Paleomagnetic Results from Luzon and the Central Philippines

Samples were collected from 86 paleomagnetic sites from the islands of Luzon, Marinduque, Mindoro, Panay, Negros, Cebu, and Mindanao in the Philippine Arc. The sampling sites range in age from Pleistocene to Jurassic. Characteristic directions of magnetization of the samples were determined by the use of vector plots. Curie temperature determinations, thin section studies, and hysteresis studies showed that remanence of these samples is carried by fine-grained (pseudo-single domain) magnetite. Positive fold tests from Miocene data from Panay, Jurassic data from Mindoro, and Cretaceous data from Cebu suggest that the magnetization of these regions was acquired prior to folding. Rotations reported below are measured with respect to the axial goecentric dipole field. The Plio-Pleistocene data set shows no resolvable rotation for the 22 sites. This data set suggests that the various terranes that make up the Philippine Arc have behaved as a single unit during the past 5 m.y. or that deformation has been below the limits of resolution. The inclination data from the Plio-Pleistocene sites have anomalously shallow inclination and are consistent with other Plio-Pleistocene data from Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Marianas. These data support earlier suggestions for a late Neogene offset dipole effect. The late Miocene sites fall into two separate groups. Ten sites from western Luzon show evidence for around 20° of clockwise rotation. In contrast to this, late Miocene samples from the Bicol region, Negros, Marinduque, and Mindanao are not rotated. The cause of the postlate Miocene clockwise rotation of Luzon is unknown, but a Pliocene collision of the North Luzon Arc with Taiwan is suggested. Early Neogene results also separate into two different populations. The population from Marinduque shows evidence for a large counterclockwise rotation. The second early Neogene population comes from Panay, Cebu, and Mindanao and clearly shows evidence for a clockwise rotation. The validity of this rotation is further supported by a fold test and a reversal test. These early Neogene data sets are consistent with a middle to late Miocene collision of the Palawan Continental Terrane and the Central Philippine Arc. Data from six dikes of possible Oligocene age from the Zambales Ophiolite are highly discordant from the present field, being rotated approximately 60° clockwise. The directions from these dikes are similar to a direction reported earlier from late Oligocene sediments also from the Zambales region. These two data sets support the interpretation that the Eocene direction from Zambales is recording a large clockwise rotation of the region. Data from the Mesozoic sites are from two regions. Data from the Cretaceous Pandan formation of Cebu are discordant with data from the Upper Jurassic from Mindoro. The presence of a fold test from each region and a reversal test from Mindoro supports the interpretation that each of these data sets is reliable. The VGP of Mindoro is displaced southward from the Late Jurassic VGP of South China, suggesting a post-Jurassic southward migration of Mindoro

Search for dinucleon decay into pions at Super-Kamiokande

A search for dinucleon decay into pions with the Super-Kamiokande detector has been performed with an exposure of 282.1 kiloton-years. Dinucleon decay is a process that violates baryon number by two units. We present the first search for dinucleon decay to pions in a large water Cherenkov detector. The modes $^{16}$O$(pp) \rightarrow$ $^{14}$C$\pi^{+}\pi^{+}$, $^{16}$O$(pn) \rightarrow$ $^{14}$N$\pi^{+}\pi^{0}$, and $^{16}$O$(nn) \rightarrow$ $^{14}$O$\pi^{0}\pi^{0}$ are investigated. No significant excess in the Super-Kamiokande data has been found, so a lower limit on the lifetime of the process per oxygen nucleus is determined. These limits are: $\tau_{pp\rightarrow\pi^{+}\pi^{+}} > 7.22 \times 10^{31}$ years, $\tau_{pn\rightarrow\pi^{+}\pi^{0}} > 1.70 \times 10^{32}$ years, and $\tau_{nn\rightarrow\pi^{0}\pi^{0}} > 4.04 \times 10^{32}$ years. The lower limits on each mode are about two orders of magnitude better than previous limits from searches for dinucleon decay in iron.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review D on March 30, 201

Search for short baseline nu(e) disappearance with the T2K near detector

8 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PRD rapid communication8 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PRD rapid communicationWe thank the J-PARC staff for superb accelerator performance and the CERN NA61 collaboration for providing valuable particle production data. We acknowledge the support of MEXT, Japan; NSERC, NRC and CFI, Canada; Commissariat `a l’Energie Atomique and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique–Institut National de Physique Nucle´aire et de Physique des Particules, France; DFG, Germany; INFN, Italy; National Science Centre (NCN), Poland; Russian Science Foundation, RFBR and Ministry of Education and Science, Russia; MINECO and European Regional Development Fund, Spain; Swiss National Science Foundation and State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, Switzerland; STFC, UK; and DOE, USA. We also thank CERN for the UA1/NOMAD magnet, DESY for the HERA-B magnet mover system, NII for SINET4, the WestGrid and SciNet consortia in Compute Canada, GridPP, UK. In addition participation of individual researchers and institutions has been further supported by funds from ERC (FP7), EU; JSPS, Japan; Royal Society, UK; DOE Early Career program, USA