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HAWC Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), & Salesa Greus, F. (2022). Cosmic ray spectrum of protons plus helium nuclei between 6 and 158 TeV from HAWC data. Phys. Rev. D, 105(6), 063021–26pp.
Abstract: A measurement with high statistics of the differential energy spectrum of light elements in cosmic rays, in particular, of primary H plus He nuclei, is reported. The spectrum is presented in the energy range from 6 to 158 TeV per nucleus. Data was collected with the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory between June 2015 and June 2019. The analysis was based on a Bayesian unfolding procedure, which was applied on a subsample of vertical HAWC data that was enriched to 82% of events induced by light nuclei. To achieve the mass separation, a cut on the lateral age of air shower data was set guided by predictions of CORSIKA/QGSJET-I1-04 simulations. The measured spectrum is consistent with a broken power-law spectrum and shows a kneelike feature at around E = 24.0(-3.1)(+3.6) TeV, with a spectral index gamma = -2.51 +/- 0.02 before the break and with gamma = -2.83 +/- 0.02 above it. The feature has a statistical significance of 4.1 sigma. Within systematic uncertainties, the significance of the spectral break is 0.8 sigma.
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Alvarado, F., & Alvarez-Ruso, L. (2022). Light-quark mass dependence of the nucleon axial charge and pion-nucleon scattering phenomenology. Phys. Rev. D, 105(7), 074001–13pp.
Abstract: The light-quark mass dependence of the nucleon axial isovector charge (gA) has been studied up to nextto-next-to-leading order, O(p4), in relativistic chiral perturbation theory using extended-on-mass-shell renormalization, without and with explicit Delta(1232) degrees of freedom. We show that in the Delta-less case, at this order, the flat trend of gA(MN) exhibited by state-of-the-art lattice QCD (LQCD) results cannot be reproduced using low energy constants extracted from pion-nucleon elastic and inelastic scattering. A satisfactory description of these LQCD data is only achieved in the theory with Delta. From this fit, we report gA(MN(phys)) = 1.260 1 0.012, close to the experimental result, and d16 = -0.88 1 0.88 GeV-2, in agreement with its empirical value. The large uncertainties are of theoretical origin, reflecting the difference between O(p3) and O(p4) that still persists at large MN in presence of the Delta.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Jashal, B. K., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., & Ruiz Vidal, J. (2022). Measurement of the photon polarization in Lambda(0)(b) -> Lambda gamma decays. Phys. Rev. D, 105(5), L051104–11pp.
Abstract: The photon polarization in b -> s gamma transitions is measured for the first time in radiative b -baryon decays exploiting the unique spin structure of Lambda(0)(b)-> Lambda(gamma) decays. A data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6 fb(-1) collected by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is used. The photon polarization is measured to be alpha(gamma) = 0.82(-0.26-0.)(13)(+)(0.17+0.04), where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. This result is in agreement with the Standard Model prediction and previous measurements in b-meson decays. Charge-parity breaking effects are studied for the first time in this observable and found to be consistent with CP symmetry.
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NEXT Collaboration(Henriques, C. A. O. et al), Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., Carcel, S., Carrion, J. V., Diaz, J., Felkai, R., et al. (2022). Neutral Bremsstrahlung Emission in Xenon Unveiled. Phys. Rev. X, 12(2), 021005–23pp.
Abstract: We present evidence of non-excimer-based secondary scintillation in gaseous xenon, obtained using both the NEXT-White time projection chamber (TPC) and a dedicated setup. Detailed comparison with first-principle calculations allows us to assign this scintillation mechanism to neutral bremsstrahlung (NBrS), a process that is postulated to exist in xenon that has been largely overlooked. For photon emission below 1000 nm, the NBrS yield increases from about 10(-2) photon/e(-) cm(-1) bar(-1) at pressure-reduced electric field values of 50 V cm(-1) bar(-1) to above 3 x 10(-1) photon/e(-) cm(-1) bar(-1) at 500 V cm(-1) bar(-1). Above 1.5 kV cm(-1) bar(-1), values that are typically employed for electroluminescence, it is estimated that NBrS is present with an intensity around 1 photon/e(-) cm(-1) bar(-1), which is about 2 orders of magnitude lower than conventional, excimer-based electroluminescence. Despite being fainter than its excimeric counterpart, our calculations reveal that NBrS causes luminous backgrounds that can interfere, in either gas or liquid phase, with the ability to distinguish and/or to precisely measure low primary-scintillation signals (S1). In particular, we show this to be the case in the "buffer region, where keeping the electric field below the electroluminescence threshold does not suffice to extinguish secondary scintillation. The electric field leakage in this region should be mitigated to avoid intolerable levels of NBrS emission. Furthermore, we show that this new source of light emission opens up a viable path toward obtaining S2 signals for discrimination purposes in future single-phase liquid TPCs for neutrino and dark matter physics, with estimated yields up to 20-50 photons/e(-) cm(-1).
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Gao, F., & Oldengott, I. M. (2022). Cosmology Meets Functional QCD: First-Order Cosmic QCD Transition Induced by Large Lepton Asymmetries. Phys. Rev. Lett., 128(13), 131301–6pp.
Abstract: The lepton flavor asymmetries of the Universe are observationally almost unconstrained before the onset of neutrino oscillations. We calculate the cosmic trajectory during the cosmic QCD epoch in the presence of large lepton flavor asymmetries. By including QCD thermodynamic quantities derived from functional QCD methods in our calculation, our work reveals for the first time the possibility of a first-order cosmic QCD transition. We specify the required values of the lepton flavor asymmetries for which a first-order transition occurs for a number of different benchmark scenarios.
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