Correlated variability in the blazar 3C 454.3

The blazar 3C 454.3 was revealed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to be in an exceptionally high flux state in July 2008. Accordingly, we performed a multi-wavelength monitoring campaign on this blazar using IR and optical observations from the SMARTS telescopes, optical, UV and X-ray data from the Swift satellite, and public-release gamma-ray data from Fermi. We find an excellent correlation between the IR, optical, UV and gamma-ray light curves, with a time lag of less than one day. The amplitude of the infrared variability is comparable to that in gamma-rays, and larger than at optical or UV wavelengths. The X-ray flux is not strongly correlated with either the gamma-rays or longer wavelength data. These variability characteristics find a natural explanation in the external Compton model, in which electrons with Lorentz factor gamma~10^(3-4) radiate synchrotron emission in the infrared-optical and also scatter accretion disk or emission line photons to gamma-ray energies, while much cooler electrons (gamma~10^(1-2)) produce X-rays by scattering synchrotron or other ambient photons.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJ Letter

Measurements of production and inelastic cross sections for p+C, p+Be, and p+Al at 60 GeV/c and p+C and p+Be at 120 GeV/c

This paper presents measurements of production cross sections and inelastic cross sections for the following reactions: 60 GeV=c protons with C, Be, Al targets and 120 GeV=c protons with C and Be targets. The analysis is performed using the NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. First measurements are obtained using protons at 120 GeV=c, while the results for protons at 60 GeV=c are compared with previously published measurements. These interaction cross section measurements are critical inputs for neutrino flux prediction in current and future accelerator-based long-baseline neutrino experiments.Authors:A. Aduszkiewicz,15 E. V. Andronov,21 T. Antićić,3 V. Babkin,19 M. Baszczyk,13 S. Bhosale,10 A. Blondel,23 M. Bogomilov,2 A. Brandin,20 A. Bravar,23 W. Bryliński,17 J. Brzychczyk,12 M. Buryakov,19 O. Busygina,18 A. Bzdak,13 H. Cherif,6 M. Ćirković,22 M. Csanad,7 J. Cybowska,17 T. Czopowicz,17 A. Damyanova,23 N. Davis,10 M. Deliyergiyev,9 M. Deveaux,6 A. Dmitriev,19 W. Dominik,15 P. Dorosz,13 J. Dumarchez,4 R. Engel,5 G. A. Feofilov,21 L. Fields,24 Z. Fodor,7,16 A. Garibov,1 M. Gaździcki,6,9 O. Golosov,20 M. Golubeva,18 K. Grebieszkow,17 F. Guber,18 A. Haesler,23 S. N. Igolkin,21 S. Ilieva,2 A. Ivashkin,18 S. R. Johnson,26 K. Kadija,3 E. Kaptur,14 N. Kargin,20 E. Kashirin,20 M. Kiełbowicz,10 V. A. Kireyeu,19 V. Klochkov,6 V. I. Kolesnikov,19 D. Kolev,2 A. Korzenev,23 V. N. Kovalenko,21 K. Kowalik,11 S. Kowalski,14 M. Koziel,6 A. Krasnoperov,19 W. Kucewicz,13 M. Kuich,15 A. Kurepin,18 D. Larsen,12 A. László,7 T. V. Lazareva,21 M. Lewicki,16 K. Łojek,12 B. Łysakowski,14 V. V. Lyubushkin,19 M. Maćkowiak-Pawłowska,17 Z. Majka,12 B. Maksiak,11 A. I. Malakhov,19 A. Marchionni,24 A. Marcinek,10 A. D. Marino,26 K. Marton,7 H.-J. Mathes,5 T. Matulewicz,15 V. Matveev,19 G. L. Melkumov,19 A. O. Merzlaya,12 B. Messerly,27 Ł. Mik,13 G. B. Mills,25 S. Morozov,18,20 S. Mrówczyński,9 Y. Nagai ,26 M. Naskręt,16 V. Ozvenchuk,10 V. Paolone,27 M. Pavin,4,3 O. Petukhov,18 R. Płaneta,12 P. Podlaski,15 B. A. Popov,19,4 B. Porfy,7 M. Posiadała-Zezula,15 D. S. Prokhorova,21 D. Pszczel,11 S. Puławski,14 J. Puzović,22 M. Ravonel,23 R. Renfordt,6 E. Richter-Wąs,12 D. Röhrich,8 E. Rondio,11 M. Roth,5 B. T. Rumberger,26 M. Rumyantsev,19 A. Rustamov,1,6 M. Rybczynski,9 A. Rybicki,10 A. Sadovsky,18 K. Schmidt,14 I. Selyuzhenkov,20 A. Yu. Seryakov,21 P. Seyboth,9 M. Słodkowski,17 A. Snoch,6 P. Staszel,12 G. Stefanek,9 J. Stepaniak,11 M. Strikhanov,20 H. Ströbele,6 T. Šuša,3 A. Taranenko,20 A. Tefelska,17 D. Tefelski,17 V. Tereshchenko,19 A. Toia,6 R. Tsenov,2 L. Turko,16 R. Ulrich,5 M. Unger,5 F. F. Valiev,21 D. Veberič,5 V. V. Vechernin,21 A. Wickremasinghe,27 Z.Włodarczyk,9 A.Wojtaszek-Szwarc,9 K. Wójcik,14 O.Wyszyński,12 L. Zambelli,4 E. D. Zimmerman,26 and R. Zwaska24 (NA61/SHINE Collaboration) 1National Nuclear Research Center, Baku, Azerbaijan 2Faculty of Physics, University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria 3Rud¯er Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia 4LPNHE, University of Paris VI and VII, Paris, France 5Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany 6University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany 7Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary 8University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway 9Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Poland 10Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland 11National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland 12Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland 13AGH—University of Science and Technology, Cracow, Poland 14University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland 15University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland 16University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland 17Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland 18Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow, Russia 19Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia 20National Research Nuclear University (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Moscow, Russia 21St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia 22University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia 23University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland 24Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois, USA 25Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA 26University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA 27University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US

Measurements of π±\pi^\pm, K±^\pm, p and pˉ\bar{\textrm{p}} spectra in proton-proton interactions at 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c with the NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS

Measurements of inclusive spectra and mean multiplicities of $\pi^\pm$, K$^\pm$, p and $\bar{\textrm{p}}$ produced in inelastic p+p interactions at incident projectile momenta of 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c ($\sqrt{s} =$ 6.3, 7.7, 8.8, 12.3 and 17.3 GeV, respectively) were performed at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron using the large acceptance NA61/SHINE hadron spectrometer. Spectra are presented as function of rapidity and transverse momentum and are compared to predictions of current models. The measurements serve as the baseline in the NA61/SHINE study of the properties of the onset of deconfinement and search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter

Multiplicity and transverse momentum fluctuations in inelastic proton-proton interactions at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron

Measurements of multiplicity and transverse momentum fluctuations of charged particles were performed in inelastic p+p interactions at 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c beam momentum. Results for the scaled variance of the multiplicity distribution and for three strongly intensive measures of multiplicity and transverse momentum fluctuations \$\Delta[P_{T},N]\$, \$\Sigma[P_{T},N]\$ and \$\Phi_{p_T}\$ are presented. For the first time the results on fluctuations are fully corrected for experimental biases. The results on multiplicity and transverse momentum fluctuations significantly deviate from expectations for the independent particle production. They also depend on charges of selected hadrons. The string-resonance Monte Carlo models EPOS and UrQMD do not describe the data. The scaled variance of multiplicity fluctuations is significantly higher in inelastic p+p interactions than in central Pb+Pb collisions measured by NA49 at the same energy per nucleon. This is in qualitative disagreement with the predictions of the Wounded Nucleon Model. Within the statistical framework the enhanced multiplicity fluctuations in inelastic p+p interactions can be interpreted as due to event-by-event fluctuations of the fireball energy and/or volume.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figure

Measurements of π±\pi^\pm, K±K^\pm, KS0K^0_S, Λ\Lambda and proton production in proton-carbon interactions at 31 GeV/cc with the NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS

Measurements of hadron production in p+C interactions at 31 GeV/c are performed using the NA61/ SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS. The analysis is based on the full set of data collected in 2009 using a graphite target with a thickness of 4% of a nuclear interaction length. Inelastic and production cross sections as well as spectra of $\pi^\pm$, $K^\pm$, p, $K^0_S$ and $\Lambda$ are measured with high precision. These measurements are essential for improved calculations of the initial neutrino fluxes in the T2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment in Japan. A comparison of the NA61/SHINE measurements with predictions of several hadroproduction models is presented.Comment: v1 corresponds to the preprint CERN-PH-EP-2015-278; v2 matches the final published versio

Measurement of negatively charged pion spectra in inelastic p+p interactions at plabp_{lab} = 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c

We present experimental results on inclusive spectra and mean multiplicities of negatively charged pions produced in inelastic p+p interactions at incident projectile momenta of 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c ($\sqrt{s} =$ 6.3, 7.7, 8.8, 12.3 and 17.3 GeV, respectively). The measurements were performed using the large acceptance NA61/SHINE hadron spectrometer at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. Two-dimensional spectra are determined in terms of rapidity and transverse momentum. Their properties such as the width of rapidity distributions and the inverse slope parameter of transverse mass spectra are extracted and their collision energy dependences are presented. The results on inelastic p+p interactions are compared with the corresponding data on central Pb+Pb collisions measured by the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS. The results presented in this paper are part of the NA61/SHINE ion program devoted to the study of the properties of the onset of deconfinement and search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter. They are required for interpretation of results on nucleus-nucleus and proton-nucleus collisions.Comment: Numerical results available at: https://edms.cern.ch/document/1314605 Updates in v3: Updated version, as accepted for publicatio

NA61/SHINE facility at the CERN SPS: beams and detector system

NA61/SHINE (SPS Heavy Ion and Neutrino Experiment) is a multi-purpose experimental facility to study hadron production in hadron-proton, hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. It recorded the first physics data with hadron beams in 2009 and with ion beams (secondary 7Be beams) in 2011. NA61/SHINE has greatly profited from the long development of the CERN proton and ion sources and the accelerator chain as well as the H2 beamline of the CERN North Area. The latter has recently been modified to also serve as a fragment separator as needed to produce the Be beams for NA61/SHINE. Numerous components of the NA61/SHINE set-up were inherited from its predecessors, in particular, the last one, the NA49 experiment. Important new detectors and upgrades of the legacy equipment were introduced by the NA61/SHINE Collaboration. This paper describes the state of the NA61/SHINE facility - the beams and the detector system - before the CERN Long Shutdown I, which started in March 2013

Challenges in QCD matter physics - The Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR

Substantial experimental and theoretical efforts worldwide are devoted to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. At LHC and top RHIC energies, QCD matter is studied at very high temperatures and nearly vanishing net-baryon densities. There is evidence that a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) was created at experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the QGP back to the hadron gas is found to be a smooth cross over. For larger net-baryon densities and lower temperatures, it is expected that the QCD phase diagram exhibits a rich structure, such as a first-order phase transition between hadronic and partonic matter which terminates in a critical point, or exotic phases like quarkyonic matter. The discovery of these landmarks would be a breakthrough in our understanding of the strong interaction and is therefore in the focus of various high-energy heavy-ion research programs. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR will play a unique role in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in the region of high net-baryon densities, because it is designed to run at unprecedented interaction rates. High-rate operation is the key prerequisite for high-precision measurements of multi-differential observables and of rare diagnostic probes which are sensitive to the dense phase of the nuclear fireball. The goal of the CBM experiment at SIS100 (sqrt(s_NN) = 2.7 - 4.9 GeV) is to discover fundamental properties of QCD matter: the phase structure at large baryon-chemical potentials (mu_B > 500 MeV), effects of chiral symmetry, and the equation-of-state at high density as it is expected to occur in the core of neutron stars. In this article, we review the motivation for and the physics programme of CBM, including activities before the start of data taking in 2022, in the context of the worldwide efforts to explore high-density QCD matter.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Published in European Physical Journal

Proton-proton interactions and onset of deconfinement

The experiment of the NA61/SHINE Collaboration at the CERN SPS is performing a unique study of the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter by varying collision energy and nuclear mass number of colliding nuclei. In central Pb+Pb collisions, the experiment of the NA49 Collaboration found structures in the energy dependence of several observables in the energy range of the CERN SPS that had been predicted for the transition to a deconfined phase. New measurements of the NA61/SHINE Collaboration find intriguing similarities in p+p interactions for which no deconfinement transition is expected at the energies of the SPS. Possible implications will be discussed