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REPORT OF RESEARCH ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND FUTURE GOALS HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS

Caltech High Energy Physics (HEP) has a broad program in both experimental and theoretical physics. We are known for our creativity and leadership. The future is uncertain and we strive to be involved in all the major areas of experimental and theoretical HEP physics so no matter where the important discoveries occur we are well positioned to play an important role. An outstanding group of postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, staff scientists, and technical and administrative personnel support our efforts in experimental and theoretical physics. The PI’s on this grant are involved in the following program of experimental and theoretical activities: I) EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS Our CMS group, led by Harvey Newman and Maria Spiropulu, has played a key role in the discovery and interpretation of the Higgs boson and in searches for new physics. They have important hardware responsibilities in both ECAL and HCAL and are also involved in the upgrades needed for the High Luminosity LHC. Newman's group also develops and operates Grid-based computing, networking, and collaborative systems for CMS and the US HEP community. The charged lepton (Mu2e) and quark BaBar flavor physics group is led by David Hitlin and Frank Porter. On Mu2e they have been instrumental in the design of the calorimeter. Construction responsibilities include one third of the crystals and associated readout as well as the calibration system. They also will have responsibility for a major part of the online system software. Although data taking ceased in 2008 the Caltech BaBar group is active on several new forefront analyses. The neutrino group is led by Ryan Patterson. They are central to NOvA's core oscillation physics program, to calibration, and to detector readiness being responsible for the production and installation of 12,000 APD arrays. They have key roles in neutrino appearance and disappearance analysis in MINOS and MINOS+. Sunil Golwala leads the dark matter direct detection effort. Areas of activity include: CDMS II data analysis, contributions to SuperCDMS Soudan operations and analysis, R&D towards SuperCDMS SNOLAB, development of a novel screener for radiocontamination (the BetaCage), and development of new WIMP detector concepts. Ren-Yuan Zhu leads the HEP crystal laboratory for the advanced detector R&D effort. The crystal lab is involved in development of novel scintillating crystals and has proposed several crystal based detector concepts for future HEP experiments at the energy and intensity frontiers. Its current research effort is concentrated on development of fast crystal scintillators with good radiation hardness and low cost. II) THEORETICAL PHYSICS The main theme of Sergei Gukov's current research is the relation between the geometry of quantum group invariants and their categorification, on the one hand, and the physics of supersymmetric gauge theory and string theory, on the other. Anton Kapustin's research spans a variety of topics in non-perturbative Quantum Field Theory (QFT). His main areas of interest are supersymmetric gauge theories, non-perturbative dualities in QFT, disorder operators, Topological Quantum Field Theory, and non-relativistic QFT. He is also interested in the foundations and possible generalizations of Quantum Mechanics. Hirosi Ooguri's current research has two main components. One is to find exact results in Calabi-Yau compactification of string theory. Another is to explore applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence. He also plans to continue his project with Caltech postdoctoral fellows on BPS spectra of supersymmetric gauge theories in diverse dimensions. John Preskill works on quantum information science. This field may lead to important future technologies, and also lead to new understanding of issues in fundamental physics John Schwarz has been exploring a number of topics in superstring theory/M-theory, supersymmetric gauge theory, and their AdS/CFT relationships. Much of the motivation for these studies is the desire to gain a deeper understanding of superstring theory and M-theory. The research interests of Mark Wise span particle physics, cosmology and nuclear physics. His recent work has centered on extensions of the standard model where baryon number and lepton number are gauged and extensions of the standard model that have novel sources of baryon number violation and new sources of charged lepton flavor violation

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Experimental Particle Physics

The high energy physics group at the University of South Carolina, under the leadership of Profs. S.R. Mishra, R. Petti, M.V. Purohit, J.R. Wilson (co-PI's), and C. Rosenfeld (PI), engaged in studies in "Experimental Particle Physics." The group collaborated with similar groups at other universities and at national laboratories to conduct experimental studies of elementary particle properties. We utilized the particle accelerators at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California, and the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. Mishra, Rosenfeld, and Petti worked predominantly on neutrino experiments. Experiments conducted in the last fifteen years that used cosmic rays and the core of the sun as a source of neutrinos showed conclusively that, contrary to the former conventional wisdom, the "flavor" of a neutrino is not immutable. A neutrino of flavor "e," "mu," or "tau," as determined from its provenance, may swap its identity with one of the other flavors -- in our jargon, they "oscillate." The oscillation phenomenon is extraordinarily difficult to study because neutrino interactions with our instruments are exceedingly rare -- they travel through the earth mostly unimpeded -- and because they must travel great distances before a substantial proportion have made the identity swap. Three of the experiments that we worked on, MINOS, NOvA, and LBNE utilize a beam of neutrinos from an accelerator at Fermilab to determine the parameters governing the oscillation. Two other experiments that we worked on, NOMAD and MIPP, provide measurements supportive of the oscillation experiments. Good measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters may constitute a "low energy window" on related phenomena that are otherwise unobservable because they would occur only at energies way above the reach of conceivable accelerators. Purohit and Wilson participated in the BaBar experiment, which collected data at SLAC until 2008. They continued to analyze the voluminous BaBar data with an emphasis on precision tests of Quantum Chromodynamics and on properties of the "eta_B," a bottom quark paired in a meson with a strange quark. The ATLAS experiment became the principal research focus for Purohit. One of the world's largest pieces of scientific equipment, ATLAS observes particle collisions at the highest-energy particle accelerator ever built, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Our efforts on ATLAS included participation in the commissioning, calibration, and installation of components called "CSCs". The unprecedented energy of 14 TeV enabled the ATLAS and CMS collaborations to declare discovery of the famous Higgs particle in 2012.

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Final Technical Report for Award DE-FG02-98ER41080

The prime motivation of the project at McMaster University was to carry out the critical evaluation and compilation of Nuclear Structure and Decay data, and of nuclear astrophysics data with continued participation in the United States Nuclear Data Program (US-NDP). A large body of evaluated and compiled structure data were supplied for databases such as ENSDF, XUNDL, NSR, etc. residing on webpage of National Nuclear Data Center of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, USA. Thermonuclear reaction rates of importance to stellar explosions, such as novae, x-ray bursts and supernovae, were evaluated as well. This effort was closely coupled to our ongoing experimental effort, which took advantage of radioactive ion beam and stable beam facilities worldwide to study these key reaction rates. This report contains brief descriptions of the various activities together with references to all the publications in peer-reviewed journals which were the result of work carried out with the award DE-FG02-98-ER41080, during 1998-2013.

Chen, Alan↗

Experimental Research at the Intensity Frontier in High Energy Physics

This Final Report describes DOE-supported Intensity Frontier research by the University of Minnesota during the interval April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2014. Primary activities included the MINOS, NOvA and LBNE Experiments and Heavy Quark studies at BES III.

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Muon Neutrino to Electron Neutrino Oscillation in NO$\nu$A

NOvA is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment optimized for electron neu- trino ( e) appearance in the NuMI beam, a muon neutrino ( $\nu$ μ ) source at Fermilab. It consists of two functionally identical, nearly fully-active liquid-scintillator tracking calorimeters. The near detector (ND) at Fermilab is used to study the neutrino beam spectrum and composition before oscillation, and measure background rate to the $\nu$ e appearance search. The far detector, 810 km away in Northern Minnesota, observes the oscillated beam and is used to extract oscillation parameters from the data. NO$\nu$ A's long baseline, combined with the ability of the NuMI beam to operate in the anti- neutrino mode, makes NO$\nu$ A sensitive to the last unmeasured parameters in neutrino oscillations- mass hierarchy, CP violation and the octant of mixing angle 23. This thesis presents the search for e appearance in the first data collected by the NO A detectors from October 2013 till May 2015. Studies of the NuMI neutrino data collected in the NO A near detector are also presented, which show large discrepancies between the ND simulation and data. Muon- removed electron (MRE) events, constructed by replacing the muon in $\nu$ μ charged cur- rent interactions by a simulated electron, are used to correct the far detector $\nu$e appearance prediction for these discrepancies. In the analysis of the first data, a total of 6 e candidate events are observed in the far detector on a background of 1, a 3.46 σ excess, which is interpreted as strong evidence for e appearance. The results are consistent with our expectation, based on constraints from other neutrino oscillation experiments. The result presented here differs from the officially published $\nu$ e appearance result from the NO A experiment where the systematic error is assumed to cover the MRE correction.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Accelerator/Experiment Operations - FY 2015

This Technical Memorandum summarizes the Fermilab accelerator and experiment operations for FY 2015. It is one of a series of annual publications intended to gather information in one place. In this case, the information concerns the FY 2015 NOvA, MINOS+ and MINERvA experiments using the Main Injector Neutrino Beam (NuMI), the activities in the SciBooNE Hall using the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB), and the SeaQuest experiment and Meson Test Beam (MTest) activities in the 120 GeV external Switchyard beam (SY120).

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Update of Earthquake Strong-Motion Instrumentation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Following the January 1980 earthquake that was felt at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a network of strong-motion accelerographs was installed at LLNL. Prior to the 1980 earthquake, there were no accelerographs installed. The ground motion from the 1980 earthquake was estimated from USGS instruments around the Laboratory to be between 0.2 – 0.3 g horizontal peak ground acceleration. These instruments were located at the Veterans Hospital, 5 miles southwest of LLNL, and in San Ramon, about 12 miles west of LLNL. In 2011, the Department of Energy (DOE) requested to know the status of our seismic instruments. We conducted a survey of our instrumentation systems and responded to DOE in a letter. During this survey, it was found that the recorders in Buildings 111 and 332 were not operational. The instruments on Nova had been removed, and only three of the 10 NIF instruments installed in 2005 were operational (two were damaged and five had been removed from operation at the request of the program). After the survey, it was clear that the site seismic instrumentation had degraded substantially and would benefit from an overhaul and more attention to ongoing maintenance. LLNL management decided to update the LLNL seismic instrumentation system. The updated system is documented in this report.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Neutrino Flux Prediction for the NuMI Beamline

The determination of the neutrino flux in any conventional neutrino beam presents a challenge for the current and future short and long baseline neutrino experiments. The uncertainties associated with the production and attenuation of the hadrons in the beamline materials along with those associated with the beam optics have a big effect in the flux spectrum knowledge. For experiments like MINERvA, understanding the flux is crucial since it enters directly into every neutrino-nucleus cross-sections measurements. The foundation of this work is predicting the neutrino flux at MINERvA using dedicated measurements of hadron production in hadron-nucleus collisions and incorporating in-situ MINERvA data that can provide additional constraints. This work also includes the prospect for predicting the flux at other detectors like the NOvA Near detector. The procedure and conclusions of this thesis will have a big impact on future hadron production experiments and on determining the fl ux for the upcoming DUNE experiment.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Measurement of the Antineutrino Double-Differential Charged-Current Quasi-Elastic Scattering Cross Section at MINERvA

Next-generation neutrino oscillation experiments, such as DUNE and Hyper-Kamiokande, hope to measure charge-parity (CP) violation in the lepton sector. In order to do this, they must dramatically reduce their current levels of uncertainty, particularly those due to neutrino-nucleus interaction models. As CP violation is a measure of the difference between the oscillation properties of neutrinos and antineutrinos, data about how the less-studied antineutrinos interact is especially valuable. We present the MINERvA experiment's first double-differential scattering cross sections for antineutrinos on scintillator, in the few-GeV range relevant to experiments such as DUNE and NOvA. We also present total antineutrino-scintillator quasi-elastic cross sections as a function of energy, which we compare to measurements from previous experiments. As well as being useful to help reduce oscillation experiments' uncertainty, our data can also be used to study the prevalence of various cor relation and final-state interaction effects within the nucleus. We compare to models produced by different model generators, and are able to draw first conclusions about the predictions of these models.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Neutrino Flux Prediction for the NuMI Beamline

The determination of the neutrino flux in any conventional neutrino beam presents a challenge for the current and future short and long baseline neutrino experiments. The uncertainties associated with the production and attenuation of the hadrons in the beamline materials along with those associated with the beam optics have a big effect in the flux spectrum knowledge. For experiments like MINERvA, understanding the flux is crucial since it enters directly into every neutrino-nucleus cross-sections measurements. The foundation of this work is predicting the neutrino flux at MINERvA using dedicated measurements of hadron production in hadron-nucleus collisions and incorporating in-situ MINERvA data that can provide additional constraints. This work also includes the prospect for predicting the flux at other detectors like the NOvA Near detector. The procedure and conclusions of this thesis will have a big impact on future hadron production experiments and on determining the flux for the upcoming DUNE experiment.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Accelerator/Experiment Operations - FY 2016

This Technical Memorandum summarizes the Fermilab accelerator and experiment operations for FY 2016. It is one of a series of annual publications intended to gather information in one place. In this case, the information concerns the FY 2016 NOvA, MINOS+ and MINERvA experiments using the Main Injector Neutrino Beam (NuMI), the MicroBooNE experiment and the activities in the SciBooNE Hall using the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB), and the SeaQuest experiment, LArIAT experiment and Meson Test Beam activities in the 120 GeV external switchyard beam (SY120). Each section was prepared by the relevant authors, and was then edited for inclusion in this summary.

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Model Uncertainties for Valencia RPA Effect for MINERvA

This technical note describes the application of the Valencia RPA multi-nucleon effect and its uncertainty to QE reactions from the GENIE neutrino event generator. The analysis of MINERvA neutrino data in Rodrigues et al. PRL 116 071802 (2016) paper makes clear the need for an RPA suppression, especially at very low momentum and energy transfer. That published analysis does not constrain the magnitude of the effect; it only tests models with and without the effect against the data. Other MINERvA analyses need an expression of the model uncertainty in the RPA effect. A well-described uncertainty can be used for systematics for unfolding, for model errors in the analysis of non-QE samples, and as input for fitting exercises for model testing or constraining backgrounds. This prescription takes uncertainties on the parameters in the Valencia RPA model and adds a (not-as-tight) constraint from muon capture data. For MINERvA we apply it as a 2D ($q_0$,$q_3$) weight to GENIE events, in lieu of generating a full beyond-Fermi-gas quasielastic events. Because it is a weight, it can be applied to the generated and fully Geant4 simulated events used in analysis without a special GENIE sample. For some limited uses, it could be cast as a 1D $Q^2$ weight without much trouble. This procedure is a suitable starting point for NOvA and DUNE where the energy dependence is modest, but probably not adequate for T2K or MicroBooNE.

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Gyrokinetic Simulation of Energetic Particles

The SciDAC-3 project Gyrokinetic Simulation of Energetic Particles (GSEP) was started in 2008 as cooperative agreement research with General Atomic (GA), University of California at Irvine (UCI lead institution), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and others. This Technical Report covers only the GA work. Understanding and predicting the confinement of energetic particles (EPs) in fusion plasma is an important research area vital to the successful operation of fusion reactors. Exterior Neutral Beam Injected (NBI) EPs are a primary source of plasma heating in current tokamaks like DIII-D. Internally generated fusion alpha particles in burning plasmas like ITER must be nearly all confined to heat the plasma to fusion conditions without much exterior heating. The thermal hydrogen plasma suffer energy confinement loses from high-n micro-turbulent driven transport. Electrostatic microturbulence has a small but not negligible impart on EP confinement loss. However is has been known since the early 90’ that NBI and particularly fusion alphas EPs can drive low-n MHD-like low-n electromagnetic Alfven Eigenmodes (AEs) unstable with the possibility significant loss of plasma heating. Even without significant heating loss, low levels of high energy escaping alphas can damage and erode the tokamak wall. The main purpose and goal of the GSEP project was to apply GA’s GYRO and UCI’s GTC gyrokinetic codes to delineate the linear stability boundaries of the EP driven AE modes in the most physically accurate way going beyond the kinetic EP perturbed MHD codes of the 90’s. Most importantly the nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations were to treat the EP driven low-n AE modes embedded in the high-n microturbulence to actually quantify the EP transport loss of confinement. The gyrokinetic codes GYRO, GTC (and GEM) where to be verified and cross-compared with simpler gyro-fluid (TAEFL) and kinetic EP perturbed MHD codes (NOVA-K) to project ITER performance, as well as validated against DIII-D experiments on AE driven NBI confinement losses. The following documents and briefly summarizes the published GA-GSEP contributions to the success of this 9-year project. The work was done by the R.E. Waltz (GA-GSEP PI) in collaboration with UCSD Research Scientist E. M. Bass also supported under this grant. Some of the later work was done in collaboration with a Peking University (Beijing, China) graduate student He Sheng (not funded by this grant).

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Measurement of Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillations and Improvements from Deep Learning

NOvA is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment which measures the oscillation of muon neutrinos from the NuMI beam at Fermilab after they travel through the Earth for 810 km. In this dissertation I describe the operations and monitoring of the detectors which make it possible to record over 98% of the delivered neutrino beam. I also present reconstruction and identification techniques using deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which are applicable to multiple analyses. Lastly, I detail the oscillation analyses in the $\nu_{\mu} \to \nu_{\mu}$ and $\nu_{\mu} \to\nu_e$ channels on a dataset of 8:85 x $10^{20}$ protons on target, with emphasis on the application of deep learning, energy reconstruction, and treatment of systematic uncertainties....

Psihas, Fernanda↗

Addendum to "Compact Perturbative Expressions for Neutrino Oscillations in Matter" [Slides]

In this paper we rewrite the neutrino mixing angles and mass squared differences in matter given, in our original paper, in a notation that is more conventional for the reader. Replacing the usual neutrino mixing angles and mass squared differences in the expressions for the vacuum oscillation probabilities with these matter mixing angles and mass squared differences gives an excellent approximation to the oscillation probabilities in matter. Comparisons for T2K, NOvA, T2HKK and DUNE are also given for neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, disappearance and appearance channels, normal ordering and inverted ordering.

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FY18 LLNL Experimental Programs at Omega

In Fiscal Year 2018 (FY18), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) High Energy-Density Physics (HED) and Indirect Drive Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF-ID) programs conducted numerous campaigns on the OMEGA and OMEGA-EP (EP) laser systems. This was the 20th year of National Lab collaborative experiments at OMEGA since the Nova Laser at LLNL shut down in 1999 [1], building upon prior collaborations. In FY18 overall, these LLNL programs led 465 target shots, with 283 shots using just the OMEGA laser system, 172 shots using just the EP laser system, and 10 Joint shots using both lasers together. Approximately 28% of the total number of shots (60 OMEGA shots and 71 EP shots) supported the Indirect Drive Inertial Confinement Fusion Campaign. The remaining 72% (223 OMEGA-only shots, 101 EP-only shots and 10 Joint shots) were dedicated to experiments for High-Energy-Density Physics. Highlights of the various HED and ICF-ID campaigns are summarized in the following reports. In addition to these experiments, LLNL Principal Investigators (PIs) led a variety of Laboratory Basic Science campaigns using OMEGA and EP, including 99 target shots using just OMEGA and 39 shots using just EP. The highlights of these are also summarized, following the ICF and HED campaigns. Overall, LLNL PIs led a total of 603 shots at LLE in FY 2018. In addition, LLNL PIs supported 47 NLUF shots on Omega and 31 NLUF shots on EP in collaboration with the academic community.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Catching Element Formation In The Act - The Case for a New MeV Gamma-Ray Mission: Radionuclide Astronomy in the 2020s

Gamma-ray astronomy explores the most energetic photons in nature to address some of the most pressing puzzles in contemporary astrophysics. It encompasses a wide range of objects and phenomena: stars, supernovae, novae, neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, nucleosynthesis, the interstellar medium, cosmic rays and relativistic-particle acceleration, and the evolution of galaxies. MeV γ-rays provide a unique probe of nuclear processes in astronomy, directly measuring radioactive decay, nu-clear de-excitation, and positron annihilation. The substantial information carried byγ-ray photons allows us to see deeper into these objects, the bulk of the power is often emitted atγ-ray energies, and radioactivity provides a natural physical clock that adds unique information.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Accelerator/Experiment Operations: FY17

This Technical Memorandum summarizes the Fermilab accelerator and experiment operations for FY 2017. It is one of a series of annual publications intended to gather information in one place. In this case, the information concerns the FY 2017 NOvA, MINOS+ and MINERvA experiments using the Main Injector Neutrino Beam (NuMI), the MicroBooNE experiment and the activities in the SciBooNE Hall using the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB), and the SeaQuest experiment, LArIAT experiment and Meson Test Beam activities in the 120 GeV external switchyard beam (SY120).

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗