Neutron and muon-induced background studies for the AMoRE double-beta decay experiment

AMoRE (Advanced Mo-based Rare process Experiment) is an experiment to search a neutrinoless double-beta decay of $^{100}$Mo in molybdate crystals. The neutron and muon-induced backgrounds are crucial to obtain the zero-background level (<$10^{-5}$ counts/(keV$\cdot$kg$\cdot$yr)) for the AMoRE-II experiment, which is the second phase of the AMoRE project, planned to run at YEMI underground laboratory. To evaluate the effects of neutron and muon-induced backgrounds, we performed Geant4 Monte Carlo simulations and studied a shielding strategy for the AMORE-II experiment. Neutron-induced backgrounds were also included in the study. In this paper, we estimated the background level in the presence of possible shielding structures, which meet the background requirement for the AMoRE-II experiment

Taste symmetry breaking with HYP-smeared staggered fermions

We study the impact of hypercubic (HYP) smearing on the size of taste breaking for staggered fermions, comparing to unimproved and to asqtad-improved staggered fermions. As in previous studies, we find a substantial reduction in taste-breaking compared to unimproved staggered fermions (by a factor of 4-7 on lattices with spacing $a\approx 0.1$fm). In addition, we observe that discretization effects of next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion (${\cal O}(a^2 p^2)$) are markedly reduced by HYP smearing. Compared to asqtad valence fermions, we find that taste-breaking in the pion spectrum is reduced by a factor of 2.5-3, down to a level comparable to the expected size of generic ${\cal O}(a^2)$ effects. Our results suggest that, once one reaches a lattice spacing of $a\approx 0.09$fm, taste-breaking will be small enough after HYP smearing that one can use a modified power counting in which ${\cal O}(a^2) \ll {\cal O}(p^2)$, simplify fitting to phenomenologically interesting quantities.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, references updated, minor change

Average values of L-series for real characters in function fields

ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record.We establish asymptotic formulae for the first and second moments of quadratic Dirichlet L–functions, at the centre of the critical strip, associated to the real quadratic function field k( √ P) and inert imaginary quadratic function field k( √ γP) with P being a monic irreducible polynomial over a fixed finite field Fq of odd cardinality q and γ a generator of F × q . We also study mean values for the class number and for the cardinality of the second K-group of maximal order of the associated fields for ramified imaginary, real, and inert imaginary quadratic function fields over Fq. One of the main novelties of this paper is that we compute the second moment of quadratic Dirichlet L-functions associated to monic irreducible polynomials. It is worth noting that the similar second moment over number fields is unknown. The second innovation of this paper comes from the fact that, if the cardinality of the ground field is even then the task of average L-functions in function fields is much harder and, in this paper, we are able to handle this strenuous case and establish several mean values results of L-functions over function fields.The first author was supported by an EPSRC-IHES William Hodge ´ Fellowship and by the EPSRC grant EP/K021132X/1. The second and third authors were supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIP)(No. 2014001824)

Subthreshold characteristics of pentacene field-effect transistors influenced by grain boundaries.

Grain boundaries in polycrystalline pentacene films significantly affect the electrical characteristics of pentacene field-effect transistors (FETs). Upon reversal of the gate voltage sweep direction, pentacene FETs exhibited hysteretic behaviours in the subthreshold region, which was more pronounced for the FET having smaller pentacene grains. No shift in the flat-band voltage of the metal-insulator-semiconductor capacitor elucidates that the observed hysteresis was mainly caused by the influence of localized trap states existing at pentacene grain boundaries. From the results of continuous on/off switching operation of the pentacene FETs, hole depletion during the off period is found to be limited by pentacene grain boundaries. It is suggested that the polycrystalline nature of a pentacene film plays an important role on the dynamic characteristics of pentacene FETs

Efficient range alignment algorithm for real-time range-Doppler algorithm

When deriving a range-Doppler image or a time-frequency image of a fast-maneuvering target at long range, existing range alignment methods yield poor results due to the large numbers of range profiles (RPs) and range bins that are required for this task. This paper proposes a three-step range alignment method to overcome the problems of these existing methods and to yield focused images: (1) coarse alignment using the interpolated center of mass of each RP, (2) fine alignment with an integer step using an entropy cost function, and (3) fine-tuning using particle swarm optimization. Compared to existing methods, the proposed method is computationally more efficient and provides better image focus. © 2017, Electromagnetics Academy. All rights reserved.11Yscopu

Definition of valid proteomic biomarkers: a bayesian solution

Clinical proteomics is suffering from high hopes generated by reports on apparent biomarkers, most of which could not be later substantiated via validation. This has brought into focus the need for improved methods of finding a panel of clearly defined biomarkers. To examine this problem, urinary proteome data was collected from healthy adult males and females, and analysed to find biomarkers that differentiated between genders. We believe that models that incorporate sparsity in terms of variables are desirable for biomarker selection, as proteomics data typically contains a huge number of variables (peptides) and few samples making the selection process potentially unstable. This suggests the application of a two-level hierarchical Bayesian probit regression model for variable selection which assumes a prior that favours sparseness. The classification performance of this method is shown to improve that of the Probabilistic K-Nearest Neighbour model

Radion Dynamics and Phenomenology in the Linear Dilaton Model

We investigate the properties of the radion in the 5D linear dilaton model arising from Little String Theory. A Goldberger-Wise type mechanism is used to stabilise a large interbrane distance, with the dilaton now playing the role of the stabilising field. We consider the coupled fluctuations of the metric and dilaton fields and identify the physical scalar modes of the system. The wavefunctions and masses of the radion and Kaluza-Klein modes are calculated, giving a radion mass of order the curvature scale. As a result of the direct coupling between the dilaton and Standard Model fields, the radion couples to the SM Lagrangian, in addition to the trace of the energy-momentum tensor. The effect of these additional interaction terms on the radion decay modes is investigated, with a notable increase in the branching fraction to photons. We also consider the effects of a non-minimal Higgs coupling to gravity, which introduces a mixing between the Higgs and radion modes. Finally, we calculate the production cross section of the radion at the LHC and use the current Higgs searches to place constraints on the parameter space.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures; v2: error in radion-gauge boson Feynman rules corrected, version published in JHE