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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aiello, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Colomer, M., Corredoira, I., et al. (2020). Deep-sea deployment of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope detection units by self-unrolling. J. Instrum., 15(11), P11027–18pp.
Abstract: KM3NeT is a research infrastructure being installed in the deep Mediterranean Sea. It will house a neutrino telescope comprising hundreds of networked moorings – detection units or strings – equipped with optical instrumentation to detect the Cherenkov radiation generated by charged particles from neutrino-induced collisions in its vicinity. In comparison to moorings typically used for oceanography, several key features of the KM3NeT string are different: the instrumentation is contained in transparent and thus unprotected glass spheres; two thin Dyneema (R) ropes are used as strength members; and a thin delicate backbone tube with fibre-optics and copper wires for data and power transmission, respectively, runs along the full length of the mooring. Also, compared to other neutrino telescopes such as ANTARES in the Mediterranean Sea and GVD in Lake Baikal, the KM3NeT strings are more slender to minimise the amount of material used for support of the optical sensors. Moreover, the rate of deploying a large number of strings in a period of a few years is unprecedented. For all these reasons, for the installation of the KM3NeT strings, a custom-made, fast deployment method was designed. Despite the length of several hundreds of metres, the slim design of the string allows it to be compacted into a small, re-usable spherical launching vehicle instead of deploying the mooring weight down from a surface vessel. After being lowered to the seafloor, the string unfurls to its full length with the buoyant launching vehicle rolling along the two ropes. The design of the vehicle, the loading with a string, and its underwater self-unrolling are detailed in this paper.
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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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HAWC Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), & Salesa Greus, F. (2022). Constraints on the Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Emission from Short GRBs with HAWC. Astrophys. J., 936(2), 126–14pp.
Abstract: Many gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been observed from radio wavelengths, and a few at very high energies (VHEs, >100 GeV). The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory is well suited to study transient phenomena at VHEs owing to its large field of view and duty cycle. These features allow for searches of VHE emission and can probe different model assumptions of duration and spectra. In this paper, we use data collected by HAWC between 2014 December and 2020 May to search for emission in the energy range from 80 to 800 GeV coming from a sample of 47 short GRBs that triggered the Fermi, Swift, and Konus satellites during this period. This analysis is optimized to search for delayed and extended VHE emission within the first 20 s of each burst. We find no evidence of VHE emission, either simultaneous or delayed, with respect to the prompt emission. Upper limits (90% confidence level) derived on the GRB fluence are used to constrain the synchrotron self-Compton forward-shock model. Constraints for the interstellar density as low as 10(-2) cm(-3) are obtained when assuming z = 0.3 for bursts with the highest keV fluences such as GRB 170206A and GRB 181222841. Such a low density makes observing VHE emission mainly from the fast-cooling regime challenging.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aiello, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Colomer, M., Garcia Soto, A., et al. (2022). Combined sensitivity of JUNO and KM3NeT/ORCA to the neutrino mass ordering. J. High Energy Phys., 03(3), 055–31pp.
Abstract: This article presents the potential of a combined analysis of the JUNO and KM3NeT/ORCA experiments to determine the neutrino mass ordering. This combination is particularly interesting as it significantly boosts the potential of either detector, beyond simply adding their neutrino mass ordering sensitivities, by removing a degeneracy in the determination of Delta M-31(2) between the two experiments when assuming the wrong ordering. The study is based on the latest projected performances for JUNO, and on simulation tools using a full Monte Carlo approach to the KM3NeT/ORCA response with a careful assessment of its energy systematics. From this analysis, a 5 sigma determination of the neutrino mass ordering is expected after 6 years of joint data taking for any value of the oscillation parameters. This sensitivity would be achieved after only 2 years of joint data taking assuming the current global best-fit values for those parameters for normal ordering.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aiello, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Colomer, M., Corredoira, I., et al. (2021). Architecture and performance of the KM3NeT front-end firmware. J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst., 7(1), 016001–24pp.
Abstract: The KM3NeT infrastructure consists of two deep-sea neutrino telescopes being deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. The telescopes will detect extraterrestrial and atmospheric neutrinos by means of the incident photons induced by the passage of relativistic charged particles through the seawater as a consequence of a neutrino interaction. The telescopes are configured in a three-dimensional grid of digital optical modules, each hosting 31 photomultipliers. The photomultiplier signals produced by the incident Cherenkov photons are converted into digital information consisting of the integrated pulse duration and the time at which it surpasses a chosen threshold. The digitization is done by means of time to digital converters (TDCs) embedded in the field programmable gate array of the central logic board. Subsequently, a state machine formats the acquired data for its transmission to shore. We present the architecture and performance of the front-end firmware consisting of the TDCs and the state machine.
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