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At least 397 records · Page 22

Speed of quantum information spreading in chaotic systems

In this work, we present a general theory of quantum information propagation in chaotic quantum many-body systems. The generic expectation in such systems is that quantum information does not propagate in localized form; instead, it tends to spread out and scramble into a form that is inaccessible to local measurements. To characterize this spreading, we define an information speed via a quench-type experiment and derive a general formula for it as a function of the entanglement density of the initial state. As the entanglement density varies from zero to one, the information speed varies from the entanglement speed to the butterfly speed. We verify that the formula holds both for a quantum chaotic spin chain and in field theories with an AdS/CFT gravity dual. For the second case, we study in detail the dynamics of entanglement in two-sided Vaidya-AdS-Reissner-Nordstrom black branes. We also show that, with an appropriate decoding process, quantum information can be construed as moving at the information speed, and, in the case of AdS/CFT, we show that a locally detectable signal propagates at the information speed in a spatially local variant of the traversable wormhole setup.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Simple theory of chiral fermion dark matter

We propose a theory of chiral fermion dark matter (DM) with an isospin-3/2 fermion of a dark sector SU(2) D gauge symmetry, which is arguably the simplest chiral theory. An isospin-3 scalar breaks SU(2) D down to a discrete non-Abelian group T' and generates the DM mass. The SU(2) D gauge symmetry protects the DM mass and guarantees its stability. We derive consistency conditions for the theory and study its DM phenomenology. In some regions of parameters of the theory a two-component DM scenario is realized, consisting of a fermion and a boson, with the boson being the lightest T' nonsinglet field. In the case of single-component fermionic DM, we find that internal consistency of the theory, perturbativity arguments, and the observed relic abundance limit the DM mass to be less than 280 GeV, except when s-channel resonance regions are open for annihilation. For a significant part of the parameter space, the theory can be tested in DM direct-detection signals at the LZ and XENONnT experiments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Searching for cosmological stochastic backgrounds by notching out resolvable compact binary foregrounds with next-generation gravitational-wave detectors

Stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds can be of either cosmological or astrophysical origin. The detection of an astrophysical stochastic gravitational-wave background with ground-based interferometers is expected in the near future. Perhaps even more excitingly, the detection of stochastic backgrounds of cosmological origin by future ground-based interferometers could reveal invaluable information about the early Universe. From this perspective, the astrophysical background is a foreground that can prevent the extraction of this information from the data. In this paper, we revisit a time-frequency domain notching procedure previously proposed to remove the astrophysical foreground in the context of next-generation ground-based detectors, but we consider the more realistic scenario where we remove individually detectable signals by taking into account the uncertainty in the estimation of their parameters. We find that time-frequency domain masks can still efficiently remove the astrophysical foreground and suppress it to about 5% of its original level. Further removal of the foreground formed by unresolvable events (in particular, unresolvable binary neutron stars), which is about 10 times larger than the residual foreground from realistic notching, would require detector sensitivity improvements. Therefore, the main limitation in the search for a cosmological background is the unresolvable foreground itself, and not the residual of the notching procedure.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Mass reconstruction of heavy neutral leptons from stopped mesons

Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), depending on their mass and mixing, can be efficiently produced in meson decays from the target or absorber in short- to medium-baseline accelerator neutrino experiments, leaving detectable signals through their decays inside the neutrino detectors. We show that the currently running ICARUS experiment at Fermilab can reconstruct the HNL mass and explore new HNL parameter space in the mass range of 70–190 MeV. The mass reconstruction is enabled by two ingredients: (i) simple two-body kinematics of HNL production from stopped kaon decays at the NuMI absorber, followed by HNL decay into a charged-lepton pair and neutrino at the detector, and (ii) high resolution of Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) detectors in reconstructing final state particles. Our mass reconstruction method is robust under realistic energy resolution and angular smearing of the charged leptons, and is applicable to any LArTPC detector. We also discuss the synergy between ICARUS and future facilities like DUNE near detector and PIP-II beam dump in probing the HNL parameter space. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Probing the Quark Orbital Angular Momentum at Electron-Ion Colliders Using Exclusive π 0 Production

We propose to detect signals from quark orbital angular momentum (OAM) through exclusive π 0 production in electron- (longitudinally polarized) proton collisions. Our analysis demonstrates that the sin 2 ϕ azimuthal angular correlation between the transverse momentum of the scattered electron and the recoil proton serves as a sensitive probe of quark OAM. Additionally, we present a numerical estimate of the asymmetry associated with this correlation for the kinematics accessible at the Electron-Ion Colliders in the U.S. and China. This study aims to pave the way for the first experimental study of quark OAM in relation to the Jaffe-Manohar spin sum rule. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

High-Voltage CMOS Active Pixel Sensor

The high-voltage CMOS (HVCMOS) sensors are a novel type of CMOS active pixel sensors for ionizing particles that can be implemented in CMOS processes with deep n-well option. The pixel contains one sensor electrode formed with a deep n-well implanted in a p-type substrate. CMOS pixel electronics, embedded in shallow wells, are placed inside the deep n-well. By biasing the substrate with a high negative voltage and by the use of a lowly doped substrate, a depleted region depth of at least 30 µm can be achieved. The electrons generated by a particle are collected by drift, which induces fast detectable signals. This publication presents a 4.2-cm 2 large HVCMOS pixel sensor implemented in a commercial 180-nm process on a lowly doped substrate and its characterization.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Neutron Response of the EJ-254 Boron-Loaded Plastic Scintillator

Organic scintillators doped with capture agents provide a detectable signal for neutrons over a broad energy range. This work characterizes the fast and slow neutron response of EJ-254, an organic plastic scintillator with 5 loading by weight. For fast neutrons, the primary mechanism for light generation in organic scintillators is n-p elastic scattering. To study the fast neutron response, the proton light yield of EJ-254 was measured at the 88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Using a broad-spectrum neutron source and a double time-of-flight technique, the EJ-254 proton light yield was obtained over the energy range of approximately 270 keV to 4.5 MeV and determined to be in agreement with other plastic scintillators comprised of the same polymer base. To isolate the slow neutron response, an AmBe source with polyethylene moderator was made incident on the EJ-254 scintillator surrounded by an array of EJ-309 observation detectors. Events in the EJ-254 target coincident with the signature 477.6 keV γ ray (resulting from de-excitation of the residual 7Li nucleus following boron neutron capture) were identified. Pulse shape discrimination was used to evaluate the temporal differences in the response of EJ-254 scintillation signals arising from γ-ray and fast/slow neutron interactions. Clear separation between γ-ray and fast neutrons signals was not achieved and the neutron capture feature was observed to overlap both the γ-ray and fast neutron bands. Taking into account the electron light nonproportionality, the neutron capture light yield in EJ-254 was determined to be 89.4±1.1 keVee.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

The VMM3a ASIC

The VMM3a is a custom low-noise Application Specific Integrated Circuit. It is intended to be used in the front end readout electronics of both the Micromegas and sTGC detectors of the ATLAS New Small Wheels upgrade project at CERN. It is fabricated in the 130 nm GlobalFoundries 8RF-DM process. Here, the 64 channels with highly configurable parameters, although designed for a specific project, can meet the processing needs of signals from various detector types in several other applications. In this note, the VMM3a, which is the production version of the VMM family, will be presented along with the features incorporated and its performance.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Signatures of Selection for Resistance/Tolerance to Perkinsus olseni in Grooved Carpet Shell Clam ( Ruditapes decussatus ) Using a Population Genomics Approach

ABSTRACT The grooved carpet shell clam ( Ruditapes decussatus ) is a bivalve of high commercial value distributed throughout the European coast. Its production has suffered a decline caused by different factors, especially by the parasite Perkinsus olsenii . Improving production of R . decussatus requires genomic resources to ascertain the genetic factors underlying resistance/tolerance to P. olseni i . In this study, the first reference genome of R . decussatus was assembled through long‐ and short‐read sequencing (1677 contigs; 1.386 Mb) and further scaffolded at chromosome level with Hi‐C (19 superscaffolds; 95.4% of assembly). Repetitive elements were identified (32%) and masked for annotation of 38,276 coding‐ and 13,056 non‐coding genes. This genome was used as a reference to develop a 2bRAD‐Seq 13,438 SNP panel for a genomic screening on six shellfish beds distributed across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Beds were selected by perkinsosis prevalence and the infection level was individually evaluated in all the samples. Genetic diversity was significantly higher in the Mediterranean than in the Atlantic region. The main genetic breakage was detected between those regions (F ST = 0.224), being the Mediterranean more heterogeneous than the Atlantic. Several loci under divergent selection (394 outliers; 261 genomic windows) were detected across shellfish beds. Samples were also inspected to detect signals of selection for resistance/tolerance to P. olseni i by using infection‐level and population‐genomics approaches, and 90 common divergent outliers for resistance/tolerance to perkinsosis were identified and used for gene mining. Candidate genes and markers identified provide invaluable information for controlling perkinsosis and for improving production of the grooved carpet shell clam.

Sambade, Inés M. [Department of Zoology, Genetics ↗

Towards a unified model of neutrino-nucleus interactions

The achievement of the goals of the ongoing and future accelerator-based neutrino experiments – notably the determination of CP violating phase in the lepton sector – will require the development of advanced models of neutrino-nucleus interactions. In this review, we summarise the present status of experimental studies of neutrino-nucleus scattering, and discuss the developments and perspectives of the theoretical approach based on factorisation of the nuclear cross section, which has recently emerged as a promising framework for the description of the variety of processes contributing to the detected signals.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Denoising Seismic Waveforms Using a Wavelet-Transform-Based Machine-Learning Method

Seismic waveform data recorded at stations can be thought of as a superposition of the signal from a source of interest and noise from other sources. Frequency‐based filtering methods for waveform denoising do not result in desired outcomes when the targeted signal and noise occupy similar frequency bands. Recently, denoising techniques based on deep‐learning convolutional neural networks (CNNs), in which a recorded waveform is decomposed into signal and noise components, have led to improved results. These CNN methods, which use short‐time Fourier transform representations of the time series, provide signal and noise masks for the input waveform. These masks are used to create denoised signal and designaled noise waveforms, respectively. However, advancements in the field of image denoising have shown the benefits of incorporating discrete wavelet transforms (DWTs) into CNN architectures to create multilevel wavelet CNN (MWCNN) models. The MWCNN model preserves the details of the input due to the good time–frequency localization of the DWT. In this report we use a data set of over 382,000 constructed seismograms recorded by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations network to compare the performance of CNN and MWCNN‐based denoising models. Evaluation of both models on constructed test data shows that the MWCNN model outperforms the CNN model in the ability to recover the ground‐truth signal component in terms of both waveform similarity and preservation of amplitude information. Model evaluation of real‐world data shows that both the CNN and MWCNN models outperform standard band‐pass filtering (BPF; average improvement in signal‐to‐noise ratio of 9.6 and 19.7 dB, respectively, with respect to BPF). Evaluation of continuous data suggests the MWCNN denoiser can improve both signal detection capabilities and phase arrival time estimates.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Design of a non-invasive laser-based beam profile monitor system for the new Fermilab PIP-II superconducting H- linac

As part of the new Proton Improvement Plan (PIP-II), Fermilab is undertaking the development of a new 800 MeV, 2 mA H- superconducting RF linac to replace its present normal conducting 400 MeV linac. The PIP-II linac consists of a series of superconducting RF cryomodules from 2.1 MeV to 800 MeV. To limit the potential damage to the superconducting RF cavities, PIP-II will utilize non-invasive laser-based monitors (laserwires) to obtain beam profiles via photoionization. This paper will present the design of this PIP-II laserwire system including the picosecond pulsed laser, optical transport line, 13 individual laserwire stations, laser feedback and timing controls. The paper also describes the signal detection system and operation of the profile measurements.

Scarpine, Victor [Fermilab]↗

Indirect searches for dark matter bound state formation and level transitions

Indirect searches for dark matter (DM) have conventionally been applied to the products of DM annihilation or decay. If DM couples to light force carriers, however, it can be captured into bound states via dissipation of energy that may yield detectable signals. We extend the indirect searches to DM bound state formation and transitions between bound levels, and constrain the emission of unstable dark photons. Our results significantly refine the predicted signal flux that could be observed in experiments. As a concrete example, we use Fermi-LAT dwarf spheroidal observations to obtain constraints in terms of the dark photon mass and energy which we use to search for the formation of stable or unstable bound states.

Baldes, Iason↗

Pair production of charged IDM scalars at high energy CLIC

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) was proposed as the next energy-frontier infrastructure at CERN, to study e ^+ + e ^- − collisions at three centre-of-mass energy stages: 380,GeV, 1.5,TeV and 3,TeV. The main goal of its high-energy stages is to search for the new physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). The Inert Doublet Model (IDM) is one of the simplest SM extensions and introduces four new scalar particles: H ^\pm ± , A and H; the lightest, H, is stable and hence a natural dark matter (DM) candidate. A set of benchmark points is considered, which are consistent with current theoretical and experimental constraints and promise detectable signals at future colliders. Prospects for observing pair-production of the IDM scalars at CLIC were previously studied using signatures with two leptons in the final state. In the current study, discovery reach for the IDM charged scalar pair-production is considered for the semi-leptonic final state at the two high-energy CLIC stages. Full simulation analysis, based on the current CLIC detector model, is presented for five selected IDM scenarios. Results are then extended to the larger set of benchmarks using the Delphes fast simulation framework. The CLIC detector model for Delphes has been modified to take pile-up contribution from the beam-induced \gamma\gamma γ γ interactions into account, which is crucial for the presented analysis. Results of the study indicate that heavy, charged IDM scalars can be discovered at CLIC for most of the proposed benchmark scenarios, with very high statistical significance.

Klamka, Jan↗

Ultrafast Electron Microscopy for Spatial-Temporal Mapping of Charge Carriers

This LDRD supported efforts to significantly advance the scanning ultrafast electron microscope (SUEM) for spatial-temporal mapping of charge carrier dynamics in semiconductor materials and microelectronic devices. Sandia's SUEM capability in Livermore, CA, was built and demonstrated with previous LDRD funding; however, the stability and usability of the tool limited the throughput for analyzing samples. A new laser alignment strategy improved the stability of the SUEM, and the design and characterization of a new micro-channel plate (MCP)- based detector improved the signal-to-noise of the SUEM signal detection. These enhancements to the SUEM system improved throughput by over two orders of magnitude (before, a single time series of SUEM measurements would take several days to several weeks to acquire; now, the same measurements can be completed in~90 minutes in an automated fashion). The SUEM system can now be routinely used as an analytical instrument and will be a central part of several multi-year projects starting in FY22.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

GraphAlign: Graph-Enabled Machine Learning for Seismic Event Filtering

This report summarizes results from a 2 year effort to improve the current automated seismic event processing system by leveraging machine learning models that can operated over the inherent graph data structure of a seismic sensor network. Specifically, the GraphAlign project seeks to utilize prior information on which stations are more likely to detect signals originating from particular geographic regions to inform event filtering. To date, the GraphAlign team has developed a Graphical Neural Network (GNN) model to filter out false events generated by the Global Associator (GA) algorithm. The algorithm operates directly on waveform data that has been associated to an event by building a variable sized graph of station waveforms nodes with edge relations to an event location node. This builds off of previous work where random forest models were used to do the same task using hand crafted features. The GNN model performance was analyzed using an 8 week IMS/IDC dataset, and it was demonstrated that the GNN outperforms the random forest baseline. We provide additional error analysis of which events the GNN model performs well and poorly against concluded by future directions for improvements.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

The Strange Case of Ground-Coupled Airwaves on Seismoacoustic Stations at Local to Near-Regional Scales

Here we investigate the application of ground-coupled airwaves observed by seismoacoustic stations at local to near-regional scales to detect signals of interest and determine back-azimuth information. Ground-coupled airwaves are created from incident pressure waves traveling through the atmosphere that couple to the earth and transmit as a seismic wave with retrograde elliptical motion. Previous studies at sub-local scales (<10 km from a source of interest) found the back-azimuth to the source could be accurately determined from seismoacoustic signals recorded by acoustic and 3-component seismic sensors spatially separated on the order of 10 to 150 m. The potential back-azimuth directions are estimated from the coherent signals between the acoustic and vertical seismic data, via a propagation-induced phase shift of the seismoacoustic signal. A unique solution is then informed by the particle motion of the 3-component seismic station, which was previously found to be less accurate than the seismoacoustic-sensor method. We investigate the applicability of this technique to greater source-receiver distances, from 50-100 km and up to 400 km, which contains pressure waves with tropospheric and stratospheric ray paths, respectively. Specifically, we analyze seismoacoustic sources with ground truth from rocket motor fuel elimination events at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) as well as a 2020 rocket launch in Southern California. From these sources we observe evidence that while coherent signals can be seen from both sources on multiple seismoacoustic station pairs, the determined ground-coupled airwave back-azimuths are more complicated than results at more local scales. Our findings suggest more complex factors including incidence angle, coupling location, subsurface material, and atmospheric propagation effects need to be fully investigated before the ground-coupled airwave back-azimuth determination method can be applied or assessed at these further distances.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Integrators

Many electromagnetic measurements detect signals that are the time derivative of the actual quantity of interest. Examples include so-called “B-dot” and “D-dot” detectors that are used for measuring transient magnetic and electric fields. Integration of these signals to recover the quantity of interest is performed either by hardware integrators in the signal line, or by software coding in the analysis programming. Hardware integration is usually done using a classic resistive-capacitive (RC) circuit, or internally in the detector by induction (L/R) or stray capacitance (RC). These hardware integration methods are only approximate, and must be corrected for distortion. This is usually called “droop correction.” In this note, we will examine this correction in some detail. Transient analysis via Laplace transforms will be used to simplify the mathematics. A rudimentary understanding of this method is assumed.

42 ENGINEERING↗