU(3) Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation and chiral couplings L-8(r) and H-r(2). J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 102–11pp.
Abstract: Next to leading order corrections to the SU(3) x SU(3) Gell-Mann-OakesRenner relation (GMOR) are obtained using weighted QCD Finite Energy Sum Rules (FESR) involving the pseudoscalar current correlator. Two types of integration kernels in the FESR are used to suppress the contribution of the kaon radial excitations to the hadronic spectral function, one with local and the other with global constraints. The result for the pseudoscalar current correlator at zero momentum is psi(5)(0) = (2.8 +/- 0.3) x 10(-3) GeV4, leading to the chiral corrections to GMOR: delta(K) = (55 +/- 5)%. The resulting uncertainties are mostly due to variations in the upper limit of integration in the FESR, within the stability regions, and to a much lesser extent due to the uncertainties in the strong coupling and the strange quark mass. Higher order quark mass corrections, vacuum condensates, and the hadronic resonance sector play a negligible role in this determination. These results confirm an independent determination from chiral perturbation theory giving also very large corrections, i.e. roughly an order of magnitude larger than the corresponding corrections in chiral SU(2) x SU(2). Combining these results with our previous determination of the corrections to GMOR in chiral SU(2) x SU(2), delta(pi), we are able to determine two low energy constants of chiral perturbation theory, i.e. L-8(r) = (1.0 +/- 0.3) x 10(-3), and H-2(r) = -(4.7 +/- 0.6) x 10(-3), both at the scale of the rho-meson mass.
|
|
|
de Putter, R., Mena, O., Giusarma, E., Ho, S., Cuesta, A., Seo, H. J., et al. (2012). New Neutrino Mass Bounds from SDSS-III Data Release 8 Photometric Luminous Galaxies. Astrophys. J., 761(1), 12–12pp.
Abstract: We present neutrino mass bounds using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts measured from Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Data Release 8. The galaxies have photometric redshifts between z = 0.45 and z = 0.65 and cover 10,000 deg(2), thus probing a volume of 3 h(-3) Gpc(3) and enabling tight constraints to be derived on the amount of dark matter in the form of massive neutrinos. A new bound on the sum of neutrino masses Sigma m nu < 0.27 eV, at the 95% confidence level (CL), is obtained after combining our sample of galaxies, which we call “CMASS,” with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) seven-year cosmic microwave background data and the most recent measurement of the Hubble parameter from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This constraint is obtained with a conservative multipole range of 30 < l < 200 in order to minimize nonlinearities, and a free bias parameter in each of the four redshift bins. We study the impact of assuming this linear galaxy bias model using mock catalogs and find that this model causes a small (similar to 1 sigma-1.5 sigma) bias in Omega(DM)h(2). For this reason, we also quote neutrino bounds based on a conservative galaxy bias model containing additional, shot-noise-like free parameters. In this conservative case, the bounds are significantly weakened, e. g., Sigma m(nu) < 0.38 eV (95% CL) for WMAP+HST+CMASS (l(max) = 200). We also study the dependence of the neutrino bound on the multipole range (l(max) = 150 versus l(max) = 200) and on which combination of data sets is included as a prior. The addition of supernova and/or baryon acoustic oscillation data does not significantly improve the neutrino mass bound once the HST prior is included. A companion paper describes the construction of the angular power spectra in detail and derives constraints on a general cosmological model, including the dark energy equation of state w and the spatial curvature Omega(K), while a second companion paper presents a measurement of the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations from the same data set. All three works are based on the catalog by Ross et al.
|
|
|
Seo, H. J. et al, & de Putter, R. (2012). Acoustic scale from the angular power spectra of SDSS-III DR8 photometric luminous galaxies. Astrophys. J., 761(1), 13–16pp.
Abstract: We measure the acoustic scale from the angular power spectra of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) Data Release 8 imaging catalog that includes 872, 921 galaxies over similar to 10,000 deg(2) between 0.45 < z < 0.65. The extensive spectroscopic training set of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey luminous galaxies allows precise estimates of the true redshift distributions of galaxies in our imaging catalog. Utilizing the redshift distribution information, we build templates and fit to the power spectra of the data, which are measured in our companion paper, to derive the location of Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) while marginalizing over many free parameters to exclude nearly all of the non-BAO signal. We derive the ratio of the angular diameter distance to the sound horizon scale D-A(z)/r(s) = 9.212(-0.404)(+0.416) at z = 0.54, and therefore D-A(z) = 1411 +/- 65 Mpc at z = 0.54; the result is fairly independent of assumptions on the underlying cosmology. Our measurement of angular diameter distance D-A(z) is 1.4 sigma higher than what is expected for the concordance Lambda CDM, in accordance to the trend of other spectroscopic BAO measurements for z greater than or similar to 0.35. We report constraints on cosmological parameters from our measurement in combination with the WMAP7 data and the previous spectroscopic BAO measurements of SDSS and WiggleZ. We refer to our companion papers (Ho et al.; de Putter et al.) for investigations on information of the full power spectrum.
|
|
|
Dawson, K. S. et al, de Putter, R., & Mena, O. (2013). The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III. Astron. J., 145(1), 10–41pp.
Abstract: The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large-scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i = 19.9 over 10,000 deg(2) to measure BAO to redshifts z < 0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Ly alpha forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g < 22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15 < z < 3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Ly alpha forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance d(A) to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z = 0.3 and z = 0.57 and measurements of H(z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Ly alpha forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate D-A(z) and H-1(z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z similar to 2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS.
|
|