Cosmic ray signatures in Paleo-detectors to investigate the past activity of our Galaxy

Interactions between secondary cosmic rays and nuclei in natural minerals can leave tracks in the lattice due to nuclear recoils. These defects can be preserved up to the Gyr timescale, making these so-called “Paleo-detectors” useful “time machines” for the study of the history of astrophysical messengers such as cosmic rays, neutrinos or even dark matter. These "Paleo-detectors" feature huge accumulated exposure times even for small masses of material, making them long-term flux integrators of all radiation along the evolution of our planet. We present the case study of the Messinian salinity crisis, a period of draining of the Mediterranean Sea which is interestingly coincident with the estimated age of the Fermi Bubbles, around 5.5 Myr ago, when our Galaxy might have been active. Greatly increased cosmic ray acceleration near the Galactic Center could have left traces in the evaporites, mainly Halite, created with the evaporation of the sea and exposed directly to secondary cosmic rays. These mineral structures were then covered during the sudden reflooding of the Mediterranean basin 5.3 Myr ago; the cosmic ray flux information remained frozen due to the shielding of the massive body of water, possibly retaining information on the flux of particles at ground in that epoch

The use of paleo-detectors to investigate cosmic-ray fluxes throughout the history of Earth

The measurement of the flux of cosmic rays in the past could give some important information about the sources of cosmic rays, the evolution of the neighborhood of the Solar System in the Galaxy and the Galaxy itself. It could also inform our understanding of key events in the Earth’s history such as mass extinctions. The paleo-detector technique proposes to investigate the traces left in natural minerals by energetic particles over geological timescales. A number of works have already suggested the use of paleo-detectors to measure weakly interacting particles such as dark matter constituent particles and neutrinos. Here, we propose for the first time to use paleo- detectors to directly detect secondary cosmic rays. The advantage of this approach is that cosmic rays can be shielded, and thus, in rocks with a particular history, we can measure the flux of cosmic rays at a specific moment in time rather than integrated since the initial formation of the target mineral. For example, evaporites produced in the desiccation of the Mediterranean sea during the Messinian salinity crisis have been exposed to cosmic rays for a very specific (and known) period of time before being submerged by a km-deep overburden of water, possibly retaining information about the flux during the exposure period. In this work, we show the challenges of this kind of study, its proposed targets and the track detection techniques

The use of paleo-detectors to investigate cosmic-ray fluxes throughout the history of Earth

The measurement of the flux of cosmic rays in the past could give some important information about the sources of cosmic rays, the evolution of the neighborhood of the Solar System in the Galaxy and the Galaxy itself. It could also inform our understanding of key events in the Earth’s history such as mass extinctions. The paleo-detector technique proposes to investigate the traces left in natural minerals by energetic particles over geological timescales. A number of works have already suggested the use of paleo-detectors to measure weakly interacting particles such as dark matter constituent particles and neutrinos. Here, we propose for the first time to use paleo-detectors to directly detect secondary cosmic rays. The advantage of this approach is that cosmic rays can be shielded, and thus, in rocks with a particular history, we can measure the flux of cosmic rays at a specific moment in time rather than integrated since the initial formation of the target mineral. For example, evaporites produced in the desiccation of the Mediterranean sea during the Messinian salinity crisis have been exposed to cosmic rays for a very specific (and known) period of time before being submerged by a km-deep overburden of water, possibly retaining information about the flux during the exposure period. In this work, we show the challenges of this kind of study, its proposed targets and the track detection techniques

KM3NeT real-time analysis framework

KM3NeT is a deep-sea neutrino observatory under construction at two sites in the Mediterranean Sea. The ARCA telescope (Italy), aims at identifying and studying TeV-PeV astrophysical neutrino sources, while the ORCA telescope (France), aims at studying the intrinsic properties of neutrinos in the few-GeV range. Since they are optimised in complementary energy ranges, both telescopes can be used to do neutrino astronomy from a few MeV to a few PeV, despite of their different primary goals. The KM3NeT observatory takes active part to the real-time multi-messenger searches, which allow to study transient phenomena by combining information from the simultaneous observation of complementary cosmic messengers with different observatories. In this respect, a key component is the real-time distribution of alerts when potentially interesting detections occur, in order to increase the discovery potential of transient sources and refine the localization of poorly localized triggers, such as gravitational waves. The KM3NeT real-time analysis framework is currently reconstructing all ARCA and ORCA events, searching for spatial and temporal coincidences with alerts received from other operating multi-messenger instruments and performing core-collapse supernova analyses. The selection of a sample of interesting events to send alerts to the external multi-messenger community is presently under definition. This contribution deals with the status of the KM3NeT real-time analysis framework and its first results. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).The authors acknowledge the financial support of the funding agencies: SC gratefully acknowledges the support from Università La Sapienza di Roma through the grant ID RM1221816813FFA3; Agence Nationale de la Recherche (contract ANR-15-CE31-0020), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commission Européenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), LabEx UnivEarthS (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-18-IDEX-0001), Paris Île-de-France Region, France; Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia (SRNSFG, FR-22-13708), Georgia; The General Secretariat of Research and Innovation (GSRI), Greece Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR), PRIN 2017 program (Grant NAT-NET 2017W4HA7S) Italy; Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation, Morocco, and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Kuwait; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; The National Science Centre, Poland (2021/41/N/ST2/01177); The grant “AstroCeNT: Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Centre”, carried out within the International Research Agendas programme of the Foundation for Polish Science financed by the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund; National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; GrantsPID2021-124591NB-C41,-C42,-C43fundedbyMCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033and,asappropriate, by“ERDF A way of making Europe”, by the “European Union” or by the “European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR”, Programa de Planes Complementarios I+D+I (refs. ASFAE/2022/023, ASFAE/2022/014), Programa Prometeo (PROMETEO/2020/019) and GenT (refs. CIDEGENT/2018/034, /2019/043, /2020/049. /2021/23) of the Generalitat Valenciana, Junta de Andalucía (ref. SOMM17/6104/UGR, P18-FR-5057), EU: MSC program (ref. 101025085), Programa María Zambrano (Spanish Ministry of Universities, funded by the European Union, NextGenerationEU), Spain; The European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (ChETEC-INFRA- Project no. 101008324)Peer ReviewedMembres del K3MNet: M. Mastrodicasa*, S. Aiello, A. Albert, M. Alshamsi, S. Alves Garre, Z. Aly, A. Ambrosone, F. Ameli, M. André, E. Androutsou, M. Anguita, L. Aphecetche, M. Ardid, S. Ardid, H. Atmani, J. Aublin, L. Bailly-Salins, Z. Bardačová, B. Baret, A. Bariego-Quintana, S. Basegmez du Pree, Y. Becherini, M. Bendahman, F. Benfenati, M. Benhassi, D.M. Benoit, E. Berbee, V. Bertin, S. Biagi, M. Boettcher, D. Bonanno, J. Boumaaza, M. Bouta, M. Bouwhuis, C. Bozza, R.M. Bozza, F. Bretaudeau, R. Bruijn, J. Brunner, R. Bruno, E. Buis, R. Buompane, J. Busto, B. Caiffi, D. Calvo, S. Campion, A. Capone, F. Carenini, V. Carretero, T. Cartraud, P. Castaldi, V. Cecchini, S. Celli, L. Cerisy, M. Chabab, M. Chadolias, A. Chen, S. Cherubini, T. Chiarusi, M. Circella, R. Cocimano, J.A.B. Coelho, A. Coleiro, R. Coniglione, P. Coyle, A. Creusot, G. Cuttone, R. Dallier, Y. Darras, A. De Benedittis, B. De Martino, V. Decoene, R. Del Burgo, I. Del Rosso, U.M. Di Cerbo, L.S. Di Mauro, I. Di Palma, A.F. Díaz, C. Díaz, D. Diego-Tortosa, C. Distefano, A. Domi, C. Donzaud, D. Dornic, M. Dörr, E. Drakopoulou, D. Drouhin, R. Dvornický, T. Eberl, E. Eckerová, A. Eddymaoui, T. van Eeden, M. Eff, D. van Eijk, I. El Bojaddaini, S. El Hedri, A. Enzenhöfer, G. Ferrara, M.D. Filipović, F. Filippini, D. Franciotti, L.A. Fusco, J. Gabriel, S. Gagliardini, T. Gal, J. García M{é}ndez, A. Garcia Soto, C. Gatius Oliver, N. Geißelbrecht, H. Ghaddari, L. Gialanella, B.K. Gibson, E. Giorgio, I. Goos, D. Goupilliere, S.R. Gozzini, R. Gracia, K. Graf, C. Guidi, B. Guillon, M. Gutiérrez, H. van Haren, A. Heijboer, A. Hekalo, L. Hennig, J.J. Hernandez Rey, W. Idrissi Ibnsalih, G. Illuminati, M. de Jong, P. de Jong, B.J. Jung, P. Kalaczyński, O. Kalekin, U.F. Katz, N.R. Khan Chowdhury, A. Khatun, G. Kistauri, C. Kopper, A. Kouchner, V. Kueviakoe, V. Kulikovskiy, R. Kvatadze, M. Labalme, R. Lahmann, G. Larosa, C. Lastoria, A. Lazo, S. Le Stum, G. Lehaut, E. Leonora, N. Lessing, G. Levi, M. Lindsey Clark, F. Longhitano, J. Majumdar, L. Malerba, F. Mamedov, J. Manczak, A. Manfreda, M. Marconi, A. Margiotta, A. Marinelli, C. Markou, L. Martin, J.A. Martínez-Mora, F. Marzaioli, M. Mastrodicasa, S. Mastroianni, S. Miccichè, G. Miele, P. Migliozzi, E. Migneco, M.L. Mitsou, C.M. Mollo, L. Morales-Gallegos, M. Morga, A. Moussa, I. Mozun Mateo, R. Muller, M.R. Musone, M. Musumeci, S. Navas, A. Nayerhoda, C.A. Nicolau, B. Nkosi, B. Ó Fearraigh, V. Oliviero, A. Orlando, E. Oukacha, D. Paesani, J. Palacios González, G. Papalashvili, V. Parisi, E.J. Pastor Gomez, A.M. Păun, G.E. Păvălaš, S. Peña Martínez, M. Perrin-Terrin, J. Perronnel, V. Pestel, R. Pestes, P. Piattelli, C. Poirè, V. Popa, T. Pradier, S. Pulvirenti, G. Quéméner, C.A. Quiroz-Rangel, U. Rahaman, N. Randazzo, R. Randriatoamanana, S. Razzaque, I.C. Rea, D. Real, G. Riccobene, J. Robinson, A. Romanov, A. Saina, F. Salesa Greus, D.F.E. Samtleben, A. Sánchez Losa, S. Sanfilippo, M. Sanguineti, C. Santonastaso, D. Santonocito, P. Sapienza, J. Schnabel, J. Schumann, H.M. Schutte, J. Seneca, N. Sennan, B. Setter, I. Sgura, R. Shanidze, A. Sharma, Y. Shitov, F. Šimkovic, A. Simonelli, A. Sinopoulou, M.V. Smirnov, B. Spisso, M. Spurio, D. Stavropoulos, I. Štekl, M. Taiuti, Y. Tayalati, H. Tedjditi, H. Thiersen, I. Tosta e Melo, B. Trocm{é}, V. Tsourapis, E. Tzamariudaki, A. Vacheret, V. Valsecchi, V. Van Elewyck, G. Vannoye, G. Vasileiadis, F. Vazquez de Sola, C. Verilhac, A. Veutro, S. Viola, D. Vivolo, J. Wilms, E. de Wolf, H. Yepes-Ramirez, G. Zarpapis, S. Zavatarelli, A. Zegarelli, D. Zito, J.D. Zornoza, J. Zúñiga, N. ZywuckaPostprint (published version

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Sedimentary rocks from Mediterranean drought in the Messinian age as a probe of the past cosmic ray flux

International audienceWe propose the use of natural minerals as detectors to study the past flux of cosmic rays. This novel application of the paleo-detector technique requires a specific approach as it needs samples that have been exposed to secondary cosmic rays for a well defined period of time. We suggest here the use of the evaporites formed during the desiccation of the Mediterranean sea ∼6 Myr ago. These minerals have been created and exposed to the air or under a shallow water basin for ∼500 kyr before being quickly submerged again by a km-scale overburden of water. We show that, by looking at the damages left in the minerals by muons in cosmic ray showers, we could detect differences in the primary cosmic ray flux during that period, as the ones expected from nearby supernova explosions, below the percent-level. We show also that little to no background from radioactive contamination and other astroparticles is expected for this kind of analysis