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At least 73 records · Page 4

Spatially Resolved Domicile Charging Demands for Light-, Medium-, and Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicles in Virginia

The use of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) and resulting grid impacts are likely to grow rapidly, and evaluation of optimal smart charge management and grid integration strategies is warranted now. Evaluating distribution grid impacts requires fine-grained models of PEV operations to estimate charging loads across diverse vehicles at high spatial resolution. We propose such a model and consider a high-electrification scenario in Richmond and Newport News, Virginia. Our framework considers four categories of vehicle that are amenable to early aggressive electrification: light-duty passenger vehicles (LDV), trucks and vans with a focus on delivery or other local operations, school buses, and transit buses. These vehicles have a relatively consistent domicile, reducing the need for public charging infrastructure rollout to electrify. We apply a recent LDV model and propose new models for each vocation of medium- and heavy-duty vehicle, leveraging telematics data. We demonstrate our framework in Virginia and find energy demands in the region may total 15 GWh day, with most consumed by LDV. However, considering power demand at high spatial resolution reveals a different trend: LDVs have relatively small peak loads at specific sites (peak site demand around 800 kW) compared to average and high demand medium- and heavy-duty vehicle charging sites (peak site demand around 6,000 kW at a transit bus depot, 1,500 kW at a local freight hub, and 1,000 kW at a school). Our framework yields insights on the relative impacts of each vocation and enables future work to tailor grid integration strategies to each vehicle category.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Neutrino Production Associated with Late Bumps in Gamma-Ray Bursts and Potential Contribution to Diffuse Flux at IceCube

IceCube has detected many TeV–PeV neutrinos, but their astrophysical origins remain largely unknown. Motivated by the observed late-time X-ray/optical bumps in some gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), we examine the correlation between IceCube neutrinos and GRBs allowing delayed neutrinos ~days after the prompt gamma-rays. Although we have not found any definitive correlation, up to ~10% of the events observed so far at IceCube may have been neutrinos produced by the late-time GRB activities at ~1 day. Assuming a connection between some IceCube events and the late GRB bumps, we show in a model-independent way that GRB sites capable of producing late ~PeV neutrinos should be nonrelativistic or mildly relativistic. We estimate the diffuse neutrino flux from such sources and find that they can possibly account for a few IceCube events. Future observations of high-energy neutrinos and late-time GRB afterglows can further test the above proposed connection.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Improved Characterization of the Astrophysical Muon–neutrino Flux with 9.5 Years of IceCube Data

We present a measurement of the high-energy astrophysical muon–neutrino flux with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The measurement uses a high-purity selection of 650k neutrino-induced muon tracks from the northern celestial hemisphere, corresponding to 9.5 yr of experimental data. With respect to previous publications, the measurement is improved by the increased size of the event sample and the extended model testing beyond simple power-law hypotheses. An updated treatment of systematic uncertainties and atmospheric background fluxes has been implemented based on recent models. The best-fit single power-law parameterization for the astrophysical energy spectrum results in a normalization of ${\phi }_{@100\mathrm{TeV}}^{{\nu }_{\mu }+{\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }}={1.44}_{-0.26}^{+0.25}\times {10}^{-18}\,{\mathrm{GeV}}^{-1}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}{\mathrm{sr}}^{-1}$ and a spectral index ${\gamma }_{\mathrm{SPL}}={2.37}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$, constrained in the energy range from 15 TeV to 5 PeV. The model tests include a single power law with a spectral cutoff at high energies, a log-parabola model, several source-class-specific flux predictions from the literature, and a model-independent spectral unfolding. The data are consistent with a single power-law hypothesis, however, spectra with softening above one PeV are statistically more favorable at a two-sigma level.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Search for Astrophysical Neutrinos from 1FLE Blazars with IceCube

The majority of astrophysical neutrinos have undetermined origins. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has observed astrophysical neutrinos but has not yet identified their sources. Blazars are promising source candidates, but previous searches for neutrino emission from populations of blazars detected in ≳GeV gamma rays have not observed any significant neutrino excess. Recent findings in multimessenger astronomy indicate that high-energy photons, coproduced with high-energy neutrinos, are likely to be absorbed and reemitted at lower energies. Thus, lower-energy photons may be better indicators of TeV–PeV neutrino production. This paper presents the first time-integrated stacking search for astrophysical neutrino emission from MeV-detected blazars in the first Fermi Large Area Telescope low energy (1FLE) catalog using ten years of IceCube muon–neutrino data. The results of this analysis are found to be consistent with a background-only hypothesis. Assuming an E -2 neutrino spectrum and proportionality between the blazars MeV gamma-ray fluxes and TeV–PeV neutrino flux, the upper limit on the 1FLE blazar energy-scaled neutrino flux is determined to be 1.64 x 10 -12 TeV cm -2 s -1 at 90% confidence level. This upper limit is approximately 1% of IceCube’s diffuse muon–neutrino flux measurement.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Search for Ultraheavy Dark Matter from Observations of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies with VERITAS

Dark matter is a key piece of the current cosmological scenario, with weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) a leading dark matter candidate. WIMPs have not been detected in their conventional parameter space (100 GeV ≲Mχ ≲ 100 TeV), a mass range accessible with current Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. As ultraheavy dark matter (UHDM; Mχ ≳ 100 TeV) has been suggested as an underexplored alternative to the WIMP paradigm, we search for an indirect dark matter annihilation signal in a higher mass range (up to 30 PeV) with the VERITAS γ-ray observatory. With 216 hr of observations of four dwarf spheroidal galaxies, we perform an unbinned likelihood analysis. We find no evidence of a γ-ray signal from UHDM annihilation above the background fluctuation for any individual dwarf galaxy nor for a joint-fit analysis, and consequently constrain the velocity-weighted annihilation cross section of UHDM for dark matter particle masses between 1 TeV and 30 PeV. We additionally set constraints on the allowed radius of a composite UHDM particle.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Observation of Cosmic-Ray Anisotropy in the Southern Hemisphere with 12 yr of Data Collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

We analyzed the 7.92 × 10 11 cosmic-ray-induced muon events collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory from 2011 May 13, when the fully constructed experiment started to take data, to 2023 May 12. This data set provides an up-to-date cosmic-ray arrival direction distribution in the Southern Hemisphere with unprecedented statistical accuracy covering more than a full period length of a solar cycle. Improvements in Monte Carlo event simulation and better handling of year-to-year differences in data processing significantly reduce systematic uncertainties below the level of statistical fluctuations compared to the previously published results. We confirm the observation of a change in the angular structure of the cosmic-ray anisotropy between 10 TeV and 1 PeV, more specifically in the 100–300 TeV energy range. For the first time, we analyzed the angular power spectrum at different energies. The observed variations of the power spectra with energy suggest relatively reduced large-scale features at high energy compared to those of medium and small scales. The large volume of data enhances the statistical significance at higher energies, up to the PeV scale, and smaller angular scales, down to approximately 6° compared to previous findings.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Searches for Neutrinos from Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory Ultra-high-energy $γ$-Ray Sources Using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Galactic PeV cosmic-ray accelerators (PeVatrons) are Galactic sources theorized to accelerate cosmic rays up to PeV in energy. The accelerated cosmic rays are expected to interact hadronically with nearby ambient gas or the interstellar medium, resulting in $γ$-rays and neutrinos. Recently, the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) identified 12 $γ$-ray sources with emissions above 100 TeV, making them candidates for PeVatrons. While at these high energies the Klein–Nishina effect exponentially suppresses leptonic emission from Galactic sources, evidence for neutrino emission would unequivocally confirm hadronic acceleration. Here, we present the results of a search for neutrinos from these $γ$-ray sources and stacking searches testing for excess neutrino emission from all 12 sources as well as their subcatalogs of supernova remnants and pulsar wind nebulae with 11 yr of track events from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. No significant emissions were found. Based on the resulting limits, we place constraints on the fraction of $γ$-ray flux originating from the hadronic processes in the Crab Nebula and LHAASO J2226+6057.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Charging Infrastructure Technologies: Smart Electric Vehicle Charging for a Reliable and Resilient Grid (RECHARGE)

Annual Merit review of the Smart Electric Vehicle Charging for a Reliable and Resilient Grid (RECHARGE) project. This project will demonstrate the value of smart charge management to reduce the impact of Electric Vehicles at Scale. Assess management of Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) charging at scale to avoid negative grid impacts, identify critical strategies and technologies, and enhance value for PEV / EVSE / grid stakeholders.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Forecasting the Impact of Dual-credit Policy (2021-2023) on China's Electric Vehicle Market

China is well known for its ambition on large-scale vehicle electrification which currently is mainly driven by fuel economy and electric vehicle policies. This study adopts the New Energy and Oil Consumption Credits (NEOCC) model, a vehicle policy analysis tool developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to systematically quantify the potential impacts of the “Passenger Cars Corporate Average Fuel Consumption and New Energy Vehicle Credit Regulation” which was released in June 2020 for the timeframe 2021-2023, so called dual-credit policy (2021-2023). It is found that, under the dual-credit policy (2021-2023), the sales of low fuel consumption conventional vehicles will increase faster than they were in 2018-2020, and the share of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) could reach 11.4% by 2023 if it keeps the expansion as it was in 2017. Besides, the BEVs with long electric range (such as 400 km) and the plugin hybrid SUVs would be the most popular PEV types.

Ou, Shawn↗

Batteries (2021 Annual Progress Report)

This document summarizes the progress of VTO battery R&D projects supported during the fiscal year 2021 (FY 2021). In FY 2021, the DOE VTO battery R&D funding was approximately $\$$115 million. Its R&D focus was on the development of high-energy batteries for EVs as well as very high-power devices for hybrid vehicles. The electrochemical energy storage roadmap (which can be found at the EERE Roadmap web page2) describes ongoing and planned efforts to develop electrochemical storage technologies for EVs. To advance battery technology, which can in turn improve market penetration of PEVs, the program investigates various battery chemistries to overcome specific technical barriers, e.g., battery cost, performance, life (both the calendar life and the cycle life), its tolerance to abusive conditions, and its recyclability/sustainability. VTO R&D has had considerable success, lowering the cost of EV battery packs to $\$$185/kWh in 2019 (representing more than 80% reduction since 2008) yet even further cost reduction is necessary for EVs to achieve head-to-head cost competitiveness with ICEs (without Federal subsidies). In addition, today’s batteries also need improvements in such areas as their ability to accept charging at a high rate, referred to as extreme fast charging (XFC) (15 minute charge) – to provide a “refueling” convenience similar to ICEs, and the ability to operate adequately at low temperatures. Research into “next-gen lithium-ion” batteries which would provide such functionalities is one of the R&D focus areas. VTO is funding research on both “next gen” chemistries (which employ an alloy anode and/or a high voltage cathode) and beyond lithium-ion (BLI) chemistries (which can, for example, employ a lithium metal anode).

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Searches for heavy QCD axions via dimuon final states

Heavy QCD axions are well-motivated extensions of the QCD axion that address the quality problem while still solving the strong CP problem. Owing to the gluon coupling, critical for solving the strong CP problem, these axions can be produced in significant numbers in beam dump and collider environments for axion decay constants as large as PeV, relevant for addressing the axion quality problem. In addition, if these axions have leptonic couplings, they can give rise to long-lived decay into lepton pairs, in particular, dominantly into muons above the dimuon threshold and below the GeV scale in a broad class of axion models. Considering existing constraints, primarily from rare meson decays, we demonstrate that current and future neutrino facilities and long-lived particle searches have the potential to probe significant parts of the heavy QCD axion parameter space via dimuon final states.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Radiative natural supersymmetry emergent from the string landscape

In string theory with flux compactifications, anthropic selection for structure formation from a discretuum of vacuum energy values provides at present our only understanding of the tiny yet positive value of the cosmological constant. We apply similar reasoning to a toy model of the multiverse restricted to vacua with the MSSM as the low energy effective theory. Here, one expects a statistical selection favoring large soft SUSY breaking terms leading to a derived value of the weak scale in each pocket universe (with appropriate electroweak symmetry breaking) which differs from the weak scale as measured in our universe. In contrast, the SUSY preserving μ parameter is selected uniformly on a log scale as is consistent with the distribution of SM fermion masses: this favors smaller values of μ. An anthropic selection of the weak scale to within a factor of a few of our measured value — in order to produce complex nuclei as we know them (atomic principle) — provides statistical predictions for Higgs and sparticle masses in accord with LHC measurements. The statistical selection then more often leads to (radiatively-driven) natural SUSY models over the Standard Model or finely-tuned SUSY models such as mSUGRA/CMSSM, split, mini-split, spread, high scale or PeV SUSY. The predicted Higgs and superparticle spectra might be testable at HL-LHC or ILC via higgsino pair production but is certainly testable at higher energy hadron colliders with $ \sqrt{s}$ ~ 30–100 TeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

The photon content of the neutron

In this work, we complete our CT18qed study with the neutron’s photon parton distribution function (PDF), which is essential for the nucleus scattering phenomenology. Two methods, CT18lux and CT18qed, based on the LUXqed formalism and the DGLAP evolution, respectively, to determine the neutron’s photon PDF have been presented. Various low-Q 2 non-perturbative variations have been carefully examined, which are treated as additional uncertainties on top of those induced by quark and gluon PDFs. The impacts of the momentum sum rule as well as isospin symmetry violation have been explored and turned out to be negligible. A detailed comparison with other neutron’s photon PDF sets has been performed, which shows a great improvement in the precision and a reasonable uncertainty estimation. Finally, two phenomenological implications are demonstrated with photon-initiated processes: neutrino-nucleus W-boson production, which is important for the near-future TeV–PeV neutrino observations, and the axion-like particle production at a high-energy muon beam-dump experiment.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Lepto-axiogenesis and the scale of supersymmetry

If the Peccei-Quinn field containing the QCD axion undergoes rotations in the early universe, the dimension-five operator responsible for neutrino masses can generate a lepton asymmetry that ultimately gives rise to the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe. This lepto-axiogenesis scenario requires a flat potential for the radial direction of the Peccei-Quinn field, naturally realized in supersymmetric models. We carefully compute the efficiency of this mechanism for the Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky (DFSZ) and Kim-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov (KSVZ) axion models and place lower bounds on the masses of scalar superpartners required to reproduce the observed baryon asymmetry. For the KSVZ model, we find an efficiency for generation of the asymmetry six times larger than the previously extant computation after including scattering channels involving superpartners. In this case, the superpartner scale should be above 30 TeV for a domain wall number of one; the lower bound weakens for larger domain wall numbers. We find that the superpartner mass scale may also be as low as ~ 30 TeV for the DFSZ model. In all cases, the lower bound on the superpartner masses is inversely proportional to the sum of the squares of the neutrino masses and so can strengthen as the upper bound on the neutrino mass improves. We identify the parameter space where the axion rotation can simultaneously produce axion dark matter via kinetic misalignment; in this case it is possible to put an upper bound of order PeV on the masses of scalar superpartners.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Hidden sector monopole dark matter with matter domination

The thermal freeze-out mechanism for relic dark matter heavier than O (10 – 100 TeV) requires cross-sections that violate perturbative unitarity. Yet the existence of dark matter heavier than these scales is certainly plausible from a particle physics perspective, pointing to the need for a non-thermal cosmological history for such theories. Topological dark matter is a well-motivated scenario of this kind. Here the hidden-sector dark matter can be produced in abundance through the Kibble-Zurek mechanism describing the non-equilibrium dynamics of defects produced in a second order phase transition. We revisit the original topological dark matter scenario, focusing on hidden-sector magnetic monopoles, and consider more general cosmological histories. We find that a monopole mass of order (1–10 5 ) PeV is generic for the thermal histories considered here, if monopoles are to entirely reproduce the current abundance of dark matter. In particular, in a scenario involving an early era of matter domination, the monopole number density is always less than or equal to that in a pure radiation dominated equivalent provided a certain condition on critical exponents is satisfied. This results in a larger monopole mass needed to account for a fixed relic abundance in such cosmologies.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Dark Grand Unification in the axiverse: decaying axion dark matter and spontaneous baryogenesis

The quantum chromodynamics axion with a decay constant near the Grand Unification (GUT) scale has an ultralight mass near a neV. We show, however, that axion-like particles with masses near the keV–PeV range with GUT-scale decay constants are also well motivated in that they naturally arise from axiverse theories with dark c gauge groups. We demonstrate that the correct dark matter abundance may be achieved by the heavy axions in these models through the misalignment mechanism in combination with a period of early matter domination from the long-lived dark glueballs of the same gauge group. Heavy axion dark matter may decay to two photons, yielding mono-energetic electromagnetic signatures that may be detectable by current or next-generation space-based telescopes. We project the sensitivity of next-generation telescopes including Athena, AMEGO, and e-ASTROGAM to such decaying axion dark matter. If the dark sector contains multiple confining gauge groups, then the observed primordial baryon asymmetry may also be achieved in this scenario through spontaneous baryogenesis. We present explicit orbifold constructions where the dark gauge groups unify with the SM at the GUT scale and axions emerge as the fifth components of dark gauge fields with bulk Chern-Simons terms.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Development of a cosmic ray oriented trigger for the fluorescence telescope on EUSO-SPB2

The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon 2 (EUSO-SPB2), in preparation, aims to make the first observations of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) from near space using optical techniques. EUSO-SPB2 will prototype instrumentation for future satellite-based missions, including the Probe of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) and K-EUSO. The payload will consist of two telescopes. The first is a Cherenkov telescope (CT) being developed to quantify the background for future below-the-limb very high energy (E 10 PeV) astrophysical neutrino observations, and the second is a fluorescence telescope (FT) being developed for detection of UHECRs. The FT will consist of a Schmidt telescope, and a 6192 pixel ultraviolet camera with an integration time of 1.05 s. The first step in the data acquisition process for the FT is a hardware level trigger in order to decide which data to record. In order to maximize the number of UHECR induced extensive air showers (EASs) which can be detected, a novel trigger algorithm has been developed based on the intricacies and limitations of the detector. Finally, the expected performance of the trigger has been characterized by simulations and, pending hardware verification, shows that EUSO-SPB2 is well positioned to attempt the first near-space observation of UHECRs via optical techniques.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗