Bioavailable Strontium, Human Paleogeography, and Migrations in the Southern Andes: A Machine Learning and GIS Approach

The Andes are a unique geological and biogeographic feature of South America. From the perspective of human geography, this mountain range provides ready access to highly diverse altitudinally arranged ecosystems. The combination of a geologically and ecologically diverse landscape provides an exceptional context to explore the potential of strontium isotopes to track the movements of people and the conveyance of material culture. Here we develop an isotopic landscape of bioavailable strontium (87Sr/86Sr) that is applied to reconstruct human paleogeography across time in the southern Andes of Argentina and Chile (31 degrees-34 degrees S). These results come from a macro-regional sampling of rodents (N = 65) and plants (N = 26) from modern and archeological contexts. This 'Southern Andean Strontium Transect' extends over 350 km across the Andes, encompassing the main geological provinces between the Pacific coast (Chile) and the eastern lowlands (Argentina). We follow a recently developed approach to isoscape construction based on Random Forest regression and GIS analysis. Our results suggest that bioavailable strontium is tightly linked with bedrock geology and offers a highly resolved proxy to track human paleogeography involving the levels of territories or daily mobility and anomalous events that disrupt home ranges, such as migration. The southern Andes provide an ideal geological setting to develop this approach, since the geological variation in rock age and composition produces distinctive isotopic signatures for each main biogeographical region. Finally, we apply this framework to a set of results from human remains from the Uspallata Valley in Mendoza (Argentina), to assess the incidence of migration in the key period of the consolidation of agropastoral economies between AD 800 and 1400. The application of the isoscape to the values from human remains confirms the persistence of human groups with relatively restricted territories encompassing Uspallata and the adjacent Precordillera between AD 800 and 1500. We also identify a pulse of human migration between AD 1280 and 1420, shortly preceding the Inka conquest. Looking forward, we expect to converge with ongoing efforts in South America to build a continental research framework to track the movement of people, animals, and artifacts across space and time

Search for A′→μ+μ−A'\to\mu^+\mu^- Decays

International audienceSearches are performed for both promptlike and long-lived dark photons, A′, produced in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. These searches look for A′→μ+μ- decays using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.5  fb-1 collected with the LHCb detector. Neither search finds evidence for a signal, and 90% confidence-level exclusion limits are placed on the γ–A′ kinetic mixing strength. The promptlike A′ search explores the mass region from near the dimuon threshold up to 70 GeV and places the most stringent constraints to date on dark photons with 214<m(A′)≲740  MeV and 10.6<m(A′)≲30  GeV. The search for long-lived A′→μ+μ- decays places world-leading constraints on low-mass dark photons with lifetimes O(1)  ps

Measurement of Ξcc++\mathit{\Xi}_{cc}^{++} production in pppp collisions at s=13\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

International audienceThe production of baryons in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of is measured in the transverse-momentum range and the rapidity range . The data used in this measurement correspond to an integrated luminosity of , recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2016. The ratio of the production cross-section times the branching fraction of the decay relative to the prompt production cross-section is found to be , assuming the central value of the measured lifetime, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic

Constraints on the KS0→μ+μ−K^0_S \rightarrow \mu^+ \mu^- Branching Fraction

International audienceA search for the decay KS0→μ+μ- is performed using proton-proton collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.6  fb-1 and collected with the LHCb experiment during 2016, 2017, and 2018 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The observed signal yield is consistent with zero, yielding an upper limit of B(KS0→μ+μ-)<2.2×10-10 at 90% C.L.. The limit reduces to B(KS0→μ+μ-)<2.1×10-10 at 90% C.L. once combined with the result from data taken in 2011 and 2012

Observation of the Λb0→χc1(3872)pK−\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow \chi_{c1}(3872)pK^- decay

International audienceUsing proton-proton collision data, collected with the LHCb detector and corresponding to 1.0, 2.0 and 1.9 fb$^{−1}$ of integrated luminosity at the centre-of-mass energies of 7, 8, and 13 TeV, respectively, the decay {\Lambda}_{\mathrm{b}}^0\to {\upchi}_{\mathrm{c}1} (3872)pK$^{−}$ with χ$_{c1}$(3872) → J/ψ π$^{+}$π$^{−}$ is observed for the first time. The significance of the observed signal is in excess of seven standard deviations. It is found that (58 ± 15)% of the decays proceed via the two-body intermediate state χ$_{c1}$(3872)Λ(1520). The branching fraction with respect to that of the ${\Lambda}_{\mathrm{b}}^0$ → ψ(2S)pK$^{−}$ decay mode, where the ψ(2S) meson is reconstructed in the J/ψ π$^{+}$π$^{−}$ final state, is measured to be: $ \frac{\beta \left({\Lambda}_{\mathrm{b}}^0\to {\upchi}_{\mathrm{c}1}(3872){\mathrm{pK}}^{-}\right)}{\beta \left({\Lambda}_{\mathrm{b}}^0\to \uppsi \left(2\mathrm{S}\right){\mathrm{pK}}^{-}\right)}\times \frac{\beta \left({\upchi}_{\mathrm{c}1}(3872)\to \mathrm{J}/\uppsi {\uppi}^{+}{\uppi}^{-}\right)}{\beta \left(\uppsi \left(2\mathrm{S}\right)\to \mathrm{J}/\uppsi {\uppi}^{+}{\uppi}^{-}\right)}=\left(5.4\pm 1.1\pm 0.2\right)\times {10}^{-2},

Measurement of fs/fuf_s / f_u Variation with Proton-Proton Collision Energy and BB-Meson Kinematics

International audienceThe ratio of the Bs0 and B+ fragmentation fractions fs and fu is studied with Bs0→J/ψϕ and B+→J/ψK+ decays using data collected by the LHCb experiment in proton-proton collisions at 7, 8, and 13 TeV center-of-mass energies. The analysis is performed in bins of B-meson momentum, longitudinal momentum, transverse momentum, pseudorapidity, and rapidity. The fragmentation-fraction ratio fs/fu is observed to depend on the B-meson transverse momentum with a significance of 6.0σ. This dependency is driven by the 13 TeV sample (8.7σ), while the results for the other collision energies are not significant when considered separately. Furthermore, the results show a 4.8σ evidence for an increase of fs/fu as a function of collision energy