Magnetic monopoles at the LHC and in the Cosmos

The magnetic monopole was postulated in 1931 by Dirac to explain electric charge quantisation. Searches for pair-produced monopoles are performed at accelerator facilities whenever a new energy regime is made available. In addition, monopoles with masses too high to be accessible at colliders would still have been produced in the early Universe and such relics can be searched for either in flight or trapped in matter. Here we discuss recent results and future prospects for direct monopole detection at the LHC and in bulk matter searches, with emphasis on the complementarity between the various techniques. Significant improvements of the results from the ATLAS experiment are expected with the development of new triggers. Dedicated LHC experiments will allow to probe wider ranges of monopole charges and masses: the MoEDAL experiment using both nuclear-track detectors and absorbing arrays, and searches for trapped monopoles in accelerator material. Finally, it is highlighted how the first search for monopoles trapped in polar volcanic rocks allows to set new constraints on the abundance of monopoles bound to matter in the Earth's interior and by extension in the primary material that formed the Solar System.Comment: 4 pages, 48th Rencontres de Moriond on Very High Energy Phenomena in the Universe, 9-16 March 2013, La Tuile, Italy, proceedings to appear in 201

Searching for magnetic monopoles trapped in accelerator material at the Large Hadron Collider

If produced in high energy particle collisions at the LHC, magnetic monopoles could stop in material surrounding the interaction points. Obsolete parts of the beam pipe near the CMS interaction region, which were exposed to the products of pp and heavy ion collisions, were analysed using a SQUID-based magnetometer. The purpose of this work is to quantify the performance of the magnetometer in the context of a monopole search using a small set of samples of accelerator material ahead of the 2013 shutdown.Comment: 11 page

Application of large area SiPMs for the readout of a plastic scintillator based timing detector

In this study an array of eight 6 mm x 6 mm area SiPMs was coupled to the end of a long plastic scintillator counter which was exposed to a 2.5 GeV/c muon beam at the CERN PS. Timing characteristics of bars with dimensions 150 cm x 6 cm x 1 cm and 120 cm x 11 cm x 2.5 cm have been studied. An 8-channel SiPM anode readout ASIC (MUSIC R1) based on a novel low input impedance current conveyor has been used to read out and amplify SiPMs independently and sum the signals at the end. Prospects for applications in large-scale particle physics detectors with timing resolution below 100 ps are provided in light of the results

Application of large area SiPMs for the readout of a plastic scintillator based timing detector

In this study an array of eight 6 mm x 6 mm area SiPMs was coupled to the end of a long plastic scintillator counter which was exposed to a 2.5 GeV/c muon beam at the CERN PS. Timing characteristics of bars with dimensions 150 cm x 6 cm x 1 cm and 120 cm x 11 cm x 2.5 cm have been studied. An 8-channel SiPM anode readout ASIC (MUSIC R1) based on a novel low input impedance current conveyor has been used to read out and amplify SiPMs independently and sum the signals at the end. Prospects for applications in large-scale particle physics detectors with timing resolution below 100 ps are provided in light of the results

Effects of ATLAS Tile calorimeter failures on jets and missing transverse energy measurements

Failures of the ATLAS Tile calorimeter would affect the jet energy resolution and would fake tails of missing transverse energy. Significant effects are expected in processes involving high transverse momentum jets ($p_T > 100$ GeV). These effects, their consequences, as well as methods to minimize them, are studied using simulated data for various degradation topologies and for different physics processes

Light-ion production in the interaction of 96 MeV neutrons with oxygen

Double-differential cross sections for light-ion (p, d, t, He-3 and alpha) production in oxygen, induced by 96 MeV neutrons are reported. Energy spectra are measured at eight laboratory angles from 20 degrees to 160 degrees in steps of 20 degrees. Procedures for data taking and data reduction are presented. Deduced energy-differential and production cross sections are reported. Experimental cross sections are compared to theoretical reaction model calculations and experimental data at lower neutron energies in the literature. The measured proton data agree reasonably well with the results of the model calculations, whereas the agreement for the other particles is less convincing. The measured production cross sections for protons, deuterons, tritons and alpha particles support the trends suggested by data at lower energies.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

MAR-Mediated Dystrophin Expression in Mesoangioblasts for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Cell Therapy

A cornerstone of autologous cell therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy is the engineering of suitable cells to express dystrophin in a stable fashion upon differentiation to muscle fibers. Most viral transduction methods are typically restricted to the expression of truncated recombinant dystrophin derivatives and by the risk of insertional mutagenesis, while non-viral vectors often suffer from inefficient transfer, expression and/or silencing