Status of the Micromegas semi-DHCAL

The activities towards the fabrication and test of a 1 m3 semi-digital hadronic calorime- ter are reviewed. The prototype sampling planes would consist of 1 m2 Micromegas chambers with 1 cm2 granularity and embedded 2 bits readout suitable for PFA calorime- try at an ILC detector. The design of the 1 m2 chamber is presented first, followed by an overview of the basic performance of small prototypes. The basic units composing the 1 m2 chamber are 32 \times 48 cm2 boards with integrated electronics and a micro-mesh. Results of character- ization tests of such boards are shown. Micromegas as a proportional detector is well suited for semi-digital hadronic calorimetry. In order to quantify the gain in perfor- mance when using one or more thresholds, simulation studies are being carried out, some of which will be reported in this contribution

The super-LHC

We review here the prospects of a long-term upgrade programme for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN laboratory's new proton-proton collider. The super-LHC, which is currently under evaluation and design, is expected to deliver of the order of ten times the statistics of the LHC. In addition to a non-technical summary of the principal physics arguments for the upgrade, I present a pedagogical introduction to the technological challenges on the accelerator and experimental fronts, and a review of the current status of the planning.Comment: To appear in Contemporary Physic

HEP Applications Evaluation of the EDG Testbed and Middleware

Workpackage 8 of the European Datagrid project was formed in January 2001 with representatives from the four LHC experiments, and with experiment independent people from five of the six main EDG partners. In September 2002 WP8 was strengthened by the addition of effort from BaBar and D0. The original mandate of WP8 was, following the definition of short- and long-term requirements, to port experiment software to the EDG middleware and testbed environment. A major additional activity has been testing the basic functionality and performance of this environment. This paper reviews experiences and evaluations in the areas of job submission, data management, mass storage handling, information systems and monitoring. It also comments on the problems of remote debugging, the portability of code, and scaling problems with increasing numbers of jobs, sites and nodes. Reference is made to the pioneeering work of Atlas and CMS in integrating the use of the EDG Testbed into their data challenges. A forward look is made to essential software developments within EDG and to the necessary cooperation between EDG and LCG for the LCG prototype due in mid 2003.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics Conference (CHEP03), La Jolla, CA, USA, March 2003, 7 pages. PSN THCT00

Recent results of Micromegas sDHCAL with a new readout chip

Calorimetry at future linear colliders could be based on a particle flow approach where granularity is the key to high jet energy resolution. Among different technologies, Micromegas chambers with 1 cm2 pad segmentation are studied for the active medium of a hadronic calorimeter. A chamber of 1 m2 with 9216 channels read out by a low noise front-end ASIC called MICROROC has recently been constructed and tested. Chamber design, ASIC circuitry and preliminary test beam results are reported

Non-Perturbative QCD Treatment of High-Energy Hadron-Hadron Scattering

Total cross-sections and logarithmic slopes of the elastic scattering cross-sections for different hadronic processes are calculated in the framework of the model of the stochastic vacuum. The relevant parameters of this model, a correlation length and the gluon condensate, are determined from scattering data, and found to be in very good agreement with values coming from completely different sources of information. A parameter-free relation is given between total cross-sections and slope parameters, which is shown to be remarkably valid up to the highest energies for which data exist.Comment: 60 pages, Heidelberg preprin

The Time Structure of Hadronic Showers in highly granular Calorimeters with Tungsten and Steel Absorbers

The intrinsic time structure of hadronic showers influences the timing capability and the required integration time of hadronic calorimeters in particle physics experiments, and depends on the active medium and on the absorber of the calorimeter. With the CALICE T3B experiment, a setup of 15 small plastic scintillator tiles read out with Silicon Photomultipliers, the time structure of showers is measured on a statistical basis with high spatial and temporal resolution in sampling calorimeters with tungsten and steel absorbers. The results are compared to GEANT4 (version 9.4 patch 03) simulations with different hadronic physics models. These comparisons demonstrate the importance of using high precision treatment of low-energy neutrons for tungsten absorbers, while an overall good agreement between data and simulations for all considered models is observed for steel.Comment: 24 pages including author list, 9 figures, published in JINS

Search for Branons at LEP

We search, in the context of extra-dimension scenarios, for the possible existence of brane fluctuations, called branons. Events with a single photon or a single Z-boson and missing energy and momentum collected with the L3 detector in e^+ e^- collisions at centre-of-mass energies sqrt{s}=189-209$ GeV are analysed. No excess over the Standard Model expectations is found and a lower limit at 95% confidence level of 103 GeV is derived for the mass of branons, for a scenario with small brane tensions. Alternatively, under the assumption of a light branon, brane tensions below 180 GeV are excluded

Study of Spin and Decay-Plane Correlations of W Bosons in the e+e- -> W+W- Process at LEP

Data collected at LEP at centre-of-mass energies \sqrt(s) = 189 - 209 GeV are used to study correlations of the spin of W bosons using e+e- -> W+W- -> lnqq~ events. Spin correlations are favoured by data, and found to agree with the Standard Model predictions. In addition, correlations between the W-boson decay planes are studied in e+e- -> W+W- -> lnqq~ and e+e- -> W+W- -> qq~qq~ events. Decay-plane correlations, consistent with zero and with the Standard Model predictions, are measured

Search for Branons at LEP

We search, in the context of extra-dimension scenarios, for the possible existence of brane fluctuations, called branons. Events with a single photon or a single Z-boson and missing energy and momentum collected with the L3 detector in e^+ e^- collisions at centre-of-mass energies sqrt{s}=189-209$ GeV are analysed. No excess over the Standard Model expectations is found and a lower limit at 95% confidence level of 103 GeV is derived for the mass of branons, for a scenario with small brane tensions. Alternatively, under the assumption of a light branon, brane tensions below 180 GeV are excluded

Ultrarelativistic sources in nonlinear electrodynamics

The fields of rapidly moving sources are studied within nonlinear electrodynamics by boosting the fields of sources at rest. As a consequence of the ultrarelativistic limit the delta-like electromagnetic shock waves are found. The character of the field within the shock depends on the theory of nonlinear electrodynamics considered. In particular, we obtain the field of an ultrarelativistic charge in the Born-Infeld theory.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure