Sensor Simulation and position calibration for the CMS pixel detector

In this paper a detailed simulation of irradiated pixel sensors was used to investigate the effects of radiation damage on charge sharing and position determination. The simulation implements a model of radiation damage by including two defect levels with opposite charge states and trapping of charge carriers. We show that charge sharing functions extracted from the simulation can be parameterized as a function of the inter-pixel position and used to improve the position determination. For sensors irradiated to Phi=5.9x10^14 n/cm^2 a position resolution below 15 um can be achieved after calibration.Comment: Presented at the 14th Int. Workshop on Vertex Detectors (Vertex 2005), November 7-11 2005, Chuzenji Lake, Nikko, Japan. 4 pages, 1 figur

A Complete Order-alpha**3 Calculation of the Cross Section for Polarized Compton Scattering

The construction of a computer code to calculate the cross sections for the spin-polarized processes e-gamma=>e-gamma,e-gamma-gamma,e-e+e- to order-alpha**3 is described. The code calculates cross sections for circularly-polarized initial-state photons and arbitrarily polarized initial-state electrons. The application of the code to the SLD Compton polarimeter indicates that the order-alpha**3 corrections produce a fractional shift in the SLC polarization scale of -0.1% which is too small and of the wrong sign to account for the discrepancy in the Z-pole asymmetries measured by the SLD Collaboration and the LEP Collaborations.Comment: 37 pages, RevTeX document, 7 figures. The FORTRAN code comrad.f is available in gzip-compressed form at ftp://ftp.slac.stanford.edu/users/morris/comrad.f.gz and /afs/slac.stanford.edu/public/users/morris/comrad.f.gz. Cosmetically updated draft (moves some detail into an appendix

Boston University School of Medicine Alumni News

Newsletter for Boston University School of Medicine alumni

Statistical Uncertainties in Temperature Diagnostics for Hot Coronal Plasma Using the ASCA SIS

Statistical uncertainties in determining the temperatures of hot (0.5 keV to 10 keV) coronal plasmas are investigated. The statistical precision of various spectral temperature diagnostics is established by analyzing synthetic ASCA Solid-state Imaging Spectrometer (SIS) CCD spectra. The diagnostics considered are the ratio of hydrogen-like to helium-like line complexes of $Z\ge14$ elements, line-free portions of the continuum, and the entire spectrum. While fits to the entire spectrum yield the highest statistical precision, it is argued that fits to the line-free continuum are less susceptible to atomic data uncertainties but lead to a modest increase in statistical uncertainty over full spectral fits. Temperatures deduced from line ratios can have similar accuracy but only over a narrow range of temperatures. Convenient estimates of statistical accuracies for the various temperature diagnostics are provided which may be used in planning ASCA SIS observations.Comment: postscript file of 8 pages+3 figures; 4 files tarred, compressed and uuencoded. To appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters; contents copyright 1994 American Astronomical Societ

A theory driven analysis of the effective QED coupling at MZM_Z

An evaluation of the effective QED coupling at the scale M_Z is presented. It employs the predictions of perturbative QCD for the cross section of electron positron annihilation into hadrons up to order \alpha_s^2, including the full quark mass dependence, and of order \alpha_s^3 in the high energy region. This allows to predict the input for the dispersion relations over a large part of the integration region. The perturbative piece is combined with data for the lower energies and the heavy quark thresholds. The result for the hadronic contribution to the running of the coupling \Delta\alpha^{(5)}_{\rm had}(M_Z^2)= (277.5 \pm 1.7)\times 10^{-4} leads to (\alpha(M_Z^2))^{-1}=128.927 \pm 0.023. Compared to previous analyses the uncertainty is thus significantly reduced.Comment: 9 pages (Latex); minor error in result for charm threshold region fixed; final result unchange

UHF and VHF radar observations of thunderstorms

A study of thunderstorms was made in the Summer of 1985 with the 430-MHz and 50-MHz radars at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Both radars use the 300-meter dish, which gives a beam width of less than 2 degrees even at these long wavelengths. Though the radars are steerable, only vertical beams were used in this experiment. The height resolution was 300 and 150 meters for the UHF and VHF, respectively. Lightning echoes, as well as returns from precipitation and clear-air turbulence were detected with both wavelengths. Large increases in the returned power were found to be coincident with increasing downward vertical velocities at UHF, whereas at VHF the total power returned was relatively constant during the life of a storm. This was attributed to the fact that the VHF is more sensitive to scattering from the turbulence-induced inhomogeneities in the refractive index and less sensitive to scatter from precipitation particles. On occasion, the shape of the Doppler spectra was observed to change with the occurrence of a lightning discharge in the pulse volume. Though the total power and mean reflectivity weighted Doppler velocity changed little during these events, the power is Doppler frequency bins near that corresponding to the updraft did increase substantially within a fraction of a second after a discharge was detected in the beam. This suggests some interaction between precipitation and lightning

Performance of high resistivity n+pp+ silicon solar cells under 1 MeV electron irradiation

High resistivity (1250 and 84 ohm-cm) n(+)pp(+) silicon solar cells were irradiated and their performance evaluated as a function of fluence. The greatest degradation in power occurred for the higher resistivity cell. The data were analyzed under open circuit conditions, and the components of V sub oc determined as a function of fluence. It was found that the voltage contributions from the front and back junctions decreased while the base component (V sub B) increased with fluence. The anomalous behavior of V sub B was attributed to an increase in the base minority carrier gradient with fluence. An argument that the increased power degradation in the 1250 ohm-cm cells was attributable to an increased voltage drop in the base is presented. Diffusion lengths calculated under high injection conditions were significantly greater than those determined under low injection. This was attributed to a saturation of recombination centers under high injection conditions