NESTOR: a status report

NESTOR is an underwater neutrino astrophysics laboratory to be located in the international waters of the southwest of Greece. The first phase of this experiment is the construction and deployment of one hexagonal tower consisting of 168 optical modules, with effective area of 20000m(2) for E greater than or equal to TeV neutrinos. Over the past few years detailed studies of the site have been carried out while many tests have been performed. The current status of the preparation of the experiment and the future plans will be presented

A measurement of the photonuclear interactions of 180 GeV muons in iron

The energy spectrum and the cross section of photonuclear interactions of 180 GeV muons in iron were measured at the CERN SPS using prototype modules of the ATLAS hadron calorimeter. The differential cross section (N-A/A)nudsigma/dnu for a union fractional energy loss nu = E-mu/E-mu was measured in the range 0.1 < nu < 1. The integrated cross section (N-A/A) integral(0.1)(1) nudsigma/dnu is (0.26 +/- 0.03(stat) +/- 0.03(syst)) . 10(-6) cm(2) g(-1) in agreement with the theoretical prediction of 0.267 . 10(-6) cm(2)g(-1). The best adjustment of the data to the theory is achieved for the value of sigma(gamma)N = (115 +/- 18(stat) +/- 15(syst))mub of the photon-nucleon cross section for photons with energies in the range from 18 to 180 GeV