599 research outputs found
Measuring the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux with down-going muons in neutrino telescopes
In the TeV energy region and above, the uncertainty in the level of prompt
atmospheric neutrinos would limit the search for diffuse astrophysical
neutrinos. We suggest that neutrino telescopes may provide an empirical
determination of the flux of prompt atmospheric electron and muon neutrinos by
measuring the flux of prompt down-going muons. Our suggestion is based on the
consideration that prompt neutrino and prompt muon fluxes at sea level are
almost identical.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Scuola, Università e Mercato del lavoro dopo la Riforma Biagi. Le politiche per la transizione dai percorsi educativi e formativi al mercato del lavoro
Quale ruolo per i percorsi di educazione e formazione nella riforma del mercato del lavoro? Se ne è parlato poco, in questi ultimi tempi. Eppure, nell’impianto della legge Biagi, proprio il sistema di istruzione e quello della formazione professionale rappresentano, assieme al nuovo contratto di apprendistato, il principale canale di sviluppo e valorizzazione delle risorse umane. Un canale attraverso cui avvicinare, grazie a investimenti in ricerca, innovazione e capitale umano, le performances del nostro sistema economico-produttivo a quelle degli altri Paesi europei. E non poteva essere diversamente, in una Europa che, da Lisbona in poi, dichiara enfaticamente di voler diventare l’economia basata sulla conoscenza più competitiva e dinamica del mondo. Il ritardo dell’Italia rispetto agli altri Stati europei è, da questo punto di vista, ancora impressionante. È sufficiente ricordare, al riguardo, come i tradizionali percorsi didattici e formativi abbiano sin qui determinato alti tassi di dispersione e, quel che più è grave, un ingresso tardivo nel mercato del lavoro. Le rilevazioni statistiche parlano di 28 anni, quando la media europea è attestata intorno ai 22-23 anni. È da tempo che se ne discute, senza tuttavia approdare a esiti concreti: gli istituti scolastici e le università italiane devono accelerare i processi volti a rafforzare la coerenza tra formazione erogata e fabbisogni del mercato del lavoro. La riforma universitaria che prevede la laurea triennale è entrata in vigore con l’anno accademico 2001/2002, i primi laureati tuttavia in minima parte si sono avvicinati al mondo del lavoro ma hanno proseguito il corso di studi verso la laurea specialistica e quindi se questa tendenza verrà confermata, difficilmente nel nostro Paese ci avvicineremo alla media europea e continueremo ad avere laureati in cerca di prima occupazione ad un’età troppo elevata per rispondere ai bisogni del mercato del lavoro
Saturation Physics in Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays: Heavy Quark Production
In this work we estimate the heavy quark production in the interaction of
ultra high energy cosmic rays in the atmosphere, considering that the primary
cosmic ray is a proton or a photon. At these energies the saturation momentum
Q_{sat}^2 stays above the hard scale \mu_c^2=4m_c^2, implying charm production
probing the saturation regime. In particular, we show that the ep HERA data
presents a scaling on \tau_c = (Q^2+\mu_c^2)/Q_{sat}^2. We derive our results
considering the dipole picture and the Color Glass Condensate formalism, which
one shows to be able to describe the heavy quark production in photon-proton
and proton-proton collisions. Nuclear effects are considered in computation of
cross sections for scattering on air nuclei. Implications on the flux of prompt
leptons at the earth are analyzed and a large suppression is predicted.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables. Version to be published in JHE
Anomaly mediated SUSY breaking scenarios in the light of cosmology and in the dark (matter)
Anomaly mediation is a popular and well motivated supersymmetry breaking
scenario. Different possible detailed realisations of this set-up are studied
and actively searched for at colliders. Apart from limits coming from flavour,
low energy physics and direct collider searches, these models are usually
constrained by the requirement of reproducing the observations on dark matter
density in the universe. We reanalyse these bounds and in particular we focus
on the dark matter bounds both considering the standard cosmological model and
alternative cosmological scenarios. These scenarios do not change the
observable cosmology but relic dark matter density bounds strongly depend on
them. We consider few benchmark points excluded by standard cosmology dark
matter bounds and suggest that loosening the dark matter constraints is
necessary in order to avoid a too strong (cosmological) model dependence in the
limits that are obtained for these models. We also discuss briefly the
implications for phenomenology and in particular at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 37 pages, 20 figures, 1 tabl
Prompt atmospheric neutrinos and muons: dependence on the gluon distribution function
We compute the next-to-leading order QCD predictions for the vertical flux of
atmospheric muons and neutrinos from decays of charmed particles, for different
PDF's (MRS-R1, MRS-R2, CTEQ-4M and MRST) and different extrapolations of these
at small partonic momentum fraction x. We find that the predicted fluxes vary
up to almost two orders of magnitude at the largest energies studied, depending
on the chosen extrapolation of the PDF's. We show that the spectral index of
the atmospheric leptonic fluxes depends linearly on the slope of the gluon
distribution function at very small x. This suggests the possibility of
obtaining some bounds on this slope in ``neutrino telescopes'', at values of x
not reachable at colliders, provided the spectral index of atmospheric leptonic
fluxes could be determined.Comment: 20 pages including 8 figure
Comment on ``Majoron emitting neutrinoless double beta decay in the electroweak chiral gauge extensions''
We point out that if the majoron-like scheme is implemented within a 331
model, there must exist at least three different mass scales for the scalar
vacuum expectation values in the model.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, Revtex. To be published in Physical Review
Prospect for relic neutrino searches
Unlike the relic photons, relic neutrinos have not so far been observed. The
Cosmic Neutrino Background (CB) is the oldest relic from the Big Bang,
produced a few seconds after the Bang itself. Due to their impact in cosmology,
relic neutrinos may be revealed indireclty in the near future through
cosmological observations. In this talk we concentrate on other proposals, made
in the last 30 years, to try to detect the CB directly, either in
laboratory searches (through tiny accelerations they produce on macroscopic
targets) or through astrophysical observations (looking for absorption dips in
the flux of Ultra-High Energy neutrinos, due to the annihilation of these
neutrinos with relic neutrinos at the Z-resonance). We concentrate mainly on
the first of these two possibilities.Comment: Talk given at the Nobel Symposium on Neutrino Physics, Enkoping,
Sweden, Augus 19-24, 2004; 16 page
Particle-Antiparticle Asymmetry Due to Non-Renormalizable Effective Interactions
We consider a model for generating a particle-antiparticle asymmetry through
out-of-equilibrium decays of a massive particle due to non-renormalizable,
effective interactions.Comment: preliminary version, 38 pages; LaTeX source, epsf.sty and EPS files
included in tar archiv
Measurement of the gluon PDF at small x with neutrino telescopes
We analyze the possibility that neutrino telescopes may provide an
experimental determination of the slope lambda of the gluon distribution in the
proton at momentum fractions x smaller than the accelerator reach. The method
is based on a linear relation between lambda and the spectral index (slope) of
the down-going atmospheric muon flux above 100 TeV, for which there is no
background. Considering the uncertainties in the charm production cross section
and in the cosmic ray composition, we estimate the error on the measurement of
lambda through this method, excluding the experimental error of the telescopes,
to be ~ +/- 0.2Comment: 16 pages with 16 figures - new version, comments added, same results
and figure
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