Abstract: PurposeA joint Working Group of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO), and the Australasian Brachytherapy Group (ABG) was created to aid in the transition from the AAPM TG-43 dose calculation formalism, the current standard, to model-based dose calculations. This work establishes the first test cases for low-energy photon-emitting brachytherapy using model-based dose calculation algorithms (MBDCAs).Acquisition and Validation MethodsFive test cases are developed: (1) a single model 6711 125I brachytherapy seed in water, 13 seeds (2) individually and (3) in combination in water, (4) the full Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study (COMS) 16-mm eye plaque in water, and (5) the full plaque in a realistic eye phantom. Calculations are done with four Monte Carlo (MC) codes and a research version of a commercial treatment planning system (TPS). For all test cases, local agreement of MC codes was within & SIM;2.5% and global agreement was & SIM;2% (4% for test case 5). MC agreement was within expected uncertainties. Local agreement of TPS with MC was within 5% for test case 1 and & SIM;20% for test cases 4 and 5, and global agreement was within 0.4% for test case 1 and 10% for test cases 4 and 5.Data Format and Usage NotesDose distributions for each set of MC and TPS calculations are available online () along with input files and all other information necessary to repeat the calculations.Potential ApplicationsThese data can be used to support commissioning of MBDCAs for low-energy brachytherapy as recommended by TGs 186 and 221 and AAPM Report 372. This work additionally lays out a sample framework for the development of test cases that can be extended to other applications beyond eye plaque brachytherapy.

Abstract: Background: The mercury isotopes around N = 104 are a well-known example of nuclei exhibiting shape coex-istence. Mixing of configurations can be studied by measuring the monopole strength rho^2(E0), however, currently the experimental information is scarce and lacks precision, especially for the I^pi -> I^pi (I not = 0) transitions. Purpose: The goals of this study were to increase the precision of the known branching ratios and internal conversion coefficients, to increase the amount of available information regarding excited states in 182,184,186Hg, and to interpret the results in the framework of shape coexistence using different models. Method: The low-energy structures in 182,184,186Hg were populated in the & beta; decay of 182,184,186Tl, produced at ISOLDE, CERN and purified by laser ionization and mass separation. The & gamma;-ray and internal conversion electron events were detected by five germanium clover detectors and a segmented silicon detector, respectively, and correlated in time to build decay schemes.Results: In total, 193, 178, and 156 transitions, including 144, 140, and 108 observed for the first time in a & beta;-decay experiment, were assigned to 182,184,186Hg, respectively. Internal conversion coefficients were determined for 23 transitions, out of which 12 had an E0 component. Extracted branching ratios allowed the sign of the interference term in 182Hg as well as & rho;2(E 0; 0+2 & RARR; 0+1 ) and B(E2; 0+2 & RARR; 2+1 ) in 184Hg to be determined. By means of electron-electron coincidences, the 0+3 state was identified in 184Hg. The experimental results were qualitatively reproduced by five theoretical approaches, the interacting boson model with configuration mixing with two different parametrizations, the general Bohr Hamiltonian, the beyond mean-field model, and the symmetry-conserving configuration-mixing model. However, a quantitative description is lacking. Conclusions: The presence of shape coexistence in neutron-deficient mercury isotopes was confirmed and evidence for the phenomenon existing at higher energies was found. The new experimental results provide important spectroscopic input for future Coulomb excitation studies.

Abstract: The White Rabbit protocol allows synchronization and communication via an optical link in an integrated, modular, and scalable manner. It provides a solution to those applications that have very demanding requirements in terms of synchronization. Field-programmable gate arrays are used to implement the protocol; additionally, special hardware is needed to provide the necessary clock signals used by the dual-mixer time difference for precise phase measurement. In the present work, an expansion board that allows for White Rabbit functionality is presented. The expansion board contains the oscillators required by the White Rabbit protocol, one running at 125 MHz and another at 124.922 MHZ. The architecture of this board includes two oscillator systems for tests and comparison. One is based on VCOs and another on crystal oscillators running at the desired frequencies. In addition, it incorporates a temperature sensor, from where the medium access control address is extracted, an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory, a pulse-per-second output, and a USB UART to access the White Rabbit IP core at the field-programmable gate array. Finally, to ensure the quality of the layout design and guarantee the level of synchronization desired, the results of the power and signal integrity simulations are also presented.

Abstract: The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB electron-positron collider aims to collect an unprecedented data set of 50 ab-1 to study CP-violation in the B-meson system and to search for Physics beyond the Standard Model. SuperKEKB is already the world's highest-luminosity collider. In order to collect the planned data set within approximately one decade, the target is to reach a peak luminosity of 6 x 1035 cm-2 s-1by further increasing the beam currents and reducing the beam size at the interaction point by squeezing the betatron function down to betay* = 0.3 mm. To ensure detector longevity and maintain good reconstruction performance, beam backgrounds must remain well controlled. We report on current background rates in Belle II and compare these against simulation. We find that a number of recent refinements have significantly improved the background simulation accuracy. Finally, we estimate the safety margins going forward. We predict that backgrounds should remain high but acceptable until a luminosity of at least 2.8 x 1035 cm-2 s-1is reached for betay* = 0.6 mm. At this point, the most vulnerable Belle II detectors, the Time-of-Propagation (TOP) particle identification system and the Central Drift Chamber (CDC), have predicted background hit rates from single-beam and luminosity backgrounds that add up to approximately half of the maximum acceptable rates.

Abstract: We discuss how tensor polarizations of gravitational waves can suffer Landau damping in the presence of velocity birefringence, when parity symmetry is explicitly broken. In particular, we analyze the role of the Nieh-Yan and Chern-Simons terms in modified theories of gravity, showing how the gravitational perturbation in collisionless media can be characterized by a subluminal phase velocity, circumventing the well-known results of General Relativity and allowing for the appearance of the kinematic damping. We investigate in detail the connection between the thermodynamic properties of the medium, such as temperature and mass of the particles interacting with the gravitational wave, and the parameters ruling the parity violating terms of the models. In this respect, we outline how the dispersion relations can give rise in each model to different regions of the wavenumber space, where the phase velocity is subluminal, superluminal or does not exist. Quantitative estimates on the considered models indicate that the phenomenon of Landau damping is not detectable given the sensitivity of present-day instruments.