16,861 research outputs found
Resistive plate chambers for time-of-flight measurements
The applications of Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) have recently been
extended by the development of counters with time resolution below 100 ps sigma
for minimum ionising particles. Applications to HEP experiments have already
taken place and many further applications are under study. In this work we
address the operating principles of such counters along with some present
challenges, with emphasis on counter aging.Comment: Presented at "PSD6 - 6th International Conference on Position
Sensitive Detectors", 9-13 September 2002, Leicester, UK. Submitted to
Nuclear Instruments and Methods
The ALICE electromagnetic calorimeter high level triggers
The ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector yields a huge sample of
data from different sub-detectors. On-line data processing is applied to select
and reduce the volume of the stored data. ALICE applies a multi-level hardware
trigger scheme where fast detectors are used to feed a three-level (L0, L1, and
L2) deep chain. The High-Level Trigger (HLT) is a fourth filtering stage
sitting logically between the L2 trigger and the data acquisition event
building. The EMCal detector comprises a large area electromagnetic calorimeter
that extends the momentum measurement of photons and neutral mesons up to
GeV/c, which improves the ALICE capability to perform jet
reconstruction with measurement of the neutral energy component of jets. An
online reconstruction and trigger chain has been developed within the HLT
framework to sharpen the EMCal hardware triggers, by combining the central
barrel tracking information with the shower reconstruction (clusters) in the
calorimeter. In the present report the status and the functionality of the
software components developed for the EMCal HLT online reconstruction and
trigger chain will be discussed, as well as preliminary results from their
commissioning performed during the 2011 LHC running period.Comment: Proceeding for the CHEP 2012 Conferenc
Measures for a Transdimensional Multiverse
The multiverse/landscape paradigm that has emerged from eternal inflation and
string theory, describes a large-scale multiverse populated by "pocket
universes" which come in a huge variety of different types, including different
dimensionalities. In order to make predictions in the multiverse, we need a
probability measure. In landscapes, the scale factor cutoff measure
has been previously shown to have a number of attractive properties. Here we
consider possible generalizations of this measure to a transdimensional
multiverse. We find that a straightforward extension of scale factor cutoff to
the transdimensional case gives a measure that strongly disfavors large amounts
of slow-roll inflation and predicts low values for the density parameter
, in conflict with observations. A suitable generalization, which
retains all the good properties of the original measure, is the "volume factor"
cutoff, which regularizes the infinite spacetime volume using cutoff surfaces
of constant volume expansion factor.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figure Minor revisions, reference adde
VISIR-VLT high resolution study of the extended emission of four obscured post-AGB candidates
The onset of the asymmetry of planetary nebulae (PNe) is expected to occur
during the late Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) and early post-AGB phases of low-
and intermediate-mass stars. Among all post-AGB objects, the most heavily
obscured ones might have escaped the selection criteria of previous studies
detecting extreme axysimmetric structures in young PNe. Since the most heavily
obscured post-AGB sources can be expected to descend from the most massive PN
progenitors, these should exhibit clear asymmetric morphologies. We have
obtained VISIR-VLT mid-IR images of four heavily obscured post-AGB objects
barely resolved in previous Spitzer IRAC observations to analyze their
morphology and physical conditions across the mid-IR. The VISIR-VLT images have
been deconvolved, flux calibrated, and used to construct RGB composite pictures
as well as color and optical depth maps that allow us to study the morphology
and physical properties of the extended emission of these sources. We have
detected extended emission from the four objects in our sample and resolved it
into several structural components that are greatly enhanced in the temperature
and optical depth maps. They reveal the presence of asymmetry in three young
PNe (IRAS 15534-5422, IRAS 17009-4154, and IRAS 18454+0001), where the
asymmetries can be associated with dusty torii and slightly bipolar outflows.
The fourth source (IRAS 18229-1127), a possible post-AGB star, is better
described as a rhomboidal detached shell. The heavily obscured sources in our
sample do not show extreme axisymmetric morphologies. This is at odds with the
expectation of highly asymmetrical morphologies in post-AGB sources descending
from massive PN progenitors. The sources presented in this paper may be
sampling critical early phases in the evolution of massive PN progenitors,
before extreme asymmetries develop.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Morphological and functional effects of graphene on the synthesis of uranium carbide for isotopes production targets
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