395 research outputs found
New measurement of the scattering cross section of slow neutrons on liquid parahydrogen from neutron transmission
Liquid hydrogen is a dense Bose fluid whose equilibrium properties are both
calculable from first principles using various theoretical approaches and of
interest for the understanding of a wide range of questions in many body
physics. Unfortunately, the pair correlation function inferred from
neutron scattering measurements of the differential cross section from different measurements reported in the literature are
inconsistent. We have measured the energy dependence of the total cross section
and the scattering cross section for slow neutrons with energies between
0.43~meV and 16.1~meV on liquid hydrogen at 15.6~K (which is dominated by the
parahydrogen component) using neutron transmission measurements on the hydrogen
target of the NPDGamma collaboration at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory. The relationship between the neutron transmission
measurement we perform and the total cross section is unambiguous, and the
energy range accesses length scales where the pair correlation function is
rapidly varying. At 1~meV our measurement is a factor of 3 below the data from
previous work. We present evidence that these previous measurements of the
hydrogen cross section, which assumed that the equilibrium value for the ratio
of orthohydrogen and parahydrogen has been reached in the target liquid, were
in fact contaminated with an extra non-equilibrium component of orthohydrogen.
Liquid parahydrogen is also a widely-used neutron moderator medium, and an
accurate knowledge of its slow neutron cross section is essential for the
design and optimization of intense slow neutron sources. We describe our
measurements and compare them with previous work.Comment: Edited for submission to Physical Review
First Observation of -odd Asymmetry in Polarized Neutron Capture on Hydrogen
We report the first observation of the parity-violating 2.2 MeV gamma-ray
asymmetry in neutron-proton capture using polarized cold
neutrons incident on a liquid parahydrogen target at the Spallation Neutron
Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. isolates the , \mbox{} component of the weak
nucleon-nucleon interaction, which is dominated by pion exchange and can be
directly related to a single coupling constant in either the DDH meson exchange
model or pionless EFT. We measured , which implies a DDH weak coupling of
and a pionless
EFT constant of MeV. We describe the experiment, data
analysis, systematic uncertainties, and the implications of the result.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
The Nab Experiment: A Precision Measurement of Unpolarized Neutron Beta Decay
Neutron beta decay is one of the most fundamental processes in nuclear
physics and provides sensitive means to uncover the details of the weak
interaction. Neutron beta decay can evaluate the ratio of axial-vector to
vector coupling constants in the standard model, , through
multiple decay correlations. The Nab experiment will carry out measurements of
the electron-neutrino correlation parameter with a precision of and the Fierz interference term to
in unpolarized free neutron beta decay. These results, along with a more
precise measurement of the neutron lifetime, aim to deliver an independent
determination of the ratio with a precision of that will allow an evaluation of and sensitively
test CKM unitarity, independent of nuclear models. Nab utilizes a novel, long
asymmetric spectrometer that guides the decay electron and proton to two large
area silicon detectors in order to precisely determine the electron energy and
an estimation of the proton momentum from the proton time of flight. The Nab
spectrometer is being commissioned at the Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline
at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Lab. We present an
overview of the Nab experiment and recent updates on the spectrometer,
analysis, and systematic effects.Comment: Presented at PPNS201
The Importance of Correlations and Fluctuations on the Initial Source Eccentricity in High-Energy Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions
In this paper, we investigate various ways of defining the initial source
eccentricity using the Monte Carlo Glauber (MCG) approach. In particular, we
examine the participant eccentricity, which quantifies the eccentricity of the
initial source shape by the major axes of the ellipse formed by the interaction
points of the participating nucleons. We show that reasonable variation of the
density parameters in the Glauber calculation, as well as variations in how
matter production is modeled, do not significantly modify the already
established behavior of the participant eccentricity as a function of collision
centrality. Focusing on event-by-event fluctuations and correlations of the
distributions of participating nucleons we demonstrate that, depending on the
achieved event-plane resolution, fluctuations in the elliptic flow magnitude
lead to most measurements being sensitive to the root-mean-square, rather
than the mean of the distribution. Neglecting correlations among
participants, we derive analytical expressions for the participant eccentricity
cumulants as a function of the number of participating nucleons,
\Npart,keeping non-negligible contributions up to \ordof{1/\Npart^3}. We
find that the derived expressions yield the same results as obtained from
mixed-event MCG calculations which remove the correlations stemming from the
nuclear collision process. Most importantly, we conclude from the comparison
with MCG calculations that the fourth order participant eccentricity cumulant
does not approach the spatial anisotropy obtained assuming a smooth nuclear
matter distribution. In particular, for the Cu+Cu system, these quantities
deviate from each other by almost a factor of two over a wide range in
centrality.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, submitted to PR
System Size, Energy and Centrality Dependence of Pseudorapidity Distributions of Charged Particles in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
We present the first measurements of the pseudorapidity distribution of
primary charged particles in Cu+Cu collisions as a function of collision
centrality and energy, \sqrtsnn = 22.4, 62.4 and 200 GeV, over a wide range of
pseudorapidity, using the PHOBOS detector. Making a global comparison of Cu+Cu
and Au+Au results, we find that the total number of produced charged particles
and the rough shape (height and width) of the pseudorapidity distributions are
determined by the number of nucleon participants. More detailed studies reveal
that a more precise matching of the shape of the Cu+Cu and Au+Au pseudorapidity
distributions over the full range of pseudorapidity occurs for the same
Npart/2A value rather than the same Npart value. In other words, it is the
collision geometry rather than just the number of nucleon participants that
drives the detailed shape of the pseudorapidity distribution and its centrality
dependence at RHIC energies.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letter
System size and centrality dependence of charged hadron transverse momentum spectra in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s) = 62.4 and 200 GeV
We present transverse momentum distributions of charged hadrons produced in
Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s) = 62.4 and 200 GeV. The spectra are measured for
transverse momenta of 0.25 < p_T < 5.0 GeV/c at sqrt(s) = 62.4 GeV and 0.25 <
p_T < 7.0 GeV/c at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV, in a pseudo-rapidity range of 0.2 < eta <
1.4. The nuclear modification factor R_AA is calculated relative to p+p data at
both collision energies as a function of collision centrality. At a given
collision energy and fractional cross-section, R_AA is observed to be
systematically larger in Cu+Cu collisions compared to Au+Au. However, for the
same number of participating nucleons, R_AA is essentially the same in both
systems over the measured range of p_T, in spite of the significantly different
geometries of the Cu+Cu and Au+Au systems.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Pseudorapidity Distributions of Charged Particles in d + Au and p + p Collisions at = 200GeV
The measured pseudorapidity distributions of primary charged particles are
presented for d + Au and p + p collisions at 200 GeV
over a wide pseudorapidity range of 5.4. The results
for d + Au collisions are presented for minimum-bias events and as a function
of collision centrality. The measurements for p + p collisions are shown for
minimum-bias events. The ratio of the charged particle multiplicity in d + Au
and p + A collisions relative to that for inelastic p + p collisions is found
to depend only on , and it is remarkably independent of
collision energy and system mass. The deuteron and gold fragmentation regions
in d + Au collisions are in good agreement with proton nucleus data at lower
energies.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceedings of Seventeenth
International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions
(Quark Matter 2004), Oakland, California from January 11-17, 2004. Submitted
to Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physic
Cluster properties from two-particle angular correlations in p+p collisions at = 200 and 410 GeV
We present results on two-particle angular correlations in proton-proton
collisions at center of mass energies of 200 and 410 GeV. The PHOBOS experiment
at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has a uniquely large coverage for
charged particles, giving the opportunity to explore the correlations at both
short- and long-range scales. At both energies, a complex two-dimensional
correlation structure in and is observed. In the
context of an independent cluster model of short-range correlations, the
cluster size and its decay width are extracted from the two-particle
pseudorapidity correlation function and compared with previous measurements in
proton-proton and proton-antiproton collisions, as well as PYTHIA and HIJING
predictions.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
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