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At least 775 records · Page 43

Evidence from the Soudan 1 experiment for underground muons associated with Cygnus X-3

The Soudan 1 experiment has yielded evidence for an average underground muon flux of approximately 7 x 10 to the minus 11th power/sq cm/s which points back to the X-ray binary Cygnus X-3, and which exhibits the 4.8 h periodicity observed for other radiation from this source. Underground muon events which seem to be associated with Cygnus X-3 also show evidence for longer time variability of the flux. Such underground muons cannot be explained by any conventional models of the propagation and interaction of cosmic rays.

Ayres, D. S. E.↗

Observation of muons from Cygnus X-3 in the NUSEX experiment

Ground based observations by means of Cerenkov light detectors and air shower arrays have established that Cyngus X-3 is a powerful source of high energy particles. The detection of a 10 to the 15th power eV signal was first reported by the Kiel experiment. Air showers with large age parameter were accepted in order to select those generated by primary gamma rays. At variance with the expectation, the muon density associated with these events was found to be surprisingly high. This puzzling result stimulated a temporal analysis of the muons recorded in Nucleon Stability Experiment (NUSEX) coming from the region around the source. A positive signal was found suggesting the presentation of this result. The analysis of the data recorded during the 2.4 years of effective working time is presented with a fine tuning of the period and the energy spectrum of the muons from the Cygnus X-3 direction derived assuming consistency between NUSEX and SOUDAN results.

Piazzoli, B. D.↗

Materials science with muon spin rotation

During this reporting period, the focus of activity in the Materials Science with Muon Spin Rotation (MSMSR) program was muon spin rotation studies of superconducting materials, in particular the high critical temperature and heavy-fermion materials. Apart from these studies, work was continued on the analysis of muon motion in metal hydrides. Results of these experiments are described in six papers included as appendices.

Source record↗

Muon Beam Helical Cooling Channel Design

The Helical Cooling Channel (HCC) achieves effective ionization cooling of the six-dimensional (6d) phase space of a muon beam by means of a series of 21st century inventions. In the HCC, hydrogen-pressurized RF cavities enable high RF gradients in strong external magnetic fields. The theory of the HCC, which requires a magnetic field with solenoid, helical dipole, and helical quadrupole components, demonstrates that dispersion in the gaseous hydrogen energy absorber provides effective emittance exchange to enable longitudinal ionization cooling. The 10-year development of a practical implementation of a muon-beam cooling device has involved a series of technical innovations and experiments that imply that an HCC of less than 300 m length can cool the 6d emittance of a muon beam by six orders of magnitude. We describe the design and construction plans for a prototype HCC module based on oxygen-doped hydrogen-pressurized RF cavities that are loaded with dielectric, fed by magnetrons, and operate in a superconducting helical solenoid magnet.

Johnson, Rolland↗

Utilizing Gas Filled Cavities for the Generation of an Intense Muon Source

A key requirement for designing intense muon sources is operating rf cavities in multi-tesla magnetic fields. Recently, a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrated that an rf cavity filed with high pressure hydrogen gas could meet this goal. In this study, rigorous simulation is used to design and evaluate the performance of an intense muon source with gas filled cavities. We present a new lattice design and compare our results with conventional schemes. We detail the influence of gas pressure on the muon production rate.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Thermal and Lorentz Force Analysis of Beryllium Windows for the Rectilinear Muon Cooling Channel

Reduction of the 6-dimensional phase-space of a muon beam by several orders of magnitude is a key requirement for a Muon Collider. Recently, a 12-stage rectilinear ionization cooling channel has been proposed to achieve that goal. The channel consists of a series of low frequency (325 MHz-650 MHz) normal conducting pillbox cavities, which are enclosed with thin beryllium windows (foils) to increase shunt impedance and give a higher field on-axis for a given amount of power. These windows are subject to ohmic heating from RF currents and Lorentz force from the EM field in the cavity, both of which will produce out of the plane displacements that can detune the cavity frequency. In this study, using the TEM3P code, we report on a detailed thermal and mechanical analysis for the actual Be windows used on a 325 MHz cavity in a vacuum ionization cooling rectilinear channel for a Muon Collider.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

A First Look at Data from the NO$\nu$A Upward-Going Muon Trigger

The NO$\nu$A collaboration has constructed a 14,000 ton, fine-grained, low-Z, total absorption tracking calorimeter at an off-axis angle to an upgraded NuMI neutrino beam. This detector, with its excellent granularity and energy resolution and relatively low-energy neutrino thresholds, was designed to observe electron neutrino appearance in a muon neutrino beam, but it also has unique capabilities suitable for more exotic efforts. In fact, if sufficient cosmic ray background rejection can be demonstrated, NO$\nu$A will be capable of a competitive indirect dark matter search for low-mass Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The cosmic ray muon rate at the NO$\nu$A far detector is approximately 100 kHz and provides the primary challenge for triggering and optimizing such a search analysis. The status of the NO$\nu$A upward-going muon trigger and a first look at the triggered sample is presented.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Next Generation Muon g-2 Experiments

I report on the progress of two new muon anomalous magnetic moment experiments, which are in advanced design and construction phases. The goal of Fermilab E989 is to reduce the experimental uncertainty of $a_\mu$ from Brookhaven E821 by a factor of 4; that is, $\delta a_\mu \sim 16 \times 10^{-11}$, a relative uncertainty of 140~ppb. The method follows the same magic-momentum storage ring concept used at BNL, and pioneered previously at CERN, but muon beam preparation, storage ring internal hardware, field measuring equipment, and detector and electronics systems are all new or upgraded significantly. In contrast, J-PARC E34 will employ a novel approach based on injection of an ultra-cold, low-energy, muon beam injected into a small, but highly uniform magnet. Only a small magnetic focusing field is needed to maintain storage, which distinguishes it from CERN, BNL and Fermilab. E34 aims to roughly match the previous BNL precision in their Phase~1 installation.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Front End and HFOFO Snake for a Muon Facility

A neutrino factory or muon collider requires the capture and cooling of a large number of muons. Scenarios for capture, bunching, phase-energy rotation and initial cooling of μ’s produced from a proton source target have been developed, for neutrino factory and muon collider scenarios. They require a drift section from the target, a bunching section and a $\phi-\delta E$ rotation section leading into the cooling channel. The currently preferred cooling channel design is an “HFOFO Snake” configuration that cools both $\mu^+$ and $\mu^-$ transversely and longitudinally. The status of the design is presented and variations are discussed.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Overview of the Fermilab Muon g-2 Experiment

The measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of muon provides a precision test of the Standard Model. The Brookhaven muon g-2 experiment (E821) measured the muon magnetic moment anomaly with 0.54 ppm precision, a more than 3 deviation from the Standard Model predictions, spurring speculation about the possibility of new physics. The new g-2 experiment at Fermilab (E989) will reduce the combined statistical and systematic error of the BNL experiment by a factor of 4. An overview of the new experiment is described in this article.

Kim, SeungCheon↗

Cosmic Ray Muon Imaging of Spent Nuclear Fuel in Dry Storage Casks

In this paper, cosmic ray muon radiography has been used to identify the absence of spent nuclear fuel bundles inside a sealed dry storage cask. The large amounts of shielding that dry storage casks use to contain radiation from the highly radioactive contents impedes typical imaging methods, but the penetrating nature of cosmic ray muons allows them to be used as an effective radiographic probe. This technique was able to successfully identify missing fuel bundles inside a sealed Westinghouse MC-10 cask. This method of fuel cask verification may prove useful for international nuclear safeguards inspectors. Finally, muon radiography may find other safety and security or safeguards applications, such as arms control verification.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Data Acquisition with GPUs: The DAQ for the Muon $g$-$2$ Experiment at Fermilab

Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) have recently become a valuable computing tool for the acquisition of data at high rates and for a relatively low cost. The devices work by parallelizing the code into thousands of threads, each executing a simple process, such as identifying pulses from a waveform digitizer. The CUDA programming library can be used to effectively write code to parallelize such tasks on Nvidia GPUs, providing a significant upgrade in performance over CPU based acquisition systems. The muon $g$-$2$ experiment at Fermilab is heavily relying on GPUs to process its data. The data acquisition system for this experiment must have the ability to create deadtime-free records from 700 $\mu$s muon spills at a raw data rate 18 GB per second. Data will be collected using 1296 channels of $\mu$TCA-based 800 MSPS, 12 bit waveform digitizers and processed in a layered array of networked commodity processors with 24 GPUs working in parallel to perform a fast recording of the muon decays during the spill. The described data acquisition system is currently being constructed, and will be fully operational before the start of the experiment in 2017.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Hunting Muon Neutrinos in MicroBooNE With Deep Learning Techniques

The MicroBooNE experiment is a large Liquid Argon TPC located on the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermi National Laboratory. The primary goal is to investigate the source of the excess of low energy electron neutrino events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment. The main background to the oscillation signal arises from intrinsic electron neutrinos coming from decay of pions and muons in the beam rather than oscillation. To constrain the systematic uncertainty on this background, MicroBooNE will perform a combined fit to both the muon and electron neutrino spectra. This method provides constraints on flux, cross section, and detector uncertainties. This poster will discuss the identification and selection of muon neutrino events using a novel hybrid approach of Deep Learning and traditional reconstruction algorithms that can be used for this constraint.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

First Measurement of Monoenergetic Muon Neutrino Charged Current Interactions

aWe report the first measurement of monoenergetic muon neutrino charged current interactions. The NuMI beam absorber provides an intense source of 236 MeV muon neutrino events originating from kaon decay at rest ($K^+\rightarrow \mu^+\nu_\mu$) that are observed by the MiniBooNE detector. The kaon-decay-at-rest (KDAR) neutrino represents a standard candle for studying neutrino-nucleus interactions, cross sections, and energy reconstruction in the hundreds of MeV region and can be used for a number of precision measurements. The KDAR signal at MiniBooNE, observed with $3.9\sigma$ significance, is distinguished from $\nu_\mu$ and $\bar{\nu}_\mu$ backgrounds using arrival time and reconstructed muon energy. This result is the first known-energy, weak-interaction-only probe of the nucleus to yield a measurement of neutrino-nucleus energy transfer ($\omega=E_\nu-E_\mu$).

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Experiences from the Commissioning and First Physics Run of the Fermilab Muon g-2 Experiment

The Muon g-2 Experiment (E989) at Fermilab is seeking to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of muon ($a_{\mu}$) with a precision of 140 parts-per-billion (ppb) and aiming to resolve the discrepancy between the E821 measurement and the Standard Model calculation of $a_{\mu}$. In E989, the muon beam is stored in a ring magnet. The anomalous spin precession frequency $\omega_{a}$ is measured by counting decay positrons in 24 calorimeters, and the magnetic field is measured by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probes. Improvements in this experiment with respect to its predecessor and the progress achieved in the commissioning run and the first physics run, Run-1, are presented.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Measurement and Analysis of Beam Phase-Space Distributions for the Fermilab Muon Campus Accelerator Complex

The Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab is tasked with measuring the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment with high precision. Since the experiment requires large amounts of muons, it is imperative to systematically study the behavior of the beam along the transport line. Unfortunately, the available diagnostics only provide beam information in X-Y space. For a complete evaluation, information of the phase-space is required. This paper demonstrates a technique to measure the beam phase-direction distribution by using a set of beam profiles. First, we establish the theoretical framework that describes the principle of the technique. Next, we apply the technique at four different locations along the accelerator delivery line. Finally, we compare our findings to predictions from tracking simulations.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Preliminary Report on the Study of Beam-Induced Background Effects at a Muon Collider

Physics at a multi-TeV muon collider needs a change of perspective for the detector design due to the large amount of background induced by muon beam decays. Preliminary studies, based on simulated data, on the composition and the characteristics of the particles originated from the muon decays and reaching the detectors are presented here. The reconstruction performance of the physics processes $H\to b\bar b$ and $Z\to b\bar b$ has been investigated for the time being without the effect of the machine induced background. A preliminary study of the environment hazard due to the radiation induced by neutrino interactions with the matter is presented using the FLUKA simulation program.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Design and performance of an in-vacuum, magnetic field mapping system for the Muon g-2 experiment

The E989 Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab aims to measure the anomalous magnetic moment, a$_\mu$, of the muon with a precision of 140 parts-per-billion. This requires a precise measurement of both the anomalous spin precession frequency, $\omega_a$, and the average magnetic field in terms of the equivalent, free proton Larmor frequency, $\omega_p$. The measurement of $\omega_p$ with a total systematic uncertainty of 70 parts-per-billion involves a combination of various NMR probes. There are 378 probes in fixed locations constantly monitoring field drifts. A water-based probe provides the calibration in terms of $\omega_p$. A crucial element for the multi-step measurement of $\omega_p$ is the regular mapping of the magnetic field over the muon storage region. The former E821 experiment at Brookhaven employed an in-vacuum field mapping system equipped with 17 NMR probes, which was developed by the University of Heidelberg. We have refurbished and upgraded this system with new probes and electronics. The upgrades include a new communication scheme incorporating time-division multiplexing to separate the important NMR reference clock from the data communication. The addition digitization of the NMR signals replaced the hardware-implemented zero-crossing counting of the E821 system. The digitized signals offer new capabilities in the NMR frequency analysis and its related systematic uncertainties. While the mechanical systems that move the field mapper around the ring have been mostly refurbished, the motion control system was completely replaced with a custom-built electronics centered around a commercial Galil motion controller. Both the field mapping NMR system and its motion control were successfully commissioned at Fermilab and have been in reliable operation during the first data taking periods. This article provides details of the upgrades of the field mapper and its performance.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗