Abstract: Cosmic-ray interactions with the atmosphere produce a flux of neutrinos in all directions with energies extending above the TeV scale(1). The Earth is not a fully transparent medium for neutrinos with energies above a few TeV, as the neutrinonucleon cross-section is large enough to make the absorption probability non-negligible(2). Since absorption depends on energy and distance travelled, studying the distribution of the TeV atmospheric neutrinos passing through the Earth offers an opportunity to infer its density profiles(3-7). This has never been done, however, due to the lack of relevant data. Here we perform a neutrino-based tomography of the Earth using actual data-one-year of through-going muon atmospheric neutrino data collected by the IceCube telescope(8). Using only weak interactions, in a way that is completely independent of gravitational measurements, we are able to determine the mass of the Earth and its core, its moment of inertia, and to establish that the core is denser than the mantle. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach to study the Earth's internal structure, which is complementary to traditional geophysics methods. Neutrino tomography could become more competitive as soon as more statistics is available, provided that the sources of systematic uncertainties are fully under control.

Abstract: We use a non-relativistic model to study the spectroscopy of a tetraquark composed of [cc][(c) over bar(c) over bar] in a diquark-antidiquark configuration. By numerically solving the Schrodinger equation with a Cornell-inspired potential, we separate the four-body problem into three two-body problems. Spin-dependent terms (spin-spin, spin-orbit and tensor) are used to describe the splitting structure of the c (c) over bar spectrum and are also extended to the interaction between diquarks. Recent experimental data on charmonium states are used to fix the parameters of the model and a satisfactory description of the spectrum is obtained. We find that the spin-dependent interaction is sizable in the diquark-antidiquark system, despite the heavy diquark mass, and also that the diquark has a finite size if treated in the same way as the c (c) over bar systems. We find that the lowest S-wave T-4c tetraquarks might be below their thresholds of spontaneous dissociation into low-lying charmonium pairs, while orbital and radial excitations would be mostly above the corresponding charmonium pair thresholds. Finally, we repeat the calculations without the confining part of the potential and obtain bound diquarks and bound tetraquarks. This might be relevant to the study of exotic charmonium in the quark-gluon plasma. The T4c states could be investigated in the forthcoming experiments at the LHC and Belle II.

Abstract: In this work we present a comparison between the two liquid scintillators BC-501A and BC-537 in terms of their performance regarding the pulse-shape discrimination between neutrons and gamma rays. Special emphasis is put on the application of artificial neural networks. The results show a systematically higher gamma-ray rejection ratio for BC-501A compared to BC-537 applying the commonly used charge comparison method. Using the artificial neural network approach the discrimination quality was improved to more than 95% rejection efficiency of gamma rays over the energy range 150 to 1000 keV for both BC-501A and BC-537. However, due to the larger light output of BC-501A compared to BC-537, neutrons could be identified in BC-501A using artificial neural networks down to a recoil proton energy of 800 keV compared to a recoil deuteron energy of 1200 keV for BC-537. We conclude that using artificial neural networks it is possible to obtain the same gamma-ray rejection quality from both BC-501A and BC-537 for neutrons above a low-energy threshold. This threshold is, however, lower for BC-501A, which is important for nuclear structure spectroscopy experiments of rare reaction channels where low-energy interactions dominates.

Abstract: We investigate the possibility of probing the hot and dense nuclear matter-created in relativistic heavyion collisions (HICs)-with strange vector mesons (K*, (K) over bar*). Our analysis is based on the nonequilibrium parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach which incorporates partonic and hadronic degrees of freedom and describes the full dynamics of HIC on a microscopic level-starting from the primary nucleon-nucleon collisions to the formation of the strongly interacting quark gluon plasma (QGP), followed by dynamical hadronization of (anti)quarks as well as final hadronic elastic and inelastic interactions. This allows us to study the K* and (K) over bar* meson formation from the QGP as well as the in-medium effects related to the modification of their spectral properties during the propagation through the dense and hot hadronic environment in the expansion phase. We employ relativistic Breit-Wigner spectral functions for the K*, (K) over bar* mesons with self-energies obtained from a self-consistent coupled-channel G-matrix approach to study the role of in-medium effects on the K* and (K) over bar* meson dynamics in heavy-ion collisions from FAIR/NICA to LHC energies. According to our analysis most of the final K* /(K) over bar*'s, that can be observed experimentally by reconstruction of the invariant mass of pi + K((K) over bar) pairs, are produced during the late hadronic phase and originate dominantly from the K((K) over bar) + pi -> K*( (K) over bar*) formation channel. The amount of K*/ (K) over bar*'s, originating from the QGP channel is comparatively small even at LHC energies and those K* /(K) over bar*'s can hardly be reconstructed experimentally due to the rescattering of final pions and (anti)kaons. This mirrors the results from our previous study on the strange vector-meson production in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. We demonstrate that K* /(K) over bar* in-medium effects should be visible at FAIR/NICA and BES RHIC energies, where the production of K* /(K) over bar*'s occurs at larger net-baryon densities. Finally, we present the experimental procedures to extract the information on the resonance masses and widths by fitting the final mass spectra at LHC energies.

Abstract: The NEXT experiment aims at searching for the hypothetical neutrinoless double-beta decay from the Xe-136 isotope using a high-purity xenon TPC. Efficient discrimination of the events through pattern recognition of the topology of primary ionisation tracks is a major requirement for the experiment. However, it is limited by the diffusion of electrons. It is known that the addition of a small fraction of a molecular gas to xenon reduces electron diffusion. On the other hand, the electroluminescence (EL) yield drops and the achievable energy resolution may be compromised. We have studied the effect of adding several molecular gases to xenon (CO2, CH4 and CF4) on the EL yield and energy resolution obtained in a small prototype of driftless gas proportional scintillation counter. We have compared our results on the scintillation characteristics (EL yield and energy resolution) with a microscopic simulation, obtaining the diffusion coefficients in those conditions as well. Accordingly, electron diffusion may be reduced from about 10 for pure xenon down to 2.5 using additive concentrations of about 0.05%, 0.2% and 0.02% for CO2, CH4 and CF4, respectively. Our results show that CF4 admixtures present the highest EL yield in those conditions, but very poor energy resolution as a result of huge fluctuations observed in the EL formation. CH4 presents the best energy resolution despite the EL yield being the lowest. The results obtained with xenon admixtures are extrapolated to the operational conditions of the NEXT-100 TPC. CO2 and CH4 show potential as molecular additives in a large xenon TPC. While CO2 has some operational constraints, making it difficult to be used in a large TPC, CH4 shows the best performance and stability as molecular additive to be used in the NEXT-100 TPC, with an extrapolated energy resolution of 0.4% at 2.45 MeV for concentrations below 0.4%, which is only slightly worse than the one obtained for pure xenon. We demonstrate the possibility to have an electroluminescence TPC operating very close to the thermal diffusion limit without jeopardizing the TPC performance, if CO2 or CH4 are chosen as additives.