Upgrading the beam telescopes at the DESY II Test Beam Facility

The DESY II Test Beam Facility is a key infrastructure for modern high energy physics detector development, providing particles with a small momentum spread in a range from 1 to 6 GeV to user groups e.g. from the LHC experiments and Belle II as well as generic detector R&D. Beam telescopes are provided in all three test beam areas as precise tracking reference without time stamping, with triggered readout and a readout time of >115 $\mu$s . If the highest available rates are used, multiple particles are traversing the telescopes within one readout frame, thus creating ambiguities that cannot be resolved without additional timing layers. Several upgrades are currently investigated and tested: Firstly, a fast monolithic pixel sensor, the TelePix, to provide precise track timing and triggering on a region of interest is proposed to overcome this limitation. The TelePix is a 180 nm HV-CMOS sensor that has been developed jointly by DESY, KIT and the University of Heidelberg and designed at KIT. In this publication, the performance evaluation is presented: The difference between two amplifier designs is evaluated. A high hit detection efficiency of above 99.9 % combined with a time resolution of below 4 ns at negligible pixel noise rates is determined. Finally, the digital hit output to provide region of interest triggering is evaluated and shows a short absolute delay with respect to a traditional trigger scintillator as well as an excellent time resolution. Secondly, a fast LGAD plane has been proposed to provide a time resolution of a few 10 ps, which is foreseen to drastically improve the timing performance of the telescope. Time resolutions of below 70 ps have been determined in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara

Binding pocket stabilization by high-throughput screening of yeast display libraries

Protein dynamics have a great influence on the binding pockets of some therapeutic targets. Flexible protein binding sites can result in transient binding pocket formation which might have a negative impact on drug screening efforts. Here, we describe a protein engineering strategy with FK506-binding protein 51 (FKBP51) as a model protein, which is a promising target for stress-related disorders. High-throughput screening of yeast display libraries of FKBP51 resulted in the identification of variants exhibiting higher affinity binding of conformation-specific FKBP51 selective inhibitors. The gene libraries of a random mutagenesis and site saturation mutagenesis of the FK1 domain of FKBP51 encoding sequence were used to create a yeast surface display library. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting for FKBP51 variants that bind conformation-specific fluorescently labeled ligands with high affinity allowed for the identification of 15 different protein variants with improved binding to either, or both FKBP51-specific ligands used in the screening, with improved affinities up to 34-fold compared to the wild type. These variants will pave the way to a better understanding of the conformational flexibility of the FKBP51 binding pocket and may enable the isolation of new selective ligands that preferably and selectively bind the active site of the protein in its open conformation state

Nuclear Polarization of Molecular Hydrogen Recombined on a Non-metallic Surface

The nuclear polarization of $\mathrm{H}_2$ molecules formed by recombination of nuclear polarized H atoms on the surface of a storage cell initially coated with a silicon-based polymer has been measured by using the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry in deep-inelastic positron-proton scattering. The molecules are found to have a substantial nuclear polarization, which is evidence that initially polarized atoms retain their nuclear polarization when absorbed on this type of surfac

First Measurement of the Tensor Structure Function b1b_1 of the Deuteron

The \Hermes experiment has investigated the tensor spin structure of the deuteron using the 27.6 GeV/c positron beam of \Hera. The use of a tensor polarized deuteron gas target with only a negligible residual vector polarization enabled the first measurement of the tensor asymmetry \At and the tensor structure function \bd for average values of the Bj{\o}rken variable $0.01<0.45$ and of the squared four-momentum transfer $0.5 {\rm GeV^2} <5 {\rm GeV^2}$. The quantities \At and \bd are found to be non-zero. The rise of \bd for decreasing values of $x$ can be interpreted to originate from the same mechanism that leads to nuclear shadowing in unpolarized scattering

Single-spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering on a transversely polarized hydrogen target

Single-spin asymmetries for semi-inclusive electroproduction of charged pions in deep-inelastic scattering of positrons are measured for the first time with transverse target polarization. The asymmetry depends on the azimuthal angles of both the pion ($\phi$) and the target spin axis ($\phi_S$) about the virtual photon direction and relative to the lepton scattering plane. The extracted Fourier component \cmpi is a signal of the previously unmeasured quark transversity distribution, in conjunction with the so-called Collins fragmentation function, also unknown. The Fourier component \smpi of the asymmetry arises from a correlation between the transverse polarization of the target nucleon and the intrinsic transverse momentum of quarks, as represented by the previously unmeasured Sivers distribution function. Evidence for both signals is observed, but the Sivers asymmetry may be affected by exclusive vector meson productio

Flavor decomposition of the sea quark helicity distributions in the nucleon from semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering

Double-spin asymmetries of semi-inclusive cross sections for the production of identified pions and kaons have been measured in deep-inelastic scattering of polarized positrons on a polarized deuterium target. Five helicity distributions including those for three sea quark flavors were extracted from these data together with re-analyzed previous data for identified pions from a hydrogen target. These distributions are consistent with zero for all three sea flavors. A recently predicted flavor asymmetry in the polarization of the light quark sea appears to be disfavored by the data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Summary and Conclusions of the First DESY Test Beam User Workshop

On October 5/6, 2017, DESY hosted the first DESY Test Beam User Workshop [1] which took place in Hamburg. Fifty participants from different user communities, ranging from LHC (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb) to FAIR (CBM, PANDA), DUNE, Belle-II, future linear colliders (ILC, CLIC) and generic detector R&D presented their experiences with the DESY II Test Beam Facility, their concrete plans for the upcoming years and a first estimate of their needs for beam time in the long-term future beyond 2025. A special focus was also on additional improvements to the facility beyond its current capabilities

Measurement of Angular Distributions and R= sigma_L/sigma_T in Diffractive Electroproduction of rho^0 Mesons

Production and decay angular distributions were extracted from measurements of exclusive electroproduction of the rho^0(770) meson over a range in the virtual photon negative four-momentum squared 0.5< Q^2 <4 GeV^2 and the photon-nucleon invariant mass range 3.8< W <6.5 GeV. The experiment was performed with the HERMES spectrometer, using a longitudinally polarized positron beam and a ^3He gas target internal to the HERA e^{+-} storage ring. The event sample combines rho^0 mesons produced incoherently off individual nucleons and coherently off the nucleus as a whole. The distributions in one production angle and two angles describing the rho^0 -> pi+ pi- decay yielded measurements of eight elements of the spin-density matrix, including one that had not been measured before. The results are consistent with the dominance of helicity-conserving amplitudes and natural parity exchange. The improved precision achieved at 47 GeV, reveals evidence for an energy dependence in the ratio R of the longitudinal to transverse cross sections at constant Q^2.Comment: 15 pages, 15 embedded figures, LaTeX for SVJour(epj) document class Revision: Fig. 15 corrected, recent data added to Figs. 10,12,14,15; minor changes to tex

Search for an exotic S=-2, Q=-2 baryon resonance at a mass near 1862 MeV in quasi-real photoproduction

A search for an exotic baryon resonance with $S=-2, Q=-2$ has been performed in quasi-real photoproduction on a deuterium target through the decay channel $\Xi^- \pi^- \to \Lambda \pi^- \pi^- \to p \pi^- \pi^- \pi^-$. No evidence for a previously reported $\Xi^{--}(1860)$ resonance is found in the $\Xi^- \pi^-$invariant mass spectrum. An upper limit for the photoproduction cross section of 2.1 nb is found at the 90% confidence level. The photoproduction cross section for the $\Xi^{0}(1530)$ is found to be between 9 and 24 nb