179 research outputs found

    Why We Already Know that Antihydrogen is Almost Certainly NOT Going to Fall "Up"

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    The ALPHA collaboration (of which I am a member) has made great strides recently in trapping antihydrogen and starting down the path of making spectroscopic measurements. The primary goal of the experiment is to test CPT invariance but there is also interest in testing another fundamental issue -- the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter (the so-called question of "antigravity"). As well as the other antihydrogen trapping experiments -- ASACUSA and ATRAP -- there is also a new experiment in the Antiproton Decelerator hall at CERN called AEGIS which is dedicated to testing the gravitional interaction between antihydrogen and the Earth. It has been claimed in the literature that there "is no compelling evidence or theoretical reason to rule out such a difference (i.e., between gg and gˉ\bar{g}) at the 1% level." I argue in this short paper that bending of light by the sun provides a more stringent limit than this.Comment: Corrected the spelling of a name in the Acknowledgement

    What Exactly is Antimatter (Gravitationally Speaking)?

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    There has been renewed interest in the idea of antigravity -- that matter and antimatter repel gravitationally - in lieu of the recent beautiful ALPHA-g result for the free-fall acceleration of antihydrogen of aHˉ=(0.75±0.13 (stat.+syst.)±0.16 (simulation))ga_{\bar{H}}=(0.75\pm 0.13~({\rm stat.+syst.})\pm 0.16~({\rm simulation}))g. Precision tests of the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) have shown that binding energy (atomic, nuclear, and nucleonic) acts like matter under gravity. Whereas the contribution of atomic binding energy to the mass of antihydrogen is negligible, the majority of the mass of the antiproton comes from the gluonic binding energy. Hence, in terms of antigravity, the antiproton is mostly composed of matter and so even if the antimatter content of the antiproton is repelled by the Earth, there would still be a net attraction of the antihydrogen to the Earth because of its dominant matter content. Using recent Lattice QCD results showing that around two-thirds of the mass of the proton (and, hence, from the CPTCPT Invariance of QCD, of the antiproton) is due to gluons, I find that in the antigravity scenario the free-fall acceleration of antihydrogen would be aHˉ=(0.330.06+0.10)ga_{\bar{H}}=(0.33^{+0.10}_{-0.06})g. The fact that antinucleons are more matter than antimatter (in the gravitational sense) leads to quite different cosmological consequences than the naive antigravity scenario (where antistars are wholly antimatter). For example, it follows naturally that there is a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe right from the instant of the Big Bang -- but not a baryon-antibaryon asymmetry. Again, this stems simply from the fact that antibaryons are more matter than antimatter

    Angular and Current-Target Correlations in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

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    Correlations between charged particles in deep inelastic ep scattering have been studied in the Breit frame with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 6.4 pb-1. Short-range correlations are analysed in terms of the angular separation between current-region particles within a cone centred around the virtual photon axis. Long-range correlations between the current and target regions have also been measured. The data support predictions for the scaling behaviour of the angular correlations at high Q2 and for anti-correlations between the current and target regions over a large range in Q2 and in the Bjorken scaling variable x. Analytic QCD calculations and Monte Carlo models correctly describe the trends of the data at high Q2, but show quantitative discrepancies. The data show differences between the correlations in deep inelastic scattering and e+e- annihilation.Comment: 26 pages including 10 figures (submitted to Eur. J. Phys. C

    Measurement of event shapes in deep inelastic scattering at HERA

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    Inclusive event-shape variables have been measured in the current region of the Breit frame for neutral current deep inelastic ep scattering using an integrated luminosity of 45.0 pb^-1 collected with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The variables studied included thrust, jet broadening and invariant jet mass. The kinematic range covered was 10 < Q^2 < 20,480 GeV^2 and 6.10^-4 < x < 0.6, where Q^2 is the virtuality of the exchanged boson and x is the Bjorken variable. The Q dependence of the shape variables has been used in conjunction with NLO perturbative calculations and the Dokshitzer-Webber non-perturbative corrections (`power corrections') to investigate the validity of this approach.Comment: 7+25 pages, 6 figure

    The Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) International Consortium inaugural meeting report

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    The Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) International Consortium is a novel, interdisciplinary initiative comprised of experts across many fields, including genomics, data analysis, engineering, public health, and architecture. The ultimate goal of the MetaSUB Consortium is to improve city utilization and planning through the detection, measurement, and design of metagenomics within urban environments. Although continual measures occur for temperature, air pressure, weather, and human activity, including longitudinal, cross-kingdom ecosystem dynamics can alter and improve the design of cities. The MetaSUB Consortium is aiding these efforts by developing and testing metagenomic methods and standards, including optimized methods for sample collection, DNA/RNA isolation, taxa characterization, and data visualization. The data produced by the consortium can aid city planners, public health officials, and architectural designers. In addition, the study will continue to lead to the discovery of new species, global maps of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) markers, and novel biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Finally, we note that engineered metagenomic ecosystems can help enable more responsive, safer, and quantified cities

    Inclusive jet cross sections in the Breit frame in neutral current deep inelastic scattering at HERA and determination of αs\alpha_{s}

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    Inclusive jet differential cross sections have been measured in neutral current deep inelastic e+p scattering for boson virtualities Q**2>125 GeV**2. The data were taken using the ZEUS detector at HERA and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 38.6 pb-1. Jets were identified in the Breit frame using the longitudinally invariant K_T cluster algorithm. Measurements of differential inclusive jet cross sections are presented as functions of jet transverse energy (E_T,jet), jet pseudorapidity and Q**2, for jets with E_T,jet>8 GeV. Next-to-leading-order QCD calculations agree well with the measurements both at high Q**2 and high E_T,jet. The value of alpha_s(M_Z), determined from an analysis of dsigma/dQ**2 for Q**2>500 GeV**2, is alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1212 +/- 0.0017 (stat.) +0.0023 / -0.0031 (syst.) +0.0028 / -0.0027 (th.)
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