Geoneutrinos in Borexino

This paper describes the Borexino detector and the high-radiopurity studies and tests that are integral part of the Borexino technology and development. The application of Borexino to the detection and studies of geoneutrinos is discussed.Comment: Conference: Neutrino Geophysics Honolulu, Hawaii December 14-16, 200

The Effects of Dissolved Methane upon Liquid Argon Scintillation Light

In this paper we report on measurements of the effects of dissolved methane upon argon scintillation light. We monitor the light yield from an alpha source held 20 cm from a cryogenic photomultiplier tube (PMT) assembly as methane is injected into a high-purity liquid argon volume. We observe significant suppression of the scintillation light yield by dissolved methane at the 10 part per billion (ppb) level. By examining the late scintillation light time constant, we determine that this loss is caused by an absorption process and also see some evidence of methane-induced scintillation quenching at higher concentrations (50-100 ppb). Using a second PMT assembly we look for visible re-emission features from the dissolved methane which have been reported in gas-phase argon methane mixtures, and we find no evidence of visible re-emission from liquid-phase argon methane mixtures at concentrations between 10 ppb and 0.1%.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures Updated to match published versio

Tunable gigahertz dynamics of low-temperature skyrmion lattice in a chiral magnet

Recently, it has been shown that the chiral magnetic insulator Cu2OSeO3hosts skyrmions in two separated pockets in temperature and magnetic field phase space. It has also been shown that the predominant stabilization mechanism for the low-temperature skyrmion (LTS) phase is via the crystalline anisotropy, opposed to temperature fluctuations that stabilize the well-established high-temperature skyrmion (HTS) phase. Here, we report on a detailed study of LTS generation by field cycling, probed by GHz spin dynamics in Cu2OSeO3. LTSs are populated via a field cycling protocol with the static magnetic field applied parallel to the ⟨100⟩ crystalline direction of plate and cuboid-shaped bulk crystals. By analyzing temperature-dependent broadband spectroscopy data, clear evidence of LTS excitations with clockwise (CW), counterclockwise (CCW), and breathing mode (BR) character at temperatures belowT= 40 K are shown. We find that the mode intensities can be tuned with the number of field-cycles below the saturation field. By tracking the resonance frequencies, we are able to map out the field-cycle-generated LTS phase diagram, from which we conclude that the LTS phase is distinctly separated from the high-temperature counterpart. We also study the mode hybridization between the dark CW and the BR modes as a function of temperature. By using two Cu2OSeO3crystals with different shapes and therefore different demagnetization factors, together with numerical calculations, we unambiguously show that the magnetocrystalline anisotropy plays a central role for the mode hybridization

Subsurface cosmogenic and radiogenic production of ^{42}Ar

Radioactive decays from ^{42}Ar and its progeny ^{42}K are potential background sources in large-scale liquid-argon-based neutrino and dark matter experiments. In the atmosphere, ^{42}Ar is produced primarily by cosmogenic activation on ^{40}Ar. The use of low radioactivity argon from cosmogenically shielded underground sources can expand the reach and sensitivity of liquid-argon-based rare event searches. We estimate ^{42}Ar production underground by nuclear reactions induced by natural radioactivity and cosmic-ray muon-induced interactions. At 3,000 mwe, ^{42}Ar production rate is 1.8E-3 atoms per ton of crust per year, 7 orders of magnitude smaller than the ^{39}Ar production rate at a similar depth in the crust. By comparing the calculated production rate of ^{42}Ar to that of ^{39}Ar for which the concentration has been measured in an underground gas sample, we estimate the activity of ^{42}Ar in gas extracted from 3,000 mwe depth to be less than 2 decays per ton of argon per year.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

Anisotropy effects on the magnetic excitations of a ferromagnetic monolayer below and above the Curie temperature

The field-driven reorientation transition of an anisotropic ferromagnetic monolayer is studied within the context of a finite-temperature Green's function theory. The equilibrium state and the field dependence of the magnon energy gap $E_0$ are calculated for static magnetic field $H$ applied in plane along an easy or a hard axis. In the latter case, the in-plane reorientation of the magnetization is shown to be continuous at T=0, in agreement with free spin wave theory, and discontinuous at finite temperature $T>0$, in contrast with the prediction of mean field theory. The discontinuity in the orientation angle creates a jump in the magnon energy gap, and it is the reason why, for $T>0$, the energy does not go to zero at the reorientation field. Above the Curie temperature $T_C$, the magnon energy gap $E_0(H)$ vanishes for H=0 both in the easy and in the hard case. As $H$ is increased, the gap is found to increase almost linearly with $H$, but with different slopes depending on the field orientation. In particular, the slope is smaller when $H$ is along the hard axis. Such a magnetic anisotropy of the spin-wave energies is shown to persist well above $T_C$ ($T \approx 1.2 T_C$).Comment: Final version accepted for publication in Physical Review B (with three figures

Reasoning algebraically about refinement on TSO architectures

The Total Store Order memory model is widely implemented by modern multicore architectures such as x86, where local buffers are used for optimisation, allowing limited forms of instruction reordering. The presence of buffers and hardware-controlled buffer flushes increases the level of non-determinism from the level specified by a program, complicating the already difficult task of concurrent programming. This paper presents a new notion of refinement for weak memory models, based on the observation that pending writes to a process' local variables may be treated as if the effect of the update has already occurred in shared memory. We develop an interval-based model with algebraic rules for various programming constructs. In this framework, several decomposition rules for our new notion of refinement are developed. We apply our approach to verify the spinlock algorithm from the literature

Structural and magnetic dynamics of a laser induced phase transition in FeRh

We use time-resolved x-ray diffraction and magnetic optical Kerr effect to study the laser induced antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic phase transition in FeRh. The structural response is given by the nucleation of independent ferromagnetic domains (\tau_1 ~ 30ps). This is significantly faster than the magnetic response (\tau_2 ~ 60ps) given by the subsequent domain realignment. X-ray diffraction shows that the two phases co-exist on short time-scales and that the phase transition is limited by the speed of sound. A nucleation model describing both the structural and magnetic dynamics is presented.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures - changed to reflect version accepted for PR

Is soft physics entropy driven?

The soft physics, pT < 2 GeV/c, observables at both RHIC and the SPS have now been mapped out in quite specific detail. From these results there is mounting evidence that this regime is primarily driven by the multiplicity per unit rapidity, dNch/deta. This suggests that the entropy of the system alone is the underlying driving force for many of the global observables measured in heavy-ion collisions. That this is the case and there is an apparent independence on collision energy is surprising. I present the evidence for this multiplicity scaling and use it to make some extremely naive predictions for the soft sector results at the LHC.Comment: Proceedings of Hot Quarks 2006. 8 figures, 6 page