Search for CP-violation in Positronium Decay

CP-violation in the quark sector has been well established over the last decade, but has not been observed in the lepton sector. We search for CP-violating decay processes in positronium, using the angular correlation of (\vec{S}\cdot\vec{k_{1}})(\vec{S}\cdot\vec{k_{1}}\times\vec{k_{2}}), where \vec{S} is the the positronium spin and \vec{k_{1}}, \vec{k_{2}} are the directions of the positronium decay photons. To a sensitivity of 2.2\times10^{-3}, no CP-violation has been found, which is at the level of the CP-violation amplitude in the K meson. A 90% confidence interval of the CP-violation parameter (C_{CP}) was determined to be -0.0023 < C_{CP} < 0.0049. This result is a factor 7 more strict than that of the previous experiment

Measurement of Parity Violation in the Early Universe using Gravitational-wave Detectors

A stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) is expected to arise from the superposition of many independent and unresolved gravitational-wave signals, of either cosmological or astrophysical origin. Some cosmological models (characterized, for instance, by a pseudo-scalar inflaton, or by some modification of gravity) break parity, leading to a polarized SGWB. We present a new technique to measure this parity violation, which we then apply to the recent results from LIGO to produce the first upper limit on parity violation in the SGWB, assuming a generic power-law SGWB spectrum across the LIGO sensitive frequency region. We also estimate sensitivity to parity violation of the future generations of gravitational-wave detectors, both for a power-law spectrum and for a model of axion inflation. This technique offers a new way of differentiating between the cosmological and astrophysical sources of the isotropic SGWB, as astrophysical sources are not expected to produce a polarized SGWB.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Parametric attosecond pulse amplification far from the ionization threshold from high order harmonic generation in He+^+

Parametric amplification of attosecond coherent pulses around 100 eV at the single-atom level is demonstrated for the first time by using the 3D time-dependent Schr{\"o}dinger equation in high-harmonic generation processes from excited states of He$^+$. We present the attosecond dynamics of the amplification process far from the ionization threshold and resolve the physics behind it. The amplification of a particular central photon energy requires the seed XUV pulses to be perfectly synchronized in time with the driving laser field for stimulated recombination to the He$^+$ ground state and is only produced in a few specific laser cycles in agreement with the experimental measurements. Our simulations show that the amplified photon energy region can be controlled by varying the peak intensity of the laser field. Our results pave the way to the realization of compact attosecond pulse intense XUV lasers with broad applications

An x-ray detector using PIN photodiodes for the axion helioscope

An x-ray detector for a solar axion search was developed. The detector is operated at 60K in a cryostat of a superconducting magnet. Special care was paid to microphonic noise immunity and mechanical structure against thermal contraction. The detector consists of an array of PIN photodiodes and tailor made preamplifiers. The size of each PIN photodiode is $11\times 11\times 0.5\ {\rm mm^3}$ and 16 pieces are used for the detector. The detector consists of two parts, the front-end part being operated at a temperature of 60K and the main part in room temperature. Under these circumstances, the detector achieved 1.0 keV resolution in FWHM, 2.5 keV threshold and 6\times 10^{-5} counts sec^{-1} keV^{-1} cm^{-2} background level.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Nucl. Instr. Meth.

Results of a Search for Paraphotons with Intense X-ray Beams at SPring-8

A search for paraphotons, or hidden U(1) gauge bosons, is performed using an intense X-ray beamline at SPring--8. "Light Shining through a Wall" technique is used in this search. No excess of events above background is observed. A stringent constraint is obtained on the photon--paraphoton mixing angle, $\chi < 8.06\times 10^{-5}\ (95$ for $0.04\ {\rm eV}<m_{\gamma^{\prime}} < 26\ {\rm keV}$.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Direct Observation of the Hyperfine Transition of the Ground State Positronium

We report the first direct measurement of the hyperfine transition of the ground state positronium. The hyperfine structure between ortho-positronium and para-positronium is about 203 GHz. We develop a new optical system to accumulate about 10 kW power using a gyrotron, a mode converter, and a Fabry-P\'{e}rot cavity. The hyperfine transition has been observed with a significance of 5.4 standard deviations. The transition probability is measured to be $A = 3.1^{+1.6}_{-1.2} \times 10^{-8}$ s$^{-1}$ for the first time, which is in good agreement with the theoretical value of $3.37 \times 10^{-8}$ s$^{-1}$