Application of terahertz spectroscopy to the characterization of biological samples using birefringence silicon grating

We present a device and method for performing vector transmission spectroscopy on biological specimens at terahertz (THz) frequencies. The device consists of artificial dielectric birefringence obtained from silicon microfluidic grating structures. The device can measure the complex dielectric function of a liquid, across a wide THz band of 2 to 5.5 THz, using a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. Measurement data from a range of liquid specimens, including sucrose, salmon deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), herring DNA, and bovine serum albumin protein solution in water are presented. The specimen handling is simple, using a microfluidic channel. The transmission through the device is improved significantly and thus the measurement accuracy and bandwidth are increase

Planar Pixel Sensors for the ATLAS tracker upgrade at HL-LHC

The ATLAS Planar Pixel Sensor R&D Project is a collaboration of 17 institutes and more than 80 scientists. Their goal is to explore the operation of planar pixel sensors for the tracker upgrade at the High Luminosity-Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). This work will give a summary of the achievements on radiation studies with n-in-n and n-in-p pixel sensors, bump-bonded to ATLAS FE-I3 and FE-I4 readout chips. The summary includes results from tests with radioactive sources and tracking efficiencies extracted from test beam measurements. Analysis results of ${2\cdot10^{16}} \text{n}_{\text{eq}}\text{cm}^{-2}$ and ${1\cdot10^{16}} \text{n}_{\text{eq}}\text{cm}^{-2}$ ($1 \text{MeV}$ neutron equivalent) irradiated n-in-n and n-in-p modules confirm the operation of planar pixel sensors for future applications

Flavour Breaking Effects of Wilson twisted mass fermions

We study the flavour breaking effects appearing in the Wilson twisted mass formulation of lattice QCD. In this quenched study, we focus on the mass splitting between the neutral and the charged pion, determining the neutral pion mass with a stochastic noise method to evaluate the disconnected contributions. We find that these disconnected contributions are significant. Using the Osterwalder-Seiler interpretation of the connected piece of the neutral pion correlator, we compute the corresponding neutral pion mass to study with more precision the scaling behaviour of the mass splitting.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

Effects of Galaxy Formation on Thermodynamics of the Intracluster Medium

We present detailed comparisons of the intracluster medium (ICM) in cosmological Eulerian cluster simulations with deep Chandra observations of nearby relaxed clusters. To assess the impact of galaxy formation, we compare two sets of simulations, one performed in the non-radiative regime and another with radiative cooling and several physical processes critical to various aspects of galaxy formation: star formation, metal enrichment and stellar feedback. We show that the observed ICM properties outside cluster cores are well-reproduced in the simulations that include cooling and star formation, while the non-radiative simulations predict an overall shape of the ICM profiles inconsistent with observations. In particular, we find that the ICM entropy in our runs with cooling is enhanced to the observed levels at radii as large as half of the virial radius. We also find that outside cluster cores entropy scaling with the mean ICM temperature in both simulations and Chandra observations is consistent with being self-similar within current error bars. We find that the pressure profiles of simulated clusters are also close to self-similar and exhibit little cluster-to-cluster scatter. The X-ray observable-total mass relations for our simulated sample agree with the Chandra measurements to \~10%-20% in normalization. We show that this systematic difference could be caused by the subsonic gas motions, unaccounted for in X-ray hydrostatic mass estimates. The much improved agreement of simulations and observations in the ICM profiles and scaling relations is encouraging and the existence of tight relations of X-ray observables, such as Yx, and total cluster mass and the simple redshift evolution of these relations hold promise for the use of clusters as cosmological probes.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures. Matches version accepted to Ap

Phase structure and Higgs boson mass in a Higgs-Yukawa model with a dimension-6 operator

We investigate the impact of a $\lambda_6 \varphi^6$ term included in a chirally invariant lattice Higgs-Yukawa model. Such a term could emerge from BSM physics at some larger energy scale. We map out the phase structure of the Higgs-Yukawa model with positive $\lambda_6$ and negative quartic self coupling of the scalar fields. To this end, we evaluate the constraint effective potential in lattice perturbation theory and also determine the magnetization of the model via numerical simulations which allow us to reach also non-perturbative values of the couplings. As a result, we find a complex phase structure with first and second order phase transitions identified through the magnetization. Further we analyze the effect of such a $\varphi^6$ term on the lower Higgs boson mass bound to see, whether the standard model lower mass bound can be altered.Comment: proceedings for The 32nd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theor

ALMA Science Verification Data: Millimeter Continuum Polarimetry of the Bright Radio Quasar 3C 286

We present full-polarization observations of the compact, steep-spectrum radio quasar 3C~286 made with the ALMA at 1.3~mm. These are the first full-polarization ALMA observations, which were obtained in the framework of Science Verification. A bright core and a south-west component are detected in the total intensity image, similar to previous centimeter images. Polarized emission is also detected toward both components. The fractional polarization of the core is about 17\%, this is higher than the fractional polarization at centimeter wavelengths, suggesting that the magnetic field is even more ordered in the millimeter radio core than it is further downstream in the jet. The observed polarization position angle (or EVPA) in the core is $\sim$\,$39^{\circ}$, which confirms the trend that the EVPA slowly increases from centimeter to millimeter wavelengths. With the aid of multi-frequency VLBI observations, we argue that this EVPA change is associated with the frequency-dependent core position. We also report a serendipitous detection of a sub-mJy source in the field of view, which is likely to be a submillimeter galaxy.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in the Ap

Gamma-ray probe of cosmic-ray pressure in galaxy clusters and cosmological implications

Cosmic rays produced in cluster accretion and merger shocks provide pressure to the intracluster medium (ICM) and affect the mass estimates of galaxy clusters. Although direct evidence for cosmic-ray ions in the ICM is still lacking, they produce gamma-ray emission through the decay of neutral pions produced in their collisions with ICM nucleons. We investigate the capability of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) and imaging atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes (IACTs) for constraining the cosmic-ray pressure contribution to the ICM. We show that GLAST can be used to place stringent upper limits, a few per cent for individual nearby rich clusters, on the ratio of pressures of the cosmic rays and thermal gas. We further show that it is possible to place tight (<~10%) constraints for distant (z <~ 0.25) clusters in the case of hard spectrum, by stacking signals from samples of known clusters. The GLAST limits could be made more precise with the constraint on the cosmic-ray spectrum potentially provided by IACTs. Future gamma-ray observations of clusters can constrain the evolution of cosmic-ray energy density, which would have important implications for cosmological tests with upcoming X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect cluster surveys.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; extended discussions; accepted by MNRA

Analysis of electron-positron momentum spectra of metallic alloys as supported by first-principles calculations

Electron-positron momentum distributions measured by the coincidence Doppler broadening method can be used in the chemical analysis of the annihilation environment, typically a vacancy-impurity complex in a solid. In the present work, we study possibilities for a quantitative analysis, i.e., for distinguishing the average numbers of different atomic species around the defect. First-principles electronic structure calculations self-consistently determining electron and positron densities and ion positions are performed for vacancy-solute complexes in Al-Cu, Al-Mg-Cu, and Al-Mg-Cu-Ag alloys. The ensuing simulated coincidence Doppler broadening spectra are compared with measured ones for defect identification. A linear fitting procedure, which uses the spectra for positrons trapped at vacancies in pure constituent metals as components, has previously been employed to find the relative percentages of different atomic species around the vacancy [A. Somoza et al. Phys. Rev. B 65, 094107 (2002)]. We test the reliability of the procedure by the help of first-principles results for vacancy-solute complexes and vacancies in constituent metals.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review B on September 19 2006. Revised version submitted on November 8 2006. Published on February 14 200

Twisted mass fermions: neutral pion masses from disconnected contributions

Twisted mass fermions allow light quarks to be explored but with the consequence that there are mass splittings, such as between the neutral and charged pion. Using a direct calculation of the connected neutral pion correlator and stochastic methods to evaluate the disconnected correlations, we determine the neutral pion mass. We explore the dependence on lattice spacing and quark mass in quenched QCD. For dynamical QCD, we determine the sign of the splitting which is linked, via chiral PT, to the nature of the phase transition at small quark mass.Comment: 6 pages, poster (hadron spectrum and quark masses) at Lattice 2005,Dublin, July 25-3

Nuclear parton distribution functions and their uncertainties

We analyze experimental data of nuclear structure-function ratios F_2^A/F_2^{A'} and Drell-Yan cross section ratios for obtaining optimum parton distribution functions (PDFs) in nuclei. Then, uncertainties of the nuclear PDFs are estimated by the Hessian method. Valence-quark distributions are determined by the F_2 data at large x; however, the small-x part is not obvious from the data. On the other hand, the antiquark distributions are determined well at x~0.01 from the F_2 data and at x~0.1 by the Drell-Yan data; however, the large-x behavior is not clear. Gluon distributions cannot be fixed by the present data and they have large uncertainties in the whole x region. Parametrization results are shown in comparison with the data. We provide a useful code for calculating nuclear PDFs at given x and Q^2.Comment: 9 pages, REVTeX, 23 eps files, Phys. Rev. C in press. Nuclear PDF library is available at http://hs.phys.saga-u.ac.jp/nuclp.htm