Measurement of the isospin-filtering dd -> 4He K+ K- reaction at Q=39 MeV

The total cross section for the dd -> 4He K+ K- reaction has been measured at a beam momentum of 3.7 GeV/c, corresponding to an excess energy of 39 MeV, which is the maximum possible at the Cooler Synchrotron COSY-J\"{u}lich. A deuterium cluster-jet target and the ANKE forward magnetic spectrometer, placed inside the storage ring, have been employed in this investigation. We find a total cross section of sigma(tot) < 14 pb, which brings into question the viability of investigating the dd -> 4He a0(980) reaction as a means of studying isospin violation.Comment: Five pages with three eps figure

The Straw Tube Trackers of the PANDA Experiment

The PANDA experiment will be built at the FAIR facility at Darmstadt (Germany) to perform accurate tests of the strong interaction through bar pp and bar pA annihilation's studies. To track charged particles, two systems consisting of a set of planar, closed-packed, self-supporting straw tube layers are under construction. The PANDA straw tubes will have also unique characteristics in term of material budget and performance. They consist of very thin mylar-aluminized cathodes which are made self-supporting by means of the operation gas-mixture over-pressure. This solution allows to reduce at maximum the weight of the mechanical support frame and hence the detector material budget. The PANDA straw tube central tracker will not only reconstruct charged particle trajectories, but also will help in low momentum (< 1 GeV) particle identification via dE/dx measurements. This is a quite new approach that PANDA tracking group has first tested with detailed Monte Carlo simulations, and then with experimental tests of detector prototypes. This paper addresses the design issues of the PANDA straw tube trackers and the performance obtained in prototype tests.Comment: 7 pages,16 figure

Comparison of nonequilibrium processes in p+Ni and p+Au collisions at GeV energies

The energy and angular dependence of double differential cross sections d2sigma/dOmega dE were measured for p, d, t, 3,4,6He, 6,7,8Li, 7,9,10Be, 10,11B, and C produced in collisions of 1.2, 1.9, and 2.5 GeV protons with a Ni target. The shape of the spectra and angular distributions does almost not change whereas the absolute value of the cross sections increases by a factor about 1.7 for all ejectiles in this beam energy range. It was found that energy and angular dependencies of the cross sections cannot be reproduced by the microscopic model of intranuclear cascade with coalescence of nucleons and the statistical model for evaporation of particles from excited, equilibrated residual nuclei. The inclusion of nonequilibrium processes, described by a phenomenological model of the emission from fast and hot moving sources, resulting from break-up of the target nucleus by impinging proton, leads to very good reproduction of data. Cross sections of these processes are quite large, exhausting approximately half of the total production cross sections. Due to good reproduction of energy and angular dependencies of d2sigma/dOmega dE by model calculation it was possible to determine total production cross sections for all studied ejectiles. Results obtained in this work point to the analogous reaction mechanism for proton induced reactions on Ni target as that observed previously for Au target in the same beam energy range.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures

Dispersion management in nonlinear photonic crystal fibres with nanostructured core

The subwavelength structure of the core of a photonic crystal fibre can modify its dispersion characteristic and significantly shift the zero dispersion wavelength. The dispersion properties of photonic crystal fibres with core structures made of a 2D lattice of subwavelength air holes and various glass inclusions are studied. We show that a modification of the core structure can give flat dispersion over a range of over 300 nm and can shift the zero dispersion wavelength over 700 nm while the core diameter and photonic cladding remain unchanged. The developed photonic crystal fibre with nanorod core has successfully demonstrated supercontinuum generation in NIR

Variation of nonequilibrium processes in p+Ni system with beam energy

The energy and angular dependence of double differential cross sections dsigma/dOmega dE were measured for p, d, t, 3,4He, 6,7Li, 7,9Be, and 10,11B produced in collisions of 0.175 GeV protons with Ni target. The analysis of measured dfferential cross sections allowed to extract total production cross sections for ejectiles listed above. The shape of the spectra and angular distributions indicate the presence of other nonequilibrium processes besides the emission of nucleons from the intranuclear cascade, and besides the evaporation of various particles from remnants of intranuclear cascade. These nonequilibrium processes consist of coalescence of nucleons into light charged particles during the intranuclear cascade, of the fireball emission which contributes to the cross sections of protons and deuterons, and of the break-up of the target nucleus which leads to the emission of intermediate mass fragments. All such processes were found earlier at beam energies 1.2, 1.9, and 2.5 GeV for Ni as well as for Au targets, however, significant differences in properties of these processes at high and low beam energy are observed in the present study.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Search for eta-mesic 4He in the dd->3He n pi0 and dd->3He p pi- reactions with the WASA-at-COSY facility

The search for 4He-eta bound states was performed with the WASA-at-COSY facility via the measurement of the excitation function for the dd->3He n pi0 and dd->3He p pi- processes. The beam momentum was varied continuously between 2.127 GeV/c and 2.422 GeV/c, corresponding to the excess energy for the dd->4He eta reaction ranging from Q=-70 MeV to Q=30 MeV. The luminosity was determined based on the dd->3He n reaction and quasi-free proton-proton scattering via dd->pp n_spectator n_spectator reactions. The excitation functions determined independently for the measured reactions do not reveal a structure which could be interpreted as a narrow mesic nucleus. Therefore, the upper limits of the total cross sections for the bound state production and decay in dd->(4He-eta)_bound->3He n pi0 and dd->(4He-eta)_bound->3He p pi- processes were determined taking into account the isospin relation between both the channels considered. The results of the analysis depend on the assumptions of the N* momentum distribution in the anticipated mesic-4He. Assuming as in the previous works, that this is identical with the distribution of nucleons bound with 20 MeV in 4He, we determined that (for the mesic bound state width in the range from 5 MeV to 50 MeV) the upper limits at 90% confidence level are about 3 nb and about 6 nb for npi0 and ppi- channels, respectively. However, based on the recent theoretical findings of the N*(1535) momentum distribution in the N*-3He nucleus bound by 3.6 MeV, we find that the WASA-at-COSY detector acceptance decreases and hence the corresponding upper limits are 5 nb and 10 nb for npi0 and ppi- channels respectively.Comment: This article will be submitted to JHE

Charge Symmetry Breaking in dd->4He{\pi}0 with WASA-at-COSY

Charge symmetry breaking (CSB) observables are a suitable experimental tool to examine effects induced by quark masses on the nuclear level. Previous high precision data from TRIUMF and IUCF are currently used to develop a consistent description of CSB within the framework of chiral perturbation theory. In this work the experimental studies on the reaction dd->4He{\pi}0 have been extended towards higher excess energies in order to provide information on the contribution of p-waves in the final state. For this, an exclusive measurement has been carried out at a beam momentum of p=1.2 GeV/c using the WASA-at-COSY facility. The total cross section amounts to sigma(tot) = (118 +- 18(stat) +- 13(sys) +- 8(ext)) pb and first data on the differential cross section are consistent with s-wave pion production.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure