3,371 research outputs found
Antiproton annihilation on light nuclei at very low energies
The recent experimental data obtained by the OBELIX group on D and
He total annihilation cross sections are analyzed. The combined
analysis of these data with existing antiprotonic atom data allows, for the
first time, the imaginary parts of the S-wave scattering lengths for the two
nuclei to be extracted. The obtained values are: for D and for He. This
analysis indicates an unexpected behaviour of the imaginary part of the
-nucleus S-wave scattering length as a function of the atomic weight
A: (p) > (D) > (He).Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure
A new Monte Carlo muon generator for cosmic-ray muon applications
Cosmic rays, thanks to their ubiquity and high penetration capability, have been successfully used in scientific research ever since their discovery. As soon as their knowledge improved, applications in the civil/environmental field were also developed: muon radiography (or muography, based on the flux attenuation) and muon tomography (based on the scattering angle) have been used to study the inner structure of volcanoes, to seek hidden rooms in Egyptian pyramids, to search for heavy metals in containers, and so on. And besides these imaging techniques, cosmic ray muons are also widely used for detector testing and alignment practically in every Nuclear Physics or Particle Physics experiment. Since most of these applications are sensitive to the angular and momentum distribution of cosmic muons, an accurate modelling of these distributions is a key feature for any generation tool conceived to simulate the cosmic muon flux. This can make the generator quite time-consuming, which is a strong limit when one needs to reach high statistics or to study large structures. A new Monte Carlo generator for cosmic-ray muons, named Efficient COsmic MUon Generator (EcoMug for short), especially designed to be fast (≳ 10^5 muons generated per second on a standard machine) without losing accuracy, is presented here. It is written as a header-only C++11 library, ready to be integrated into whatever C++ code, in particular C++ code based on Geant4 simulation tool. By default, EcoMug relies on a simple and effective parametrisation of the experimental data of cosmic ray differential flux at sea level, taken from the literature, but the library is written in such a way that every user can easily replace it with his own user-defined parametrisation. Unlike other tools, EcoMug is able to generate muons from different kind of surfaces (plane, cylinder and half-sphere), while keeping the correct angular and momentum distribution of generated tracks inside a fiducial volume. This allows to optimise the generation surface according to the system under study, and leads to a further improvement of the overall simulation efficiency. In this contribution we will present the main features of EcoMug, starting from its mathematical foundation, and eventually showing some interesting applications
Limits on the low energy antinucleon-nucleus annihilations from the Heisenberg principle
We show that the quantum uncertainty principle puts some limits on the
effectiveness of the antinucleon-nucleus annihilation at very low energies.
This is caused by the fact that the realization a very effective short-distance
reaction process implies information on the relative distance of the reacting
particles. Some quantitative predictions are possible on this ground, including
the approximate A-independence of antinucleon-nucleus annihilation rates.Comment: 10 pages, no figure
Breakdown rates and macroinvertebrate colonisation of alder (Alnus glutinosa) leaves in an acid lake (Lake Orta, N Italy), before, during and after a liming intervention
To test the effectiveness of the liming intervention on Lake Orta, the speed of leaves decay and of colonisation processes by macrobenthonic fauna were studied on alder leaves (Alnus glutinosa) placed on the bottom of the lake and recovered after appropriate time intervals. Experiments were performed at two sites (North and South) and two depths (-3 and –18 m), during three successive winters: 1988-1989 (pre-liming), 1989-1990 (liming), 1990-1991 (post-liming). Two main results emerged: 1) alder leaves, which are known to have a medium to high decaying speed in a number of aquatic environments, behave in Lake Orta as a low speed species. Decaying processes in the three years are significantly different only in station N3, where the mean breakdown rate in 1988- 1989 is more than twice that measured in the two subsequent winters. 2) The species richness of colonising benthic fauna is low: the community is made up almost exclusively of Chironomidae, which form 70 to 100% of the whole population; among them, the genus Phenopsectra is always present, while Tanytarsus was collected only during the first year and in the less deep sampling sites. The mean population abundances were higher before liming
Coulomb corrections to low energy antiproton annihilation cross sections on protons and nuclei
We calculate, in a systematic way, the enhancement effect on
antiproton-proton and antiproton-nucleus annihilation cross sections at low
energy due to the initial state electrostatic interaction between the
projectile and the target nucleus. This calculation is aimed at future
comparisons between antineutron and antiproton annihilation rates on different
targets, for the extraction of pure isospin channels.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures (latex format
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