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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

High intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe

The EUROnu project has studied three possible options for future, high intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe. The first is a Super Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of pions created by bombarding targets with a 4 MW proton beam from the CERN High Power Superconducting Proton Linac. The far detector for this facility is the 500 kt MEMPHYS water Cherenkov, located in the Fréjus tunnel. The second facility is the Neutrino Factory, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of μ + and μ – beams in a storage ring. The far detector in this case is a 100 kt magnetized iron neutrino detector at a baseline of 2000 km. The third option is a Beta Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of beta emitting isotopes, in particular 6 He and 18 Ne, also stored in a ring. The far detector is also the MEMPHYS detector in the Fréjus tunnel. EUROnu has undertaken conceptual designs of these facilities and studied the performance of the detectors. Based on this, it has determined the physics reach of each facility, in particular for the measurement of CP violation in the lepton sector, and estimated the cost of construction. These have demonstrated that the best facility to build is the Neutrino Factory. Furthermore, if a powerful proton driver is constructed for another purpose or if the MEMPHYS detector is built for astroparticle physics, the Super Beam also becomes very attractive.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2012

2012 Aspen Winter Conferences on High Energy and Astrophysics

Aspen Center for Physics Project Summary DE-SC0007313 Budget Period: 1/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 The Hunt for New Particles, from the Alps to the Plains to the Rockies The 2012 Aspen Winter Conference on Particle Physics was held at the Aspen Center for Physics from February 11 to February 17, 2012. Sixty-seven participants from nine countries, and several universities and national labs attended the workshop titled, The Hunt for New Particles, from the Alps to the Plains to the Rockies. There were 53 formal talks, and a considerable number of informal discussions held during the week. The weeks events included a public lecture-Hunting the Dark Universe given by Neal Weiner from New York University) and attended by 237 members of the public, and a physics cafe geared for high schoolers that is a discussion with physicists conducted by Spencer Chang (University of Oregon), Matthew Reece (Harvard University) and Julia Shelton (Yale University) and attended by 67 locals and visitors. While there were no published proceedings, some of the talks are posted online and can be Googled. The workshop was organized by John Campbell (Fermilab), Patrick Fox (Fermilab), Ivan Furic (University of Florida), Eva Halkiadakis (Rutgers University) and Daniel Whiteson (University of California Irvine). Additional information is available at http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=143360. Inflationary Theory and its Confrontation with Data in the Planck Era The 2012 Aspen Winter Conference on Astroparticle physics held at the Aspen Center for Physics was Inflationary Theory and its Confrontation with Data in the Planck Era. It was held from January 30 to February 4, 2012. The 62 participants came from 7 countries and attended 43 talks over five days. Late mornings through the afternoon are reserved for informal discussions. In feedback received from participants, it is often these unplanned chats that produce the most excitement due to working through problems with fellow physicists from other institutions and countries or due to incipient collaborations. In addition, Shamit Kachru of Stanford University gave a public lecture titled The Small (and Large) Scale Structure of Space-Time.There were 237 members of the general public in attendance. Before the lecture, 65 people attended the physics cafe to discuss the current topic with Matthew Kleban (New York University) and Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford University). This workshop was organized by Olivier Dore (Jet Propulsion Lab), Fabian Schmidt (Caltech), Leonardo Senatore (Stanford University), and Kendrick Smith (Princeton University).

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Scikit HEP Project -- overview and prospects

Scikit-HEP is a community-driven and community-oriented project with the goal of providing an ecosystem for particle physics data analysis in Python. Scikit-HEP is a toolset of approximately twenty packages and a few "affiliated" packages. It expands the typical Python data analysis tools for particle physicists. Each package focuses on a particular topic, and interacts with other packages in the toolset, where appropriate. Most of the packages are easy to install in many environments; much work has been done this year to provide binary "wheels" on PyPI and conda-forge packages. The Scikit-HEP project has been gaining interest and momentum, by building a user and developer community engaging collaboration across experiments. Some of the packages are being used by other communities, including the astroparticle physics community. An overview of the overall project and toolset will be presented, as well as a vision for development and sustainability.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

SNOLAB Deep Underground Scientific Research Operations

Investigations at the frontiers of particle physics are driving key experiments deep underground to escape cosmic-rays and other backgrounds that overwhelm sensitive searches for dark matter, exotic particles, and neutrino properties. The international neutrino physics community has come together to develop the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), a leading-edge experiment for neutrino science and proton decay studies. This experiment, together with the facility that will support it, the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF), will be an internationally designed, coordinated and funded program, hosted at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. The DUNE experimental facility will be sited deep underground (1.5km) at Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, SD, and will become the deepest experimental facility operated by Fermilab. SNOLAB is a unique world-class international facility for deep underground scientific research. Located 2 km underground near Sudbury, Ontario, SNOLAB hosts a suite of surface facilities and laboratories. The science program at SNOLAB is primarily focused on subatomic and astroparticle physics, specifically the search for dark matter and neutrino studies. As the second-deepest underground lab facility, SNOLAB has gained considerable experience in deep underground scientific research operations. The purpose of this agreement is to leverage the unique capabilities of both Fermilab and SNOLAB to accomplish the following: Provide Fermilab with additional, direct experience in deep underground scientific research operations at SNOLAB to help improve the operational support for SURF. Provide SNOLAB with an experienced leader to serve as Interim Associate Director for Program Integration & Operations, while SNOLAB conducts its search for a permanent hire.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory

The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a newly formed, global collaboration dedicated to observing and studying cosmic rays (CR) and cosmic-ray ensembles (CRE): groups of at least two CR with a common primary interaction vertex or the same parent particle. The CREDO program embraces testing known CR and CRE scenarios, and preparing to observe unexpected physics, it is also suitable for multi-messenger and multi-mission applications. Perfectly matched to CREDO capabilities, CRE could be formed both within classical models (e.g., as products of photon–photon interactions), and exotic scenarios (e.g., as results of decay of Super-Heavy Dark Matter particles). Their fronts might be significantly extended in space and time, and they might include cosmic rays of energies spanning the whole cosmic-ray energy spectrum, with a footprint composed of at least two extensive air showers with correlated arrival directions and arrival times. As the CRE are predominantly expected to be spread over large areas and, due to the expected wide energy range of the contributing particles, such a CRE detection might only be feasible when using all available cosmic-ray infrastructure collectively, i.e., as a globally extended network of detectors. Thus, with this review article, the CREDO Collaboration invites the astroparticle physics community to actively join or to contribute to the research dedicated to CRE and, in particular, to pool together cosmic-ray data to support specific CRE detection strategies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2011

UCLA Intermediate Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics Research: Final Report

This project covers the following research: (a) Investigations into the structure of the proton and neutron. This is done by investigating the different resonance states of nucleons with beams of tagged, polarized photons, linearly as well as circularly, incident on polarized hydrogen/deuterium targets and measuring the production of {pi}{sup 0}, 2{pi}{sup }0, 3{pi}{sup 0}, {eta} , {eta}', {omega}, etc. The principal detector is the Crystal Ball multiphoton spectrometer which has an acceptance of nearly 4 . It has been moved to the MAMI accelerator facility of the University of Mainz, Germany. We investigate the conversion of electromagnetic energy into mesonic matter and conversely. (b) We investigate the consequences of applying the "standard" symmetries of isospin, G-parity, charge conjugation, C, P, T, and chirality using rare and forbidden decays of light mesons such as the {eta} ,{eta}' and {omega}. We also investigate the consequences of these symmetries being slightly broken symmetries. We do this by studying selected meson decays using the Crystal Ball detector. (c) We determine the mass, or more precisely the mass difference of the three light quarks (which are inputs to Quantum Chromodynamics) by measuring the decay rate of specially selected {eta} and {eta}' decay modes, again we use the Crystal Ball. (d)We have started a new program to search for the 33 missing cascade baryons using the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson Laboratory. Cascade resonances are very special: they have double strangeness and are quite narrow. This implies that they can be discovered by the missing mass technique in photoproduction reactions such as in {gamma}p{yields}{Xi}{sup}K{sup +}K{sup +}. The cascade program is of particular importance for the upgrade to 12 GeV of the CLAS detector and for design of the Hall D at JLab. (e) Finally, we are getting more involved in a new program to measure the hadronic matter form factor of complex nuclei, in particular the "neutron skin" of {sup 208}Pb, which is of great interest to astroparticle physics for determining the properties of neutron stars. Processes of study are coherent and noncoherent 0 photoproduction. The Crystal Ball is uniquely suited for these studies because of the large acceptance, good direction and energy resolution and it is an inclusive detector for the {pi}{sup 0} final state and exclusive for background such as 2 {pi}{sup 0}.

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 OSTI2011

Large scale anisotropy of UHECRs for the Telescope Array

The origin of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) is one of the most interesting questions in astroparticle physics. Despite of the efforts by other previous measurements, there is no consensus of both of the origin and the mechanism of UHECRs generation and propagation yet. In this context, Telescope Array (TA) experiment is expected to play an important role as the largest detector in the northern hemisphere which consists of an array of surface particle detectors (SDs) and fluorescence detectors (FDs) and other important calibration devices. We searched for large scale anisotropy using SD data of TA. UHECRs are expected to be restricted in GZK horizon when the composition of UHECRs is proton, so the observed arrival directions are expected to exhibit local large scale anisotropy if UHECR sources are some astrophysical objects. We used the SD data set from 11 May 2008 to 7 September 2010 to search for large-scale anisotropy. The discrimination power between LSS and isotropy is not enough yet, but the statistics in TA is expected to discriminate between those in about 95% confidence level on average in near future.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2013

BiPo: A dedicated radiopurity detector for the SuperNEMO experiment

New generation experiments in Astroparticle Physics need to operate in really restrictive background conditions, which implies the use of high radiopure materials for the experimental setup construction. For this reason the screening of the materials with enough sensitivity has become a challenge that sometimes cannot be afforded with standard techniques like Germanium detector spectroscopy. BiPo is a dedicated detector, that operates in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory, designed to measure the radiopurity, mainly of the ββ sources of the SuperNEMO experiment, by the detection of BiPo events. It is composed of two modules with 40 optical lines each one, registering the energy and the time of the emitted particles. The well known features of the BiPo events (delayed coincidence between an electron and an alpha particle) facilitate the discrimination of other background events that could entangle the expected signal. In addition, the geometry of the detector, with an active area of around 3.6 m{sup 2}, has been optimized to reach the necessary sensitivity levels for the SuperNEMO source foils in the shortest time possible. Preliminary results of background measurements and calibrations taken since summer 2012 shows that the required sensitivity for the measurements of the source foils could be reached in few months. Routine measurements of samples are already started being an important point for the SuperNEMO source foils construction.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2013

Radon assay and purification techniques

Radon is a source of background in many astroparticle physics experiments searching for rare low energy events. In this paper an overview about radon in the field is given including radon detection techniques, radon sources and material screening with respect to radon emanation. Finally, also the problem of long-lived radioactive {sup 222}Rn-daughters and the question of gas purification from radon is addressed.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2013

Water purification in Borexino

Astroparticle Physics and Underground experiments searching for rare nuclear events, need high purity materials to act as detectors or detector shielding. Water has the advantage of being cheap, dense and easily available. Most of all, water can be purified to the goal of obatining a high level of radiopurity. Water Purification can be achieved by means of a combination of processes, including filtration, reverse osmosis, deionization and gas stripping. The Water Purification System for the Borexino experiment, will be described together with its main performances.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2014

Noise and spurious pulses for Cherenkov light detection with 10-inch and 3-inch photomultipliers

A large number of large photocathode area photomultipliers are widely used in astroparticle physics detectors to measure Cherenkov light in media like water or ice. In neutrino telescopes the key element of the detector is the optical module, which consists of one or more photodetectors inside a transparent pressure-resistant glass sphere. The glass sphere serves as mechanical protection while ensuring good light transmission. The performance of the telescope is largely dependent on the presence of noise pulses present on the anode of the photomultipliers. A study was conducted of noise pulses of Hamamatsu 10-inch and 3-inch diameter photomultipliers measuring time and charge distributions of dark pulses, pre-pulses, delayed pulses, and after-pulses. In particular, an analysis on multiple after-pulses was performed on both photomultiplier models. A digital oscilloscope was used to acquire all the pulses after the main pulse during a time window of 16μs for an off-line analysis to determine the charge and time spectra and a correlation between the arrival times and the charge of each after-pulse.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2015

On the origin of high-energy cosmic neutrinos

Recently, the IceCube collaboration made a big announcement of the first discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrinos. Their origin is a new interesting mystery in astroparticle physics, but the present data may give us hints of connection to cosmic-ray and/or gamma-ray sources. We will look over possible scenarios for the cosmic neutrino signal, and emphasize the importance of multimessenger approaches in order to identify the PeV neutrino sources and get crucial clues to the cosmic-ray origin. We also discuss some possibilities to study neutrino properties and probe new physics.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2011

What can(not) be measured with ton-scale dark matter direct detection experiments

Direct searches for dark matter have prompted in recent years a great deal of excitement within the astroparticle physics community, but the compatibility between signal claims and null results of different experiments is far from being a settled issue. In this context, we study here the prospects for constraining the dark matter parameter space with the next generation of ton-scale detectors. Using realistic experimental capabilities for a wide range of targets (including fluorine, sodium, argon, germanium, iodine and xenon), the role of target complementarity is analysed in detail while including the impact of astrophysical uncertainties in a self-consistent manner. We show explicitly that a multi-target signal in future direct detection facilities can determine the sign of the ratio of scalar couplings f{sub n}/f{sub p}, but not its scale. This implies that the scalar-proton cross-section is left essentially unconstrained if the assumption f{sub p} ∼ f{sub n} is relaxed. Instead, we find that both the axial-proton cross-section and the ratio of axial couplings a{sub n}/a{sub p} can be measured with fair accuracy if multi-ton instruments using sodium and iodine will eventually come online. Moreover, it turns out that future direct detection data can easily discriminate between elastic and inelastic scatterings. Finally, we argue that, with weak assumptions regarding the WIMP couplings and the astrophysics, only the dark matter mass and the inelastic parameter (i.e. mass splitting) may be inferred from the recoil spectra — specifically, we anticipate an accuracy of tens of GeV (tens of keV) in the measurement of the dark matter mass (inelastic parameter)

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Are IceCube neutrinos unveiling PeV-scale decaying dark matter?

Recent observations by IceCube, notably two PeV cascades accompanied by events at energies ∼ (30–400) TeV, are clearly in excess over atmospheric background fluxes and beg for an astroparticle physics explanation. Although some models of astrophysical accelerators can account for the observations within current statistics, intriguing features in the energy and possibly angular distributions of the events make worth exploring alternatives. Here, we entertain the possibility of interpreting the data with a few PeV mass scale decaying dark matter, with lifetime of the order of 10{sup 27} s. We discuss generic signatures of this scenario, including its unique energy spectrum distortion with respect to the benchmark E{sub ν}{sup −2} expectation for astrophysical sources, as well as peculiar anisotropies. A direct comparison with the data show a good match with the above-mentioned features. We further discuss possible future checks of this scenario.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2014

IceCube events and decaying dark matter: hints and constraints

In the light of the new IceCube data on the (yet unidentified) astrophysical neutrino flux in the PeV and sub-PeV range, we present an update on the status of decaying dark matter interpretation of the events. In particular, we develop further the angular distribution analysis and discuss the perspectives for diagnostics. By performing various statistical tests (maximum likelihood, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling tests) we conclude that currently the data show a mild preference (below the two sigma level) for the angular distribution expected from dark matter decay vs. the isotropic distribution foreseen for a conventional astrophysical flux of extragalactic origin. Also, we briefly develop some general considerations on heavy dark matter model building and on the compatibility of the expected energy spectrum of decay products with the IceCube data, as well as with existing bounds from gamma-rays. Alternatively, assuming that the IceCube data originate from conventional astrophysical sources, we derive bounds on both decaying and annihilating dark matter for various final states. The lower limits on heavy dark matter lifetime improve by up to an order of magnitude with respect to existing constraints, definitively making these events—even if astrophysical in origin—an important tool for astroparticle physics studies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Muon lifetime measurement in Chiapas and the Escaramujo project

Escaramujo is a project with the goal of promote scientific development and integration regarding science for Latin America. It consists of a series of Laboratories and Workshops for High Energy Physics, astroparticle and instrumentation, given by Federico Izraelevitch. Escaramujo has been conduced at several institutions in Latin America. In this work, the moun mean lifetime measurements performed during the workshop held in Chiapas are presented. Furthermore, the results are compared with the corresponding value reported by the Particle Data Group (PDG).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗