82 research outputs found
A Comparative Study of the Depth of Maximum of Simulated Air Shower Longitudinal Profiles
A comparative study of simulated air shower longitudinal profiles is
presented. An appropriate thinning level for the calculations is first
determined empirically. High statistics results are then provided, over a wide
energy range, (10^14.0 to 10^20.5 eV), for proton & iron primaries, using four
combinations of the MOCCA & CORSIKA program frameworks, and the SIBYLL & QGSJET
high energy hadronic interaction models. These results are compared to existing
experimental data. The way in which the first interaction controls Xmax is
investigated, as is the distribution of Xmax.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by Astroparticle Physics. (Revised
according to referee's comments.
A Measurement of the Cosmic Ray Spectrum and Composition at the Knee
The energy spectrum and primary composition of cosmic rays with energy
between and 3\times10^{16}\unit{eV} have been studied using
the CASA-BLANCA detector. CASA measured the charged particle distribution of
air showers, while BLANCA measured the lateral distribution of Cherenkov light.
The data are interpreted using the predictions of the CORSIKA air shower
simulation coupled with four different hadronic interaction codes.
The differential flux of cosmic rays measured by BLANCA exhibits a knee in
the range of 2--3 PeV with a width of approximately 0.5 decades in primary
energy. The power law indices of the differential flux below and above the knee
are and .
We present our data both as a mean depth of shower maximum and as a mean
nuclear mass. A multi-component fit using four elemental species shows the same
composition trends given by the mean quantities, and also indicates that QGSJET
and VENUS are the preferred hadronic interaction models. We find that an
initially mixed composition turns lighter between 1 and 3 PeV, and then becomes
heavier with increasing energy above 3 PeV.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to Astroparticle Physic
The Composition of Cosmic Rays at the Knee
The observation of a small change in spectral slope, or 'knee' in the fluxes
of cosmic rays near energies 10^15 eV has caused much speculation since its
discovery over 40 years ago. The origin of this feature remains unknown. A
small workshop to review some modern experimental measurements of this region
was held at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, USA in June 2000. This paper
summarizes the results presented at this workshop and the discussion of their
interpretation in the context of hadronic models of atmospheric airshowers.Comment: 36 pages, 10 figure
Dark energy and dark matter from an inhomogeneous dilaton
A cosmological scenario is proposed where the dark matter (DM) and dark
energy (DE) of the universe are two simultaneous manifestations of an
inhomogenous dilaton. The equation of state of the field is scale-dependent and
pressureless at galactic and larger scales and it has negative pressure as a DE
at very large scales. The dilaton drives an inflationary phase followed by a
kinetic energy-dominated one, as in the "quintessential inflation" model
introduced by Peebles & Vilenkin, and soon after the end of inflation particle
production seeds the first inhomogeneities that lead to galaxy formation. The
dilaton is trapped near the minimum of the potential where it oscillates like a
massive field, and the excess of kinetic energy is dissipated via the mechanism
of "gravitational cooling" first introduced by Seidel & Suen. The
inhomogeneities therefore behave like solitonic oscillations around the minimum
of the potential, known as "oscillatons", that we propose account for most DM
in galaxies. Those regions where the dilaton does not transform enough kinetic
energy into reheating or carry an excess of it from regions that have cooled,
evolve to the tail of the potential as DE, driving the acceleration of the
universe.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, uses revtex, submitted PR
Cosmological parameters from CMB and other data: a Monte-Carlo approach
We present a fast Markov Chain Monte-Carlo exploration of cosmological
parameter space. We perform a joint analysis of results from recent CMB
experiments and provide parameter constraints, including sigma_8, from the CMB
independent of other data. We next combine data from the CMB, HST Key Project,
2dF galaxy redshift survey, supernovae Ia and big-bang nucleosynthesis. The
Monte Carlo method allows the rapid investigation of a large number of
parameters, and we present results from 6 and 9 parameter analyses of flat
models, and an 11 parameter analysis of non-flat models. Our results include
constraints on the neutrino mass (m_nu < 0.3eV), equation of state of the dark
energy, and the tensor amplitude, as well as demonstrating the effect of
additional parameters on the base parameter constraints. In a series of
appendices we describe the many uses of importance sampling, including
computing results from new data and accuracy correction of results generated
from an approximate method. We also discuss the different ways of converting
parameter samples to parameter constraints, the effect of the prior, assess the
goodness of fit and consistency, and describe the use of analytic
marginalization over normalization parameters.Comment: Quintessence results now include perturbations. Changes to match
version accepted by PRD. MCMC code and data are available at
http://cosmologist.info/cosmomc/ along with a B&W printer-friendly version of
the pape
Holographic Discreteness of Inflationary Perturbations
The holographic entropy bound is used to estimate the quantum-gravitational
discreteness of inflationary perturbations. In the context of scalar inflaton
perturbations produced during standard slow-roll inflation, but assuming that
horizon-scale perturbations ``freeze out'' in discrete steps separated by one
bit of total observable entropy, it is shown that the Hilbert space of a
typical horizon-scale inflaton perturbation is equivalent to that of about 10^5
binary spins-- approximately the inverse of the final scalar metric
perturbation amplitude, independent of other parameters. Holography thus
suggests that in a broad class of fundamental theories, inflationary
perturbations carry a limited amount of information (about 10^5 bits per mode)
and should therefore display discreteness not predicted by the standard field
theory. Some manifestations of this discreteness may be observable in cosmic
background anisotropy.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. D. New figures
and references adde
2022 Upgrade and Improved Low Frequency Camera Sensitivity for CMB Observation at the South Pole
Constraining the Galactic foregrounds with multi-frequency Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) observations is an essential step towards ultimately reaching
the sensitivity to measure primordial gravitational waves (PGWs), the sign of
inflation after the Big-Bang that would be imprinted on the CMB. The BICEP
Array telescope is a set of multi-frequency cameras designed to constrain the
energy scale of inflation through CMB B-mode searches while also controlling
the polarized galactic foregrounds. The lowest frequency BICEP Array receiver
(BA1) has been observing from the South Pole since 2020 and provides 30 GHz and
40 GHz data to characterize the Galactic synchrotron in our CMB maps. In this
paper, we present the design of the BA1 detectors and the full optical
characterization of the camera including the on-sky performance at the South
Pole. The paper also introduces the design challenges during the first
observing season including the effect of out-of-band photons on detectors
performance. It also describes the tests done to diagnose that effect and the
new upgrade to minimize these photons, as well as installing more dichroic
detectors during the 2022 deployment season to improve the BA1 sensitivity. We
finally report background noise measurements of the detectors with the goal of
having photon noise dominated detectors in both optical channels. BA1 achieves
an improvement in mapping speed compared to the previous deployment season.Comment: Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2022
(AS22
Detection of B-mode polarization at degree angular scales by BICEP2
We report results from the BICEP2 experiment, a cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeter specifically designed to search for the signal of inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode power spectrum around ââŒ80. The telescope comprised a 26 cm aperture all-cold refracting optical system equipped with a focal plane of 512 antenna coupled transition edge sensor 150 GHz bolometers each with temperature sensitivity of â300ââÎŒKCMBâs . BICEP2 observed from the South Pole for three seasons from 2010 to 2012. A low-foreground region of sky with an effective area of 380 square deg was observed to a depth of 87 nK deg in Stokes Q and U. In this paper we describe the observations, data reduction, maps, simulations, and results. We find an excess of B-mode power over the base lensed-ÎCDM expectation in the range 305Ï. Through jackknife tests and simulations based on detailed calibration measurements we show that systematic contamination is much smaller than the observed excess. Cross correlating against WMAP 23 GHz maps we find that Galactic synchrotron makes a negligible contribution to the observed signal. We also examine a number of available models of polarized dust emission and find that at their default parameter values they predict power âŒ(5â10)Ă smaller than the observed excess signal (with no significant cross-correlation with our maps). However, these models are not sufficiently constrained by external public data to exclude the possibility of dust emission bright enough to explain the entire excess signal. Cross correlating BICEP2 against 100 GHz maps from the BICEP1 experiment, the excess signal is confirmed with 3Ï significance and its spectral index is found to be consistent with that of the CMB, disfavoring dust at 1.7Ï. The observed B-mode power spectrum is well fit by a lensed-ÎCDM+tensor theoretical model with tensor-to-scalar ratio r=0.20
+0.07
â0.05, with r=0 disfavored at 7.0Ï. Accounting for the contribution of foreground, dust will shift this value downward by an amount which will be better constrained with upcoming data sets
Primordial Nucleosynthesis for the New Cosmology: Determining Uncertainties and Examining Concordance
Big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have
a long history together in the standard cosmology. The general concordance
between the predicted and observed light element abundances provides a direct
probe of the universal baryon density. Recent CMB anisotropy measurements,
particularly the observations performed by the WMAP satellite, examine this
concordance by independently measuring the cosmic baryon density. Key to this
test of concordance is a quantitative understanding of the uncertainties in the
BBN light element abundance predictions. These uncertainties are dominated by
systematic errors in nuclear cross sections. We critically analyze the cross
section data, producing representations that describe this data and its
uncertainties, taking into account the correlations among data, and explicitly
treating the systematic errors between data sets. Using these updated nuclear
inputs, we compute the new BBN abundance predictions, and quantitatively
examine their concordance with observations. Depending on what deuterium
observations are adopted, one gets the following constraints on the baryon
density: OmegaBh^2=0.0229\pm0.0013 or OmegaBh^2 = 0.0216^{+0.0020}_{-0.0021} at
68% confidence, fixing N_{\nu,eff}=3.0. Concerns over systematics in helium and
lithium observations limit the confidence constraints based on this data
provide. With new nuclear cross section data, light element abundance
observations and the ever increasing resolution of the CMB anisotropy, tighter
constraints can be placed on nuclear and particle astrophysics. ABRIDGEDComment: 54 pages, 20 figures, 5 tables v2: reflects PRD version minor changes
to text and reference
The SPTPoL extended cluster survey
We describe the observations and resultant galaxy cluster catalog from the 2770 deg2 SPTpol Extended Cluster Survey (SPT-ECS). Clusters are identified via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect and confirmed with a combination of archival and targeted follow-up data, making particular use of data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). With incomplete follow-up we have confirmed as clusters 244 of 266 candidates at a detection significance Ο â„ 5 and an additional 204 systems at 4 4 threshold, and 10% of their measured SZ flux. We associate SZ-selected clusters, from both SPT-ECS and the SPT-SZ survey, with clusters from the DES redMaPPer sample, and we find an offset distribution between the SZ center and central galaxy in general agreement with previous work, though with a larger fraction of clusters with significant offsets. Adopting a fixed Planck-like cosmology, we measure the optical richness-SZ mass (l - M) relation and find it to be 28% shallower than that from a weak-lensing analysis of the DES data-a difference significant at the 4Ï level-with the relations intersecting at λ = 60. The SPT-ECS cluster sample will be particularly useful for studying the evolution of massive clusters and, in combination with DES lensing observations and the SPT-SZ cluster sample, will be an important component of future cosmological analyses
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