475 research outputs found
A Study of the Residual 39Ar Content in Argon from Underground Sources
The discovery of argon from underground sources with significantly less 39Ar
than atmospheric argon was an important step in the development of
direct-detection dark matter experiments using argon as the active target. We
report on the design and operation of a low background detector with a single
phase liquid argon target that was built to study the 39Ar content of the
underground argon. Underground argon from the Kinder Morgan CO2 plant in
Cortez, Colorado was determined to have less than 0.65% of the 39Ar activity in
atmospheric argon.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure
Glass breaks like metals, but at the nanometer scale
We report in situ Atomic Force Microscopy experiments which reveal the
presence of nanoscale damage cavities ahead of a stress-corrosion crack tip in
glass. Their presence might explain the departure from linear elasticity
observed in the vicinity of a crack tip in glass. Such a ductile fracture
mechanism, widely observed in the case of metallic materials at the micrometer
scale, might be also at the origin of the striking similarity of the
morphologies of fracture surfaces of glass and metallic alloys at different
length scales.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett, few minor
corrections, Fig. 1b change
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New experimental limits on the Pauli forbidden transitions in C nuclei obtained with 485 days Borexino data
The Pauli exclusion principle (PEP) has been tested for nucleons () in
with the Borexino detector.The approach consists of a search for
, , and emitted in a non-Paulian transition of
1- shell nucleons to the filled 1 shell in nuclei. Due to the
extremely low background and the large mass (278 t) of the Borexino detector,
the following most stringent up-to-date experimental bounds on PEP violating
transitions of nucleons have been established:
y, y,
y,
y and y, all at 90% C.L. The corresponding upper
limits on the relative strengths for the searched non-Paulian electromagnetic,
strong and weak transitions have been estimated: , and .Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
Measurement of the solar 8B neutrino rate with a liquid scintillator target and 3 MeV energy threshold in the Borexino detector
We report the measurement of electron neutrino elastic scattering from 8B
solar neutrinos with 3 MeV energy threshold by the Borexino detector in Gran
Sasso (Italy). The rate of solar neutrino-induced electron scattering events
above this energy in Borexino is 0.217 +- 0.038 (stat) +- 0.008 (syst) cpd/100
t, which corresponds to the equivalent unoscillated flux of (2.4 +- 0.4 (stat)
+- 0.1 (syst))x10^6 cm^-2 s^-1, in good agreement with measurements from SNO
and SuperKamiokaNDE. Assuming the 8B neutrino flux predicted by the high
metallicity Standard Solar Model, the average 8B neutrino survival probability
above 3 MeV is measured to be 0.29+-0.10. The survival probabilities for 7Be
and 8B neutrinos as measured by Borexino differ by 1.9 sigma. These results are
consistent with the prediction of the MSW-LMA solution of a transition in the
solar electron neutrino survival probability between the low energy
vacuum-driven and the high-energy matter-enhanced solar neutrino oscillation
regimes.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 6 table
Muon and Cosmogenic Neutron Detection in Borexino
Borexino, a liquid scintillator detector at LNGS, is designed for the
detection of neutrinos and antineutrinos from the Sun, supernovae, nuclear
reactors, and the Earth. The feeble nature of these signals requires a strong
suppression of backgrounds below a few MeV. Very low intrinsic radiogenic
contamination of all detector components needs to be accompanied by the
efficient identification of muons and of muon-induced backgrounds. Muons
produce unstable nuclei by spallation processes along their trajectory through
the detector whose decays can mimic the expected signals; for isotopes with
half-lives longer than a few seconds, the dead time induced by a muon-related
veto becomes unacceptably long, unless its application can be restricted to a
sub-volume along the muon track. Consequently, not only the identification of
muons with very high efficiency but also a precise reconstruction of their
tracks is of primary importance for the physics program of the experiment. The
Borexino inner detector is surrounded by an outer water-Cherenkov detector that
plays a fundamental role in accomplishing this task. The detector design
principles and their implementation are described. The strategies adopted to
identify muons are reviewed and their efficiency is evaluated. The overall muon
veto efficiency is found to be 99.992% or better. Ad-hoc track reconstruction
algorithms developed are presented. Their performance is tested against muon
events of known direction such as those from the CNGS neutrino beam, test
tracks available from a dedicated External Muon Tracker and cosmic muons whose
angular distribution reflects the local overburden profile. The achieved
angular resolution is 3-5 deg and the lateral resolution is 35-50 cm, depending
on the impact parameter of the crossing muon. The methods implemented to
efficiently tag cosmogenic neutrons are also presented.Comment: 42 pages. 32 figures on 37 files. Uses JINST.cls. 1 auxiliary file
(defines.tex) with TEX macros. submitted to Journal of Instrumentatio
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Measurement of geo-neutrinos from 1353 days of Borexino
We present a measurement of the geo--neutrino signal obtained from 1353 days
of data with the Borexino detector at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in
Italy. With a fiducial exposure of (3.69 0.16) proton
year after all selection cuts and background subtraction, we detected
(14.3 4.4) geo-neutrino events assuming a fixed chondritic mass Th/U
ratio of 3.9. This corresponds to a geo-neutrino signal = (38.8
12.0) TNU with just a 6 probability for a null geo-neutrino
measurement. With U and Th left as free parameters in the fit, the relative
signals are = (10.6 12.7) TNU and =
(26.5 19.5) TNU. Borexino data alone are compatible with a mantle
geo--neutrino signal of (15.4 12.3) TNU, while a combined analysis with
the KamLAND data allows to extract a mantle signal of (14.1 8.1) TNU. Our
measurement of a reactor anti--neutrino signal =
84.5 TNU is in agreement with expectations in the presence of
neutrino oscillations.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
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