NEXT Collaboration(Navarro, K. E. et al), Carcel, S., Carrion, J. V., Lopez, F., Lopez-March, N., Martin-Albo, J., et al. (2023). A compact dication source for Ba2+ tagging and heavy metal ion sensor development. J. Instrum., 18(7), P07044–19pp.
Abstract: We present a tunable metal ion beam that delivers controllable ion currents in the picoamp range for testing of dry-phase ion sensors. Ion beams are formed by sequential atomic evaporation and single or multiple electron impact ionization, followed by acceleration into a sensing region. Controllability of the ionic charge state is achieved through tuning of electrode potentials that influence the retention time in the ionization region. Barium, lead, and cadmium samples have been used to test the system, with ion currents identified and quantified using a quadrupole mass analyzer. Realization of a clean Ba2+ ion beam within a bench-top system represents an important technical advance toward the development and characterization of barium tagging systems for neutrinoless double beta decay searches in xenon gas. This system also provides a testbed for investigation of novel ion sensing methodologies for environmental assay applications, with dication beams of Pb2+ and Cd2+ also demonstrated for this purpose.
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Donini, A., Hernandez, P., Pena, C., & Romero-Lopez, F. (2016). Nonleptonic kaon decays at large N-c. Phys. Rev. D, 94(11), 114511–6pp.
Abstract: We study the scaling with the number of colors, N-c, of the weak amplitudes mediating kaon mixing and decay. We evaluate the amplitudes of the two relevant current-current operators on the lattice for N-c = 3-7. We conclude that the subleading 1/N-c corrections in B-k, are small, but those in the K -> pi pi amplitudes are large and fully anticoirelated in the I = 0, 2 isospin channels. We briefly comment on the implications for the Delta I = 1/2 rule.
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Blanton, T. D., Romero-Lopez, F., & Sharpe, S. R. (2020). I=3 Three-Pion Scattering Amplitude from Lattice QCD. Phys. Rev. Lett., 124(3), 032001–7pp.
Abstract: We analyze the spectrum of two- and three-pion states of maximal isospin obtained recently for isosymmetric QCD with pion mass M approximate to 200 MeV in Horz and Hanlon, [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 142002 (2019)]. Using the relativistic three-particle quantization condition, we find similar to 2 sigma evidence for a nonzero value for the contact part of the 3 pi(+) (I = 3) scattering amplitude. We also compare our results to leading-order chiral perturbation theory. We find good agreement at threshold and some tension in the energy dependent part of the 3 pi(+) scattering amplitude. We also find that the 2 pi(+) (I = 2) spectrum is fit well by an s-wave phase shift that incorporates the expected Adler zero.
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