Engineering Papers⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Reno, Mary Hall

Publications and source records attributed to Reno, Mary Hall.

10 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Forward production of prompt neutrinos from charm in the atmosphere and at high energy colliders

The high-energy atmospheric neutrino flux is dominated by neutrinos from the decays of charmed hadrons produced in the forward direction by cosmic ray interactions with air nuclei. We evaluate the charm contributions to the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux as a function of the center-of-mass energy √s of the hadronic collision and of the center-of-mass rapidity y of the produced charm hadron. Uncertainties associated with parton distribution functions are also evaluated as a function of y. We find that the y coverage of LHCb for forward heavy-flavour production, complemented by the angular coverage of present and future forward neutrino experiments at the LHC, bracket the most interesting y regions for the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux. At √s = 14 TeV foreseen for the HL-LHC phase, nucleon collisions in air contribute to the prompt neutrino flux prominently below E ν ~ 10 7 GeV. Measurements of forward charm and/or forward neutrinos produced in hadron collisions up to √s = 100 TeV, which might become possible at the FCC, are relevant for the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux up to E ν = 10 8 GeV and beyond.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

High-Energy to Ultrahigh-Energy Neutrino Interactions

The cross sections for neutrino interactions with nucleons have been measured directly in accelerator experiments and through the zenith-angle and energy dependence of neutrino events at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Fluxes of high-energy neutrinos are produced at the Large Hadron Collider and by cosmic rays in the atmosphere. High-energy neutrinos also come from astrophysical and cosmic sources. The theory of neutrino interactions is reviewed. Current cross-section measurements and prospects for the future are discussed. The focus here is on neutrino interactions for energies larger than 1 TeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC

High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe standard model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the standard model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF’s physics potential.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Tau neutrinos in the next decade: from GeV to EeV

Tau neutrinos are the least studied particle in the standard model. This whitepaper discusses the current and expected upcoming status of tau neutrino physics with attention to the broad experimental and theoretical landscape spanning long-baseline, beam-dump, collider, and astrophysical experiments. This whitepaper was prepared as a part of the NuTau2021 Workshop.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

High-energy and ultra-high-energy neutrinos: A Snowmass white paper

Astrophysical neutrinos are excellent probes of astroparticle physics and high-energy physics. With energies far beyond solar, supernovae, atmospheric, and accelerator neutrinos, high-energy and ultra-high-energy neutrinos probe fundamental physics from the TeV scale to the EeV scale and beyond. They are sensitive to physics both within and beyond the Standard Model through their production mechanisms and in their propagation over cosmological distances. They carry unique information about their extreme non-thermal sources by giving insight into regions that are opaque to electromagnetic radiation. Here in this white paper describes the opportunities astrophysical neutrino observations offer for astrophysics and high-energy physics, today and in coming years.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Parton distribution function uncertainties in theoretical predictions for far-forward tau neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider

New experiments dealing with neutrinos in the far-forward region at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are under design or already in preparation. Two of them, FASERν and SND@LHC, are expected to be active during Run 3 and have the potential to detect the interactions of ν and $\bar {v}$ that come from high-energy collisions in one of the LHC interaction points, extracted along the direction tangent to the beam line. Tau neutrinos and antineutrinos come predominantly from $D^{±}_{s}$ production in pp collisions, followed by the leptonic decay of these mesons. Neutrino pseudorapidities in the range of η > 6.9 and η > 8.9 are relevant to these future experiments. At such pseudorapidities at high energies, QCD theoretical predictions for the flux of ν τ plus $\bar {v}_τ$ rely on parton distribution functions (PDFs) in a combination of very small and large parton–x values. We evaluate PDF un certainties affecting the flux of ν τ + $\bar {v}_τ$ produced by $D^{±}_{s}$ decay in the far forward region at the LHC. Next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD uncertainties are included in the calculation of $D^{±}_{s}$ production and NLO PDF sets are used for consistency. The theoretical uncertainty associated with the 40 PDF sets of the PROSA19 group amounts to ±(20 – 30)% for the (ν τ + $\bar {v}_τ$) number of charged-current (CC) events. Scale uncertainties are much larger, resulting in a range of CC event predictions from ~70% lower to ~90% higher than the central prediction. A comparison of the predictions with those obtained using as input the central PDFs from the 3-flavour NLO PDF sets of the CT14, ABMP16 and NNPDF3.1 collaborations show that far-forward neutrino energy distributions vary by as much as a factor of ~2 – 4 relative to the PROSA19 predictions at TeV neutrino energies. The Forward Physics Facility in the high luminosity LHC era will provide data capable of constraining NLO QCD evaluations with these PDF sets.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The Forward Physics Facility: Sites, experiments, and physics potential

The Forward Physics Facility (FPF) is a proposal to create a cavern with the space and infrastructure to support a suite of far-forward experiments at the Large Hadron Collider during the High Luminosity era. Located along the beam collision axis and shielded from the interaction point by at least 100 m of concrete and rock, the FPF will house experiments that will detect particles outside the acceptance of the existing large LHC experiments and will observe rare and exotic processes in an extremely low-background environment. In this work, we summarize the current status of plans for the FPF, including recent progress in civil engineering in identifying promising sites for the FPF and the experiments currently envisioned to realize the FPF’s physics potential. We then review the many Standard Model and new physics topics that will be advanced by the FPF, including searches for long-lived particles, probes of dark matter and dark sectors, high-statistics studies of TeV neutrinos of all three flavors, aspects of perturbative and non-perturbative QCD, and high-energy astroparticle physics.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
NASA NTRS2019

POEMMA's Target of Opportunity Sensitivity to Cosmic Neutrino Transient Sources

We calculate the sensitivity of space-based cosmic neutrino detection from transient sources in the context of the Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) mission using Target- of-Opportunity (ToO) observations. POEMMA uses two spacecraft each with a large Schmidt telescope to simultaneously view the optical signals generated by extensive air showers (EASs). POEMMA is designed for both ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray and very-high-energy neutrino measurements. POEMMA has significant neutrino sensitivity starting in the 10 PeV decade via measurements of Cherenkov signals from upward-moving EASs initiated by tau neutrinos interacting in the Earth. For ToO observations, POEMMA uses the ability to quickly repoint (90° in 500 seconds) each of the two spacecraft to the direction of the transient source. POEMMA EAS measurements are performed during astronomical night, leading to different observational constraints for short- and long-duration bursts. For short-bursts of order 10(exp 3) s, POEMMA will increase the sensitivity of existing experiments (e.g., IceCube and the Pierre Auger Observatory) by up to two orders of magnitude. For long-duration bursts on the scale of 10(exp 5−6) s, the full celestial sky is available and the average neutrino sensitivity will be increased by up to a factor of 50, reaching the desired level to probe model predictions of transient neutrino sources (e.g., of blazer flares as well as both black hole-black hole and neutron star-neutron star mergers). POEMMA’s neutrino sensitivity to various models of transient neutrino sources are detailed. Altogether, our results demonstrate better sensitivity to ToO neutrino sources from the space-based POEMMA experiment compared to current ground-based experiments, and more importantly, demonstrate unique full-sky coverage for ToO neutrino sources.

Venters, Tonia M.↗