A Search for Sterile Neutrino Oscillations in the MicroBooNE Experiment Using Deep Learning Reconstruction and Event Selection
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46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
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Theory and experiment for low-energy electroweak physics [Slides]
Standard Model and beyond with CKM matrix element V ud
74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
Performance and Commissioning of the BigBite Timing Hodoscope for Nucleon Form Factor Measurements at Jefferson Lab
The BigBite Timing Hodoscope detector is the primary subject of this thesis. The Super BigBite Spectrometer is a Jefferson Lab Hall A Collaboration project that has and will continue to measure nucleon electromagnetic form factors. This spectrometer includes the Timing Hodoscope which provides high resolution particle timing data for scattered electrons in the electron arm of BigBite. The Timing Hodoscope utilizes 90, 25 × 25 × 600 mm3 scintillator bars stacked on top of each other to form a single detector plane, and these bars are connected to 180 photo-multiplier tubes via light guides. Particles collide with the scintillating material creating a shower of optical photons and these particle events in the bars are collected to generate signals that are readout by the data acquisition (DAQ) electronics. NINO ASIC amplifier-discriminator cards output signals from the photo-multiplier tubes into analogue and logic signals, which are sent to analogue-to-digital (ADC) and time-to-digital (TDC) converter data acquisition readout modules. This data is then used for analysis of the detector. The focus of this thesis is the construction, commissioning, calibration, and performance of the BigBite Timing Hodoscope before and during the first of five nucleon electromagnetic form factor experiments at Jefferson Lab Hall A. Before the neutron magnetic form factor, G n M, experiment, cosmic ray data was collected during commissioning to confirm proper operation of the Timing Hodoscope electronics by observing the ADC and TDC data. Commissioning studies for charge normalization, gain matching, and other ADC and TDC detector data variables were performed before moving the detector into Hall A. Following installation in Hall A, several calibration studies were implemented to fine-tune the detector in preparation for use in the experiment. The calibration studies included analysis of timing cuts, TDC alignment, the time-walk effect, time difference offsets, and scintillator velocity corrections. Once the Timing Hodoscope was well-calibrated, data-taking during the experiment commenced and the beam-on-target data was used to characterize the Timing Hodoscope performance during the G n M experiment run-time. The performance analysis included studies observing energy deposit, cluster size, rates, accidentals, pile-up, tracking efficiency, position resolution, and time resolution. After application of physics cuts to ensure a data set comprised of particle tracks corresponding to elastic electrons, which is the main data of interest for measurement of G n M, the Timing Hodoscope is shown on average across all kinematic settings to have a >98% tracking efficiency, a position resolution of 4-6 cm in the non-dispersive plane and 1.5-2 cm in the dispersive plane, and a time resolution of 500-750 ps. These performance results are compared to a GEANT4 based performance simulation of the BigBite Timing Hodoscope for reference, showing to what degree the measured performance values match those taken from the simulation.
Marinaro, Ralph↗
On the Fidelity of Computational Models for the Flow of Milled Loblolly Pine: A Benchmark Study on Continuum-Mechanics Models and Discrete-Particle Models
The upstream of bioenergy industry has suffered from unreliable operations of granular biomass feedstocks in handling equipment. Computational modeling, including continuum-mechanics models and discrete-particle models, offers insightful understandings and predictive capabilities on the flow of milled biomass and can assist equipment design and optimization. This paper presents a benchmark study on the fidelity of the continuum and discrete modeling approaches for predicting granular biomass flow. We first introduce the constitutive law of the continuum-mechanics model and the contact law of the coarse-grained discrete-particle model, with model parameters calibrated against laboratory characterization tests of the milled loblolly pine. Three classical granular material flow systems (i.e., a lab-scale rotating drum, a pilot-scale hopper, and a full-scale inclined plane) are then simulated using the two models with the same initial and boundary conditions as the physical experiments. The close agreement of the numerical predictions with the experimental measurements on the hopper mass flow rate, the hopper critical outlet width, the material stopping thickness on the inclined plane, and the dynamic angle of repose, clearly indicates that the two methods can capture the critical flow behavior of granular biomass. The qualitative comparison shows that the continuum-mechanics model outperforms in parameterization of materials and wall friction, and large-scale systems, while the discrete-particle model is more preferred for discontinuous flow systems at smaller scales. Industry stakeholders can use these findings as guidance for choosing appropriate numerical tools to model biomass material flow in part of the optimization of material handling equipment in biorefineries.
Jin, Wencheng↗
Demonstration of plasma mirror capability for the OMEGA Extended Performance laser system
A plasma mirror platform was developed for the OMEGA-EP facility to redirect beams, thus enabling more flexible experimental configurations as well as a platform that can be used in the future to improve laser contrast. The plasma mirror reflected a short pulse focusing beam at 22.5° angle of incidence onto a 12.5 μm thick Cu foil, generating Bremsstrahlung and k α x rays, and accelerating ions and relativistic electrons. By measuring these secondary sources, the plasma mirror key performance metrics of integrated reflectivity and optical quality are inferred. It is shown that for a 5 ± 2 ps, 310 J laser pulse, the plasma mirror integrated reflectivity was 62 ± 13% at an operating fluence of 1670 J cm –2 , and that the resultant short pulse driven particle acceleration and x-ray generation indicate that the on target intensity was 3.1 × 10 18 W cm –2 , which is indicative of a good post-plasma mirror interaction beam optical quality. By deriving the plasma mirror performance metrics from the secondary source scalings, it was simultaneously demonstrated that the plasma mirror is ready for adoption in short pulse particle acceleration and high energy photon generation experiments using the OMEGA-EP system.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
Exotic and Conventional Quarkonium Physics Prospects at Belle II
The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB energy-asymmetric $e^+ e^-$ collider is a substantial upgrade of the B factory facility at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan. It aims to record a factor of 50 times more data than its predecessor. The experiment completed a commissioning run in 2018, and began full operation in early 2019. Belle II is uniquely capable of studying the so-called "XYZ" particles: heavy exotic hadrons consisting of more than three quarks. First discovered by Belle, these now number in the dozens, and represent the emergence of a new category within quantum chromodynamics. This talk will present the prospects of Belle II to explore both exotic and conventional quarkonium physics.
Fulsom, Bryan G.↗
Fog Formation Related to Gravity Currents Interacting with Coastal Topography
An interesting mixing-fog event was identified during IOP7 of the C-FOG project, where a cold front arriving from the north-east collided with the Downs peninsula in Ferryland, Newfoundland, to produce foggy conditions. A comprehensive set of field observations suggests that this collision caused turbulent mixing of nearly saturated ambient air with an almost saturated cold front, creating conditions for mixing fog. Additionally, laboratory experiments were performed to study the interaction of lock-exchange induced gravity currents with a (rectangular) obstacle to delve into physical processes underlying this phenomenon. Instantaneous velocity and density fields were obtained using particle image velocimetry and planar laser-induced fluorescence. The observations suggest that the obstacle starts affecting the approaching gravity-current propagation at an upstream distance of 2 H and, upon collision, the mixing is taking place over a spatial scale of 0.83 H , where H is the depth of the ambient fluid layer. The time for largerscale turbulent stirring to permeate to the smallest scales of turbulence and activate the condensation nuclei was estimated as 3t * , where t* = √H/g' is the intrinsic time scale of the gravity current and g' the reduced gravity. Extrapolation of results to IOP7 showed a good agreement with observations.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Comment on “The Mössbauer rotor experiment and the general theory of relativity” [Ann. Physics 368 (2016) 258–266]
Highlights: •Our approach is considered from the viewpoint of arbitrary moving continuum. •Continuum characteristics are determined by a deformation tensor, a stress tensor, a strain velocity tensor, a spin tensor (Sing (1963)) and the first curvature vectors of the world lines of medium particles. •All these physical values are located on the hypersurfaces orthogonal to the world lines of medium particles and specify the “physical” space. •The time counting from the “physical” space permits to obtain the red shift of the frequency at the end of the tube that coincides with Corda result (Corda (2016)).
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
BoxScore - A real-time beam-diagnosis program for the CAEN digitizer x730 series
BoxScore is a real-time beam diagnosis and monitoring program for the CAEN x730 series digitizer, developed for the ATLAS in-flight system at Argonne National Laboratory. The CAEN x730 series digitizer, with built-in Digital Pulse Processing for the Pulse-Height-Analysis, digitizes the input signal in real-time and processes it using a trapezoidal filter. BoxScore reads the digitizer’s buffer directly, builds and saves events to local files, plots histograms for particle identification, and outputs the rates of selected isotopes every second. Implementation of BoxScore has shortened the time needed for in-flight beam-tuning and has potential applications for other nuclear physics experiments.
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
Role of 3D neoclassical particle flux in density pump-out during ELM control by RMP in DIII-D
Application of three-dimensional (3-D) resonant magnetic perturbations, for the purpose of controlling edge localized modes (ELMs) in high confinement (H-mode) tokamak fusion operations, routinely leads to significantly reduction of the plasma density during the discharge, a phenomenon termed 'density pump-out'. Understanding the density pump-out phenomenon due to 3-D fields is a longstanding challenging issue. This work discusses a self-consistent toroidal model that allows initial value simulation of the density pump-out effect. The model successfully reproduces pump-out phenomenology in DIII-D ELM suppression experiments. The radial particle flux, associated with the 3-D neoclassical effects (the neoclassical toroidal viscosity, NTV), is discovered to play an important role in producing the observed large density pump- out. The key physics is associated with the drift kinetic Landau resonances between the toroidal precession of trapped thermal ions and electrons from one side, and the magnetic field perturbation from the other side. Such resonances, occurring near the top of the pedestal region, substantially enhances the radial particle flux associated with NTV. As a general consequence of the resonant NTV flux, larger density pump- out occurs in plasmas with lower collisionality and slower toroidal rotation.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
Installation and Commissioning of the GLUEX DIRC
The GlueX experiment takes place in experimental Hall D at Jefferson Lab (JLab). With a linearly polarized photon beam of up to 12 GeV energy, GlueX is a dedicated experiment to search for hybrid mesons via photoproduction reactions. The low-intensity (Phase I) of GlueX was recently completed; the high-intensity (Phase II) started in 2020 including an upgraded particle identification system, known as the DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light), utilizing components from the decommissioned BaBar experiment. The identification and separation of the kaon final states will significantly enhance the GlueX physics program, by adding the capability of accessing the strange quark flavor content of conventional (and potentially hybrid) mesons. Here, we report that the installation and commissioning of the DIRC detector has been successfully completed.
47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
Measurements of Penning-Malmberg trap patch potentials and associated performance degradation
Antiprotons created by laser ionization of antihydrogen are observed to rapidly escape the ALPHA trap. Further, positron plasmas heat more quickly after the trap is illuminated by laser light for several hours. These phenomena can be caused by patch potentials—variations in the electrical potential along metal surfaces. A simple model of the effects of patch potentials explains the particle loss, and an experimental technique using trapped electrons is developed for measuring the electric field produced by the patch potentials. The model is validated by controlled experiments and simulations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
Experimental Searches for Muon to Electron Conversion in a Nucleus: COMET, DeeMe, and Mu2e (A Contributed paper for Snowmass 21)
Searches for charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) offer deep probes for a range of new physics scenarios, such as super-symmetric models, theories involving scalar leptoquarks or additional Higgs doublets, and models explaining the neutrino mass hierarchy and the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe via leptogenesis. The coherent, neutrinoless conversion of a muon to an electron in the field of a nucleus, $\mu^{-}+N\rightarrow e^{-} +N$, is one example of a muonic CLFV process which has sensitivity to this new physics. This paper details three experiments: COMET, DeeMe and Mu2e which will search for $\mu^{-}+N\rightarrow e^{-} +N$ in the coming decade. These experiments offer sensitivity up to an effective new physics mass scale of $\mathcal{O}(10^{4}$ TeV/c$^{2}$), going far beyond what can be achieved in direct, collider-based, searches. The theoretical motivation, designs and anticipated timelines for these three experiments are presented. These experiments are a crucial part of a global search for CLFV. Continued support for all planned experimental searches for muonic CLFV is strongly encouraged.
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
Hidden-sectors search and probe of discrete symmetries at the REDTOP experiment
The $η$ and $η^{\prime}$ mesons are nearly unique in the particle universe since they are nearly Goldstone bosons, and their decay dynamics are strongly constrained. While earlier experiments collected samples of order $\sim 10^{9}η$, the proposed REDTOP (Rare Eta Decays To Observe Physics Beyond the Standard Model) facility targets $\mathcal{O}(10^{14})η$ and $\mathcal{O}(10^{12})η^\prime$, enabling broad searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. In this work, we present studies evaluating REDTOP sensitivity to processes that couple the Standard Model to New Physics through four portals: the Vector (dark photon), the Scalar (Higgs-mixing), the Axion-like, and the Heavy Lepton. In parallel, the proposed statistics allow precise tests of $CP$ and $T$ invariance and lepton universality and improve determinations of the $η/η'$ transition form factors, which are crucial inputs to the hadronic light-by-light contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment $(g-2)_μ$.
Gatto, C. [INFN, Naples; Northern Illinois U.]↗
The Mu2e Experiment and Progress in the Year 2024
The Mu2e Experiment is a search for Charged Lepton Flavor Violation (CLFV) in the process of a coherent neutrinoless mu- N -> e- N transition. This process is allowed under the Standard Model in the presence of neutrino mixing; albeit, at unobservable rates (branching ratio below 10-50). The sensitivity of the Mu2e experiment is a factor of 104 improvement over the current limit. This search both compliments and extends current searches for muon to electron+gamma at MEG and new physics searches at the LHC. Another interesting process that Mu2e will search for is the neutrionless conversion of stopped negative muons into positrons: mu- N -> e+ N'. This process violates both lepton flavor and lepton number (LNV) and would provide proof that neutrinos are Majorana particles. Progress has been made in many areas in preparation for beam. A description of the Mu2e Experiment and a synopsis of this experiment s progress in the year 2024 towards data collection will be presented.
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
Using Boosted Decision Trees to Select High Quality Measurements in the Mu2e Experiment at Fermilab
This thesis presents the implementation and evaluation of a Boosted Decision Tree (BDT) model to improve the selection of high-quality track measurements in the Mu2e experiment at Fermilab. The Mu2e experiment is a high-energy physics experiments seeking to observe a rare theoretical physics process known as Charged Lepton Flavor Violation. A significant challenge faced by the Mu2e experiment are so-called background events, which are events whose data mimics that of the rare physics process the experiment seeks to observe. Without a mechanism to reduce background, it would be impossible to know whether Charged Lepton Flavor Violation occurred or not. To this end, high-quality track measurements must be distinguished from low-quality track measurements. A track can be conceived of as the reconstructed path of a particle that traveled through the Mu2e detector. In addition to other data, data about such tracks is stored using a C++-based framework, specific to the domain of high-energy physics, known as ROOT. A boosted decision tree model was trained using ROOT’s Toolkit For Multivariate Analysis by leveraging variables ancillary to track quality. In evaluation, the BDT achieves a ROC-AUC of 0.927 in discriminating good-quality tracks from poor-quality tracks. Such a score is indicative of both strong discrimination and strong generalization. Subsequently, it is shown that applying a BDT-based quality cut to the distribution of particle momenta significantly enhances the signal-to-background distinction for signal electrons, paving the way for improved sensitivity to Charged Lepton Flavor Violation.
Mullany, Brendan T. [Drew U.] (ORCID:0009000818888↗
Validation of MCNP Critical Benchmark Models of Moderated Highly Enriched Uranium Slabs
A new centralized repository of high-quality MCNP models of critical benchmark experiments is currently under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The benchmark experiments are described in the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook, and the initial set of benchmark models are derived from the Whisper Suite provided with MCNP6.2. This effort is a collaboration among the Nuclear Criticality Safety, Nuclear Data, and Monte Carlo code development/application organizations at LANL. The goal is to build a single LANL benchmark collection that is up to date with the latest ICSBEP revision, has a formal review and revision process, is contained in an open-source repository, and utilizes new Python tools for improved input and output file review. This paper describes the validation of the models associated with HEU-MET-FAST-007, “Uranium Metal Slabs Moderated with Polyethylene, Plexiglas, and Teflon”. The Monte Carlo n-Particle (MCNP) models were compared to the second revision of HEU-MET-FAST-007. The experiment considered critical configurations of highly enriched uranium (HEU) metal slabs and various moderators in 43 unique cases. The slabs of uranium were separated by layers of moderating material, forming an assembly. The assembly was separated in two halves with one half placed on a stationary table and the other attached to a moveable table that could be raised and lowered via pulleys connected to the ceiling of the shielded room. To reach criticality, the two halves were brought together with a negligible gap between the assemblies.
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
Review of opportunities for new long-lived particle triggers in Run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider
Long-lived particles (LLPs) are highly motivated signals of physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) with great discovery potential and unique experimental challenges. The LLP search programme made great advances during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but many important regions of signal space remain unexplored. Dedicated triggers are crucial to improve the potential of LLP searches, and their development and expansion is necessary for the full exploitation of the new data. The public discussion of triggers has therefore been a relevant theme in the recent LLP literature, in the meetings of the LLP@LHC Community workshop and in the respective experiments. This paper documents the ideas collected during talks and discussions at these Workshops, benefiting as well from the ideas under development by the trigger community within the experimental collaborations. We summarise the theoretical motivations of various LLP scenarios leading to highly elusive signals, reviewing concrete ideas for triggers that could greatly extend the reach of the LHC experiments. We thus expect this document to encourage further thinking for both the phenomenological and experimental communities, as a stepping stone to further develop the LLP@LHC physics programme.
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗