Abstract: This work presents GN-Vision, a novel dual gamma-ray and neutron imaging system, which aims at simultaneously obtaining information about the spatial origin of gamma-ray and neutron sources. The proposed device is based on two position sensitive detection planes and exploits the Compton imaging technique for the imaging of gamma-rays. In addition, spatial distributions of slow- and thermal-neutron sources (<100 eV) are reconstructed by using a passive neutron pin-hole collimator attached to the first detection plane. The proposed gamma-neutron imaging device could be of prime interest for nuclear safety and security applications. The two main advantages of this imaging system are its high efficiency and portability, making it well suited for nuclear applications were compactness and real-time imaging is important. This work presents the working principle and conceptual design of the GN-Vision system and explores, on the basis of Monte Carlo simulations, its simultaneous gamma-ray and neutron detection and imaging capabilities for a realistic scenario where a Cf-252 source is hidden in a neutron moderating container.

Abstract: In dark-matter annihilation channels to hadronic final states, stable particles – such as positrons, photons, antiprotons, and antineutrinos – are produced via complex sequences of phenomena including QED/QCD radiation, hadronisation, and hadron decays. These processes are normally modelled by Monte Carlo (MC) event generators whose limited accuracy imply intrinsic QCD uncertainties on the predictions for indirect-detection experiments like Fermi-LAT, Pamela, IceCube or Ams-02. In this article, we perform a comprehensive analysis of QCD uncertainties, meaning both perturbative and nonperturbative sources of uncertainty are included – estimated via variations of MC renormalization-scale and fragmentation-function parameters, respectively – in antimatter spectra from dark-matter annihilation, based on parametric variations of the Pythia 8 event generator. After performing several retunings of light-quark fragmentation functions, we define a set of variations that span a conservative estimate of the QCD uncertainties. We estimate the effects on antimatter spectra for various annihilation channels and final-state particle species, and discuss their impact on fitted values for the dark-matter mass and thermally-averaged annihilation cross section. We find dramatic impacts which can go up to O(10%) for the annihilation cross section. We provide the spectra in tabulated form including QCD uncertainties and code snippets to perform fast dark-matter fits, in this github repository.

Abstract: We study the role of the Schwinger phase (SP) that appears in the propagator of a charged particle in the presence of a static and uniform magnetic field (B) over right arrow. We first note that this phase cannot be removed by a gauge transformation; far from this, we show that it plays an important role in the restoration of the symmetries of the system. Next, we analyze the effect of SPs in the one-loop corrections to charged pion and rho meson self-energies. To carry out this analysis we consider first a simple form for the meson-quark interactions, and then we study the pi(+) and rho(-) propagators within the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, performing a numerical analysis of the B dependence of meson lowest energy states. For both pi(+) and rho(-) mesons, we compare the numerical results arising from the full calculation-in which SPs are included in the propagators, and meson wave functions correspond to states of definite Landau quantum number-and those obtained within alternative schemes in which SPs are neglected (or somehow eliminated) and meson states are described by plane waves of definite four-momentum.