95 research outputs found
Outer crust of a cold non-accreting magnetar
The outer crust structure and composition of a cold, non-accreting magnetar
is studied. We model the outer crust to be made of fully equilibrated matter
where ionized nuclei form a Coulomb crystal embedded in an electron gas. The
main effects of the strong magnetic field are those of quantizing the electron
motion in Landau levels and of modifying the nuclear single particle levels
producing, on average, an increased binding of nucleons in nuclei present in
the Coulomb lattice. The effect of an homogeneous and constant magnetic field
on nuclear masses has been predicted by using a covariant density functional,
in which induced currents and axial deformation due to the presence of a
magnetic field that breaks time-reversal symmetry have been included
self-consistently in the nucleon and meson equations of motion. Although not
yet observed, for G both effects contribute to produce
different compositions and to enlarge the range of pressures typically present
in common neutron stars. Specifically, in such a regime, the magnetic field
effects on nuclei favor the appearance of heavier nuclei at low pressures. As
increases, such heavier nuclei are also preferred up to larger pressures.
In the most extreme case, the whole outer crust is almost made of
Zr.Comment: Published versio
Description of nuclear systems with a self-consistent configuration-mixing approach. I: Theory, algorithm, and application to the C test nucleus
Although self-consistent multi-configuration methods have been used for
decades to address the description of atomic and molecular many-body systems,
only a few trials have been made in the context of nuclear structure. This work
aims at the development of such an approach to describe in a unified way
various types of correlations in nuclei, in a self-consistent manner where the
mean-field is improved as correlations are introduced. The goal is to reconcile
the usually set apart Shell-Model and Self-Consistent Mean-Field methods. This
approach is referred as "variational multiparticle-multihole configuration
mixing method". It is based on a double variational principle which yields a
set of two coupled equations that determine at the same time the expansion
coefficients of the many-body wave function and the single particle states. The
formalism is derived and discussed in a general context, starting from a
three-body Hamiltonian. Links to existing many-body techniques such as the
formalism of Green's functions are established. First applications are done
using the two-body D1S Gogny effective force. The numerical procedure is tested
on the C nucleus in order to study the convergence features of the
algorithm in different contexts. Ground state properties as well as
single-particle quantities are analyzed, and the description of the first
state is examined. This study allows to validate our numerical algorithm and
leads to encouraging results. In order to test the method further, we will
realize in the second article of this series, a systematic description of more
nuclei and observables obtained by applying the newly-developed numerical
procedure with the same Gogny force. As raised in the present work,
applications of the variational multiparticle-multihole configuration mixing
method will however ultimately require the use of an extended and more
constrained Gogny force.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. C. v2:
minor corrections and references adde
Nuclear structure in strong magnetic fields: nuclei in the crust of a magnetar
Covariant density functional theory is used to study the effect of strong
magnetic fields, up to the limit predicted for neutron stars (for magnetars G), on nuclear structure. All new terms in the equation of
motion resulting from time reversal symmetry breaking by the magnetic field and
the induced currents, as well as axial deformation, are taken into account in a
self-consistent fashion. For nuclei in the iron region of the nuclear chart it
is found that fields in the order of magnitude of G significantly
affect bulk properties like masses and radii.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
The energy spectrum of cosmic rays beyond the turn-down around 10¹⁷ eV as measured with the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
We present a measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum above 100 PeV using the part of the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory that has a spacing of 750 m. An inflection of the spectrum is observed, confirming the presence of the so-called second-knee feature. The spectrum is then combined with that of the 1500 m array to produce a single measurement of the flux, linking this spectral feature with the three additional breaks at the highest energies. The combined spectrum, with an energy scale set calorimetrically via fluorescence telescopes and using a single detector type, results in the most statistically and systematically precise measurement of spectral breaks yet obtained. These measurements are critical for furthering our understanding of the highest energy cosmic rays
Design and implementation of the AMIGA embedded system for data acquisition
The Auger Muon Infill Ground Array (AMIGA) is part of the AugerPrime upgrade
of the Pierre Auger Observatory. It consists of particle counters buried 2.3 m
underground next to the water-Cherenkov stations that form the 23.5 km
large infilled array. The reduced distance between detectors in this denser
area allows the lowering of the energy threshold for primary cosmic ray
reconstruction down to about 10 eV. At the depth of 2.3 m the
electromagnetic component of cosmic ray showers is almost entirely absorbed so
that the buried scintillators provide an independent and direct measurement of
the air showers muon content. This work describes the design and implementation
of the AMIGA embedded system, which provides centralized control, data
acquisition and environment monitoring to its detectors. The presented system
was firstly tested in the engineering array phase ended in 2017, and lately
selected as the final design to be installed in all new detectors of the
production phase. The system was proven to be robust and reliable and has
worked in a stable manner since its first deployment.Comment: Accepted for publication at JINST. Published version, 34 pages, 15
figures, 4 table
Constraining Lorentz Invariance Violation using the muon content of extensive air showers measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory
Lorentz symmetry requires the space-time structure to be the same for all observers, but, on the other hand, various quantum gravity theories suggest that it may be violated when approaching the Planck scale. Even a small violation of Lorentz Invariance (LI) could easily affect the Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) propagation on a cosmological scale. Moreover, at the extreme energies, like those available in the collision of UHECRs with atmosphere, one should also expect a change in the interactions and, therefore, in the development of extensive air showers. For the first time, this effect has been studied using the muon content of air showers measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory. After having introduced Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV) as a perturbation term in the single particle dispersion relation, a library of simulated showers with different energies, primary particles and LIV strengths has been produced. Leading to a change in the energy threshold of particle decays, the modification of the energy-momentum relation allows hadronic interactions of neutral pions that contribute to the growth of the hadronic cascade. As a consequence, an increase in the number of muons and a decrease in their intrinsic fluctuations are expected. Comparing the Monte Carlo expectations with the muon fluctuation measurements from the Pierre Auger Observatory, limits on LIV parameters have been derived and presented in this contribution
Extraction of the Muon Signals Recorded with the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory Using Recurrent Neural Networks
The Pierre Auger Observatory, at present the largest cosmic-ray observatory
ever built, is instrumented with a ground array of 1600 water-Cherenkov
detectors, known as the Surface Detector (SD). The SD samples the secondary
particle content (mostly photons, electrons, positrons and muons) of extensive
air showers initiated by cosmic rays with energies ranging from eV up
to more than eV. Measuring the independent contribution of the muon
component to the total registered signal is crucial to enhance the capability
of the Observatory to estimate the mass of the cosmic rays on an event-by-event
basis. However, with the current design of the SD, it is difficult to
straightforwardly separate the contributions of muons to the SD time traces
from those of photons, electrons and positrons. In this paper, we present a
method aimed at extracting the muon component of the time traces registered
with each individual detector of the SD using Recurrent Neural Networks. We
derive the performances of the method by training the neural network on
simulations, in which the muon and the electromagnetic components of the traces
are known. We conclude this work showing the performance of this method on
experimental data of the Pierre Auger Observatory. We find that our predictions
agree with the parameterizations obtained by the AGASA collaboration to
describe the lateral distributions of the electromagnetic and muonic components
of extensive air showers.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures. Version accepted for publication in JINS
Deep-Learning based Reconstruction of the Shower Maximum using the Water-Cherenkov Detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory
The atmospheric depth of the air shower maximum is an
observable commonly used for the determination of the nuclear mass composition
of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. Direct measurements of are
performed using observations of the longitudinal shower development with
fluorescence telescopes. At the same time, several methods have been proposed
for an indirect estimation of from the characteristics of
the shower particles registered with surface detector arrays. In this paper, we
present a deep neural network (DNN) for the estimation of .
The reconstruction relies on the signals induced by shower particles in the
ground based water-Cherenkov detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The
network architecture features recurrent long short-term memory layers to
process the temporal structure of signals and hexagonal convolutions to exploit
the symmetry of the surface detector array. We evaluate the performance of the
network using air showers simulated with three different hadronic interaction
models. Thereafter, we account for long-term detector effects and calibrate the
reconstructed using fluorescence measurements. Finally, we
show that the event-by-event resolution in the reconstruction of the shower
maximum improves with increasing shower energy and reaches less than
at energies above .Comment: Published version, 29 pages, 12 figure
Calibration of the underground muon detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
To obtain direct measurements of the muon content of extensive air showers with energy above 10 eV, the Pierre Auger Observatory is currently being equipped with an underground muon detector (UMD), consisting of 219 10 m-modules, each segmented into 64 scintillators coupled to silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). Direct access to the shower muon content allows for the study of both of the composition of primary cosmic rays and of high-energy hadronic interactions in the forward direction. As the muon density can vary between tens of muons per m2 close to the intersection of the shower axis with the ground to much less than one per m2 when far away, the necessary broad dynamic range is achieved by the simultaneous implementation of two acquisition modes in the read-out electronics: the binary mode, tuned to count single muons, and the ADC mode, suited to measure a high number of them. In this work, we present the end-to-end calibration of the muon detector modules: first, the SiPMs are calibrated by means of the binary channel, and then, the ADC channel is calibrated using atmospheric muons, detected in parallel to the shower data acquisition. The laboratory and field measurements performed to develop the implementation of the full calibration chain of both binary and ADC channels are presented and discussed. The calibration procedure is reliable to work with the high amount of channels in the UMD, which will be operated continuously, in changing environmental conditions, for several years
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