Abstract: Radio-frequency (RF) carpets with ultra-fine pitches are examined for ion transport in gases at atmospheric pressures and above. We develop new analytic and computational methods for modeling RF ion transport at densities where dynamics are strongly influenced by buffer gas collisions. An analytic description of levitating and sweeping forces from phased arrays is obtained, then thermodynamic and kinetic principles are used to calculate ion loss rates in the presence of collisions. This methodology is validated against detailed microscopic SIMION simulations. We then explore a parameter space of special interest for neutrinoless double beta decay experiments: transport of barium ions in xenon at pressures from 1 to 10 bar. Our computations account for molecular ion formation and pressure dependent mobility as well as finite temperature effects. We discuss the challenges associated with achieving suitable operating conditions, which lie beyond the capabilities of existing devices, using presently available or near-future manufacturing techniques.

Abstract: We analyze 7.3 yr of ANTARES high-energy neutrino and Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) gamma-ray data in search of cosmic neutrino + gamma-ray (nu + gamma) transient sources or source populations. Our analysis has the potential to detect either individual nu + gamma transient sources (durations delta t less than or similar to 1000 s), if they exhibit sufficient gamma-ray or neutrino multiplicity, or a statistical excess of nu + gamma transients of individually lower multiplicities. Individual high gamma-ray multiplicity events could be produced, for example, by a single ANTARES neutrino in coincidence with a LAT-detected gamma-ray burst. Treating ANTARES track and cascade event types separately, we establish detection thresholds by Monte Carlo scrambling of the neutrino data, and determine our analysis sensitivity by signal injection against these scrambled data sets. We find our analysis is sensitive to nu + gamma transient populations responsible for >5% of the observed gamma-coincident neutrinos in the track data at 90% confidence. Applying our analysis to the unscrambled data reveals no individual nu + gamma events of high significance; two ANTARES track + Fermi gamma-ray events are identified that exceed a once per decade false alarm rate threshold (p = 17%). No evidence for subthreshold nu + gamma source populations is found among the track (p = 39%) or cascade (p = 60%) events. Exploring a possible correlation of high-energy neutrino directions with Fermi gamma-ray sky brightness identified in previous work yields no added support for this correlation. While TXS.0506+056, a blazar and variable (nontransient) Fermi gamma-ray source, has recently been identified as the first source of high-energy neutrinos, the challenges in reconciling observations of the Fermi gamma-ray sky, the IceCube high-energy cosmic neutrinos, and ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays using only blazars suggest a significant contribution by other source populations. Searches for transient sources of high-energy neutrinos thus remain interesting, with the potential for either neutrino clustering or multimessenger coincidence searches to lead to discovery of the first nu + gamma transients.

Abstract: We present our new measurement of the cross-section for charm dimuon production in neutrino iron interactions based upon the full statistics collected by the NOMAD experiment. After background subtraction we observe 15 344 charm dimuon events, providing the largest sample currently available. The analysis exploits the large inclusive charged current sample – about 9 x 10(6) events after all analysis cuts – and the high resolution NOMAD detector to constrain the total systematic uncertainty on the ratio of charm dimuon to inclusive Charged Current (CC) cross-sections to similar to 2%. We also perform a fit to the NOMAD data to extract the charm production parameters and the strange quark sea content of the nucleon within the NLO QCD approximation. We obtain a value of m(c)(m(c)) = 1.159 +/- 0.075 GeV/c(2) for the running mass of the charm quark in the (MS) over bar scheme and a strange quark sea suppression factor of kappa(s) = 0.591 +/- 0.019 at Q(2) = 20 GeV2/c(2).

Abstract: The existence of diffuse Galactic neutrino production is expected from cosmic-ray interactions with Galactic gas and radiation fields. Thus, neutrinos are a unique messenger offering the opportunity to test the products of Galactic cosmic-ray interactions up to energies of hundreds of TeV. Here we present a search for this production using ten years of Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch (ANTARES) track and shower data, as well as seven years of IceCube track data. The data are combined into a joint likelihood test for neutrino emission according to the KRA(gamma) model assuming a 5 PeV per nucleon Galactic cosmic-ray cutoff. No significant excess is found. As a consequence, the limits presented in this Letter start constraining the model parameter space for Galactic cosmic-ray production and transport.

Abstract: We calculate neutrino emissivities from self-annihilating dark matter (DM) (chi) in the dense and hot stellar interior of a (proto)neutron star. Using a model where DM interacts with nucleons in the stellar core through a pseudoscalar boson (a) we find that the neutrino production rates from the dominant reaction channels chi -> nu(nu) over bar or chi chi -> aa, with subsequent decay of the mediator a -> nu(nu) over bar, could locally match and even surpass those of the standard neutrinos from the modified nuclear URCA processes at early ages. We find that the emitting region can be localized in a tiny fraction of the star (less than a few percent of the core volume) and the process can last its entire lifetime for some cases under study. We discuss the possible consequences of our results for stellar cooling in light of existing DM constraints.