3,228 research outputs found
The Level-0 Muon Trigger for the LHCb Experiment
A very compact architecture has been developed for the first level Muon
Trigger of the LHCb experiment that processes 40 millions of proton-proton
collisions per second. For each collision, it receives 3.2 kBytes of data and
it finds straight tracks within a 1.2 microseconds latency. The trigger
implementation is massively parallel, pipelined and fully synchronous with the
LHC clock. It relies on 248 high density Field Programable Gate arrays and on
the massive use of multigigabit serial link transceivers embedded inside FPGAs.Comment: 33 pages, 16 figures, submitted to NIM
Conception and Validation Software Tools for the Level 0 Muon Trigger of LHCb
The Level-0 muon trigger processor of the LHCb experiment looks for straight particules crossing muon detector and measures their transverse momentum. It processes 40×106 proton-proton collisions per second. The tracking uses a road algorithm relying on the projectivity of the muon detector. The architecture of the Level-0 muon trigger is complex with a dense network of data interconnections. The design and validation of such an intricate system has only been possible with intense use of software tools for the detector simulation, the modelling of the hardware components behaviour and the validation. A database describing the dataflow is the corner stone between the software and hardware components
Neutrino Telescopes in the Mediterranean Sea
The observation of high energy extraterrestrial neutrinos can be an
invaluable source of information about the most energetic phenomena in the
Universe. Neutrinos can shed light on the processes that accelerate charge
particles in an incredibly wide range of energies both within and outside our
Galaxy. They can also help to investigate the nature of the dark matter that
pervades the Universe. The unique properties of the neutrino make it peerless
as a cosmic messenger, enabling the study of dense and distant astrophysical
objects at high energy. The experimental challenge, however, is enormous. Due
to the weakly interacting nature of neutrinos and the expected low fluxes very
large detectors are required. In this paper we briefly review the neutrino
telescopes under the Mediterranean Sea that are operating or in progress. The
first line of the ANTARES telescope started to take data in March 2006 and the
full 12-line detector was completed in May 2008. By January 2009 more than one
thousand neutrino events had been reconstructed. Some of the results of ANTARES
will be reviewed. The NESTOR and NEMO projects have made a lot of progress to
demonstrate the feasibility of their proposed technological solutions. Finally,
the project of a km3-scale telescope, KM3NeT, is rapidly progressing: a
conceptual design report was published in 2008 and a technical design report is
expected to be delivered by the end of 2009
Neutrino Mixing and Neutrino Telescopes
Measuring flux ratios of ultra-high energy neutrinos is an alternative method
to determine the neutrino mixing angles and the CP phase delta. We conduct a
systematic analysis of the neutrino mixing probabilities and of various flux
ratios measurable at neutrino telescopes. The considered cases are neutrinos
from pion, neutron and muon-damped sources. Explicit formulae in case of mu-tau
symmetry and its special case tri-bimaximal mixing are obtained, and the
leading corrections due to non-zero theta_{13} and non-maximal theta_{23} are
given. The first order correction is universal as it appears in basically all
ratios. We study in detail its dependence on theta_{13}, theta_{23} and the CP
phase, finding that the dependence on theta_{23} is strongest. The flavor
compositions for the considered neutrino sources are evaluated in terms of this
correction. A measurement of a flux ratio is a clean measurement of the
universal correction (and therefore of theta_{13}, theta_{23} and delta) if the
zeroth order ratio does not depend on theta_{12}. This favors pion sources over
the other cases, which in turn are good candidates to probe theta_{12}. The
only situations in which the universal correction does not appear are certain
ratios in case of a neutron and muon-damped source, which depend mainly on
theta_{12} and receive only quadratic corrections from the other parameters. We
further show that there are only two independent neutrino oscillation
probabilities, give the allowed ranges of the considered flux ratios and of all
probabilities, and show that none of the latter can be zero or one.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures. Minor changes, to appear in JCA
Tests of the Equivalence Principle with Neutral Kaons
We test the Principle of Equivalence for particles and antiparticles, using
CPLEAR data on tagged K0 and K0bar decays into pi^+ pi^-. For the first time,
we search for possible annual, monthly and diurnal modulations of the
observables |eta_{+-}| and phi_{+-}, that could be correlated with variations
in astrophysical potentials. Within the accuracy of CPLEAR, the measured values
of |eta_{+-}| and phi_{+-} are found not to be correlated with changes of the
gravitational potential. We analyze data assuming effective scalar, vector and
tensor interactions, and we conclude that the Principle of Equivalence between
particles and antiparticles holds to a level of 6.5, 4.3 and 1.8 x 10^{-9},
respectively, for scalar, vector and tensor potentials originating from the Sun
with a range much greater than the distance Earth-Sun. We also study
energy-dependent effects that might arise from vector or tensor interactions.
Finally, we compile upper limits on the gravitational coupling difference
between K0 and K0bar as a function of the scalar, vector and tensor interaction
range.Comment: 15 pages latex 2e, five figures, one style file (cernart.csl)
incorporate
Test of CPT Symmetry and Quantum Mechanics with Experimental data from CPLEAR
We use fits to recent published CPLEAR data on neutral kaon decays to
and to constrain the CPT--violation parameters
appearing in a formulation of the neutral kaon system as an open
quantum-mechanical system. The obtained upper limits of the CPT--violation
parameters are approaching the range suggested by certain ideas concerning
quantum gravity.Comment: 9 pages of uuencoded postscript (includes 3 figures
Background Light in Potential Sites for the ANTARES Undersea Neutrino Telescope
The ANTARES collaboration has performed a series of {\em in situ}
measurements to study the background light for a planned undersea neutrino
telescope. Such background can be caused by K decays or by biological
activity. We report on measurements at two sites in the Mediterranean Sea at
depths of 2400~m and 2700~m, respectively. Three photomultiplier tubes were
used to measure single counting rates and coincidence rates for pairs of tubes
at various distances. The background rate is seen to consist of three
components: a constant rate due to K decays, a continuum rate that
varies on a time scale of several hours simultaneously over distances up to at
least 40~m, and random bursts a few seconds long that are only correlated in
time over distances of the order of a meter. A trigger requiring coincidences
between nearby photomultiplier tubes should reduce the trigger rate for a
neutrino telescope to a manageable level with only a small loss in efficiency.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astroparticle
Physic
Ultrahigh energy neutrinos in the Mediterranean: Detecting ντ and νμ with a km3 telescope
We perform a study of the ultra high energy neutrino detection performances of a km3 Neutrino Telescope sitting at the three proposed sites for ANTARES, NEMO and NESTOR in the Mediterranean sea. We focus on the effect of the underwater surface profile on the total amount of yearly expected tau and mu crossing the fiducial volume in the limit of full detection efficiency and energy resolution. We also emphasize the possible enhancement of matter effect by a suitable choice of the geometry of the Telescope
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Search for lepton-flavour-violating decays of Higgs-like bosons.
A search is presented for a Higgs-like boson with mass in the range 45 to 195 GeV/c2 decaying into a muon and a tau lepton. The dataset consists of proton-proton interactions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV , collected by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2 fb-1 . The tau leptons are reconstructed in both leptonic and hadronic decay channels. An upper limit on the production cross-section multiplied by the branching fraction at 95% confidence level is set and ranges from 22 pb for a boson mass of 45 GeV/c2 to 4 pb for a mass of 195 GeV/c2
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