Enhanced Proton Acceleration by an Ultrashort Laser Interaction with Structured Dynamic Plasma Targets

We experimentally demonstrate a notably enhanced acceleration of protons to high energy by relatively modest ultrashort laser pulses and structured dynamical plasma targets. Realized by special deposition of snow targets on sapphire substrates and using carefully planned pre-pulses, high proton yield emitted in a narrow solid angle with energy above 21MeV were detected from a 5TW laser. Our simulations predict that using the proposed scheme protons can be accelerated to energies above 150MeV by 100TW laser systems.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letter

Dynamics of Nanometer-Scale Foil Targets Irradiated with Relativistically Intense Laser Pulses

In this letter we report on an experimental study of high harmonic radiation generated in nanometer-scale foil targets irradiated under normal incidence. The experiments constitute the first unambiguous observation of odd-numbered relativistic harmonics generated by the $\vec{v}\times\vec{B}$ component of the Lorentz force verifying a long predicted property of solid target harmonics. Simultaneously the observed harmonic spectra allow in-situ extraction of the target density in an experimental scenario which is of utmost interest for applications such as ion acceleration by the radiation pressure of an ultraintense laser.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Acquisition of pneumococci specific effector and regulatory Cd4+ T cells localising within human upper respiratory-tract mucosal lymphoid tissue

The upper respiratory tract mucosa is the location for commensal Streptococcus (S.) pneumoniae colonization and therefore represents a major site of contact between host and bacteria. The CD4(+) T cell response to pneumococcus is increasingly recognised as an important mediator of immunity that protects against invasive disease, with data suggesting a critical role for Th17 cells in mucosal clearance. By assessing CD4 T cell proliferative responses we demonstrate age-related sequestration of Th1 and Th17 CD4(+) T cells reactive to pneumococcal protein antigens within mucosal lymphoid tissue. CD25(hi) T cell depletion and utilisation of pneumococcal specific MHCII tetramers revealed the presence of antigen specific Tregs that utilised CTLA-4 and PDL-1 surface molecules to suppress these responses. The balance between mucosal effector and regulatory CD4(+) T cell immunity is likely to be critical to pneumococcal commensalism and the prevention of unwanted pathology associated with carriage. However, if dysregulated, such responses may render the host more susceptible to invasive pneumococcal infection and adversely affect the successful implementation of both polysaccharide-conjugate and novel protein-based pneumococcal vaccines

Precision CMB constraints on eV-scale bosons coupled to neutrinos

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) has proven to be an invaluable tool for studying the properties and interactions of neutrinos, providing insight not only into the sum of neutrino masses but also the free streaming nature of neutrinos prior to recombination. The CMB is a particularly powerful probe of new eV-scale bosons interacting with neutrinos, as these particles can thermalize with neutrinos via the inverse decay process, νν¯ → X , and suppress neutrino free streaming near recombination – even for couplings as small as λν∼ O(10 - 13) . Here, we revisit CMB constraints on such bosons, improving upon a number of approximations previously adopted in the literature and generalizing the constraints to a broader class of models. This includes scenarios in which the boson is either spin-0 or spin-1, the number of interacting neutrinos is either Nint= 1 , 2 or 3, and the case in which a primordial abundance of the species is present. We apply these bounds to well-motivated models, such as the singlet majoron model or a light U(1)Lμ-Lτ gauge boson, and find that they represent the leading constraints for masses mX∼1eV . Finally, we revisit the extent to which neutrino-philic bosons can ameliorate the Hubble tension, and find that recent improvements in the understanding of how such bosons damp neutrino free streaming reduces the previously found success of this proposal

Predicting the baryon asymmetry with degenerate right-handed neutrinos

We consider the generation of a baryon asymmetry in an extension of the Standard Model with two singlet Majorana fermions that are degenerate above the electroweak phase transition. The model can explain neutrino masses as well as the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry, for masses of the heavy singlets below the electroweak scale. The only physical CP violating phases in the model are those in the PMNS mixing matrix, i.e. the Dirac phase and a Majorana phase that enter light neutrino observables. We present an accurate analytic approximation for the baryon asymmetry in terms of CP flavour invariants, and derive the correlations with neutrino observables. We demonstrate that the measurement of CP violation in neutrino oscillations as well as the mixings of the heavy neutral leptons with the electron, muon and tau flavours suffice to pin down the matter-antimatter asymmetry from laboratory measurements.Comment: 29 + 4 pages, 9 figures. Includes a comparison to the non-degenerate scenario. Matches published version in JHE

First Observation of Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission in a Free-Electron Laser at 109 nm Wavelength

We present the first observation of Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) in a free-electron laser (FEL) in the Vacuum Ultraviolet regime at 109 nm wavelength (11 eV). The observed free-electron laser gain (approx. 3000) and the radiation characteristics, such as dependency on bunch charge, angular distribution, spectral width and intensity fluctuations all corroborate the existing models for SASE FELs.Comment: 6 pages including 6 figures; e-mail: [email protected]

Social capital of venture capitalists and start-up funding

How does the social capital of venture capitalists (VCs) affect the funding of start-ups? By building on the rich social capital literature, we hypothesize a positive effect of VCs' social capital, derived from past syndication, on the amount of money that start-ups receive. Specifically, we argue that both structural and relational aspects of VCs' social networks provide VCs with superior access to information about current investment objects and opportunities to leverage them in the future, increasing their willingness to invest in these firms. Our empirical results, derived from a novel dataset containing more than 1,500 first funding rounds in the Internet and IT sector, strongly confirm our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of venture capital and entrepreneurship, showing that the role and effect of VCs' social capital on start-up firms may be more complex than previously argued in the literature

Nontunneling high-order harmonics from ultra-intense laser-driven tightly bound systems

High-order harmonic emission is investigated by numerical solution of the weakly relativistic, two-dimensional Schrödinger equation for the case of ultra-intense laser-driven tightly bound systems (for example, multiply charged ions such as O7+ exposed to laser fields of the order of 1018 W cm-2 at 248 nm). In contrast to their usual substantial decrease, the low-order harmonics having an energy less than the ionization potential exhibit a high efficiency (i.e. intense) plateau with a well defined cutoff. The shape of this plateau is found to depend on the shape of the binding potential. A classical “surfing” mechanism for the generation of these harmonics is proposed that does not involve tunneling and that nevertheless explains the observed cutoff. Thus we call them “nontunneling harmonics.” The significance of relativistic effects for these harmonics is investigated and found to be small, despite the high laser intensity, because of the absence of tunneling

Strong magnetic coupling of an inhomogeneous NV ensemble to a cavity

We study experimentally and theoretically a dense ensemble of negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond coupled to a high $Q$ superconducting coplanar waveguide cavity mode at low temperature. The nitrogen-vacancy centers are modeled as effective spin one defects with inhomogeneous frequency distribution. For a large enough ensemble the effective magnetic coupling of the collective spin dominates the mode losses and inhomogeneous broadening of the ensemble and the system exhibits well resolved normal mode splitting in probe transmission spectra. We use several theoretical approaches to model the probe spectra and the number and frequency distribution of the spins. This analysis reveals an only slowly temperature dependent q-Gaussian energy distribution of the defects with a yet unexplained decrease of effectively coupled spins at very low temperatures below \unit{100}{\milli\kelvin}. Based on the system parameters we predict the possibility to implement an extremely stable maser by adding an external pump to the system.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure