Radar shadow detection in SAR images using DEM and projections

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images are widely used in target recognition tasks nowadays. In this letter, we propose an automatic approach for radar shadow detection and extraction from SAR images utilizing geometric projections along with the digital elevation model (DEM) which corresponds to the given geo-referenced SAR image. First, the DEM is rotated into the radar geometry so that each row would match that of a radar line of sight. Next, we extract the shadow regions by processing row by row until the image is covered fully. We test the proposed shadow detection approach on different DEMs and a simulated 1D signals and 2D hills and volleys modeled by various variance based Gaussian functions. Experimental results indicate the proposed algorithm produces good results in detecting shadows in SAR images with high resolution.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Longitudinal top polarisation measurement and anomalous WtbWtb coupling

Kinematical distributions of decay products of the top quark carry information on the polarisation of the top as well as on any possible new physics in the decay of the top quark. We construct observables in the form of asymmetries in the kinematical distributions to probe their effects. Charged-lepton angular distributions in the decay are insensitive to anomalous couplings to leading order. Hence these can be a robust probe of top polarisation. However, these are difficult to measure in the case of highly boosted top quarks as compared to energy distributions of decay products. These are then sensitive, in general, to both top polarisation and top anomalous couplings. We compare various asymmetries for their sensitivities to the longitudinal polarisation of the top quark as well as to possible new physics in the $Wtb$ vertex, paying special attention to the case of highly boosted top quarks. We perform a $\chi ^2$- analysis to determine the regions in the longitudinal polarisation of the top quark and the couplings of the $Wtb$ vertex constrained by different combinations of the asymmetries. Moreover, we find that use of observables sensitive to the longitudinal top polarisation can add to the sensitivity to which the $Wtb$ vertex can be probed.Comment: significantly revised version, clarifications on the term 'polarisation' added, new references added, the title modified, 41 figures. Accepted for publication in EPJ