Charged Current Neutrino Cross Section and Tau Energy Loss at Ultra-High Energies

We evaluate both the tau lepton energy loss produced by photonuclear interactions and the neutrino charged current cross section at ultra-high energies, relevant to neutrino bounds with Earth-skimming tau neutrinos, using different theoretical and phenomenological models for nucleon and nucleus structure functions. The theoretical uncertainty is estimated by taking different extrapolations of the structure function F2 to very low values of x, in the low and moderate Q2 range for the tau lepton interaction and at high Q2 for the neutrino-nucleus inelastic cross section. It is at these extremely low values of x where nuclear shadowing and parton saturation effects are unknown and could be stronger than usually considered. For tau and neutrino energies E=10^9 GeV we find uncertainties of a factor 4 for the tau energy loss and of a factor 2 for the charged current neutrino-nucleus cross section.Comment: 20 pages and 11 figure

Signatures of unstable semiclassical trajectories in tunneling

It was found recently that processes of multidimensional tunneling are generally described at high energies by unstable semiclassical trajectories. We study two observational signatures related to the instability of trajectories. First, we find an additional power-law dependence of the tunneling probability on the semiclassical parameter as compared to the standard case of potential tunneling. The second signature is substantial widening of the probability distribution over final-state quantum numbers. These effects are studied using modified semiclassical technique which incorporates stabilization of the tunneling trajectories. The technique is derived from first principles. We obtain expressions for the inclusive and exclusive tunneling probabilities in the case of unstable semiclassical trajectories. We also investigate the "phase transition" between the cases of stable and unstable trajectories across certain "critical" value of energy. Finally, we derive the relation between the semiclassical probabilities of tunneling from the low-lying and highly excited initial states. This puts on firm ground a conjecture made previously in the semiclassical description of collision-induced tunneling in field theory.Comment: Journal version; 48 pages, 16 figure

Measurements of the Casimir-Lifshitz force in fluids: the effect of electrostatic forces and Debye screening

In this work, we present detailed measurements of the Casimir-Lifshitz force between two gold surfaces (a sphere and a plate) immersed in ethanol and study the effect of residual electrostatic forces, which are dominated by static fields within the apparatus and can be reduced with proper shielding. Electrostatic forces are further reduced by Debye screening through the addition of salt ions to the liquid. Additionally, the salt leads to a reduction of the Casimir-Lifshitz force by screening the zero-frequency contribution to the force; however, the effect is small between gold surfaces at the measured separations and within experimental error. An improved calibration procedure is described and compared to previous methods. Finally, the experimental results are compared to Lifshitz's theory and found to be consistent for the materials used in the experiment.Comment: 11 figures. PRA in pres

Real-Time Instantons and Suppression of Collision-Induced Tunneling

We consider tunneling processes in QFT induced by collisions of elementary particles. We propose a semiclassical method for estimating the probability of these processes in the limit of very high collision energy. As an illustration, we evaluate the maximum probability of induced tunneling between different vacua in a (1+1)-dimensional scalar model with boundary interaction.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, JETP Letters styl

Use of singular classical solutions for calculation of multiparticle cross sections in field theory

A method of reducing the problem of the calculation of tree multiparticle cross sections in $\phi^4$ theory to the solution of a singular classical Euclidean boundary value problem is introduced. The solutions are obtained numerically in terms of the decomposition in spherical harmonics, and the corresponding estimates of the tree cross sections at arbitrary energies are found. Numerical analysis agrees with analytical results obtained earlier in the limiting cases of large and small energies.Comment: LaTeX, 18 pages, 3 postscript figure

Air ions induced aerosol sensing by eye-safe LIDAR

Low concentrations aerosols quantification is rather challenging for LIDAR instruments due to eye-safety restrictions so high energy pulses cannot be utilized to improve the sensitivity. Highly sensitive but eye-save LIDAR has been developed for the quantification of the water droplet aerosol which was induced by air ions. Few days sensing of aerosols in closed tunnel revealed a strong correlation between air optical transparency (LIDAR measurements) and concentrations of positive/negative ions (ion counter Sapphir 3-M). The correlation coefficient was observed to be almost unity for the air transparency signal and air ions unipolarity coefficient. High sensitivity of the water droplet aerosol quantification makes the developed eye-safe LIDAR a perspective instrument for space resolved measurements of the air ions distribution. Space and time resolved measurements of air ions exhalation can be a new instrument for tectonic activity study including new earthquake forecasting indicators search

Predicting Neutron Production from Cosmic-ray Muons

Fast neutrons from cosmic-ray muons are an important background to underground low energy experiments. The estimate of such background is often hampered by the difficulty of measuring and calculating neutron production with sufficient accuracy. Indeed substantial disagreement exists between the different analytical calculations performed so far, while data reported by different experiments is not always consistent. We discuss a new unified approach to estimate the neutron yield, the energy spectrum, the multiplicity and the angular distribution from cosmic muons using the Monte Carlo simulation package FLUKA and show that it gives a good description of most of the existing measurements once the appropriate corrections have been applied.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure