642 research outputs found
The BRAN luminosity detectors for the LHC
This paper describes the several phases which led, from the conceptual
design, prototyping, construction and tests with beam, to the installation and
operation of the BRAN (Beam RAte of Neutrals) relative luminosity monitors for
the LHC. The detectors have been operating since 2009 to contribute, optimize
and maintain the accelerator performance in the two high luminosity interaction
regions (IR), the IR1 (ATLAS) and the IR5 (CMS). The devices are gas ionization
chambers installed inside a neutral particle absorber 140 m away from the
Interaction Points in IR1 and IR5 and monitor the energy deposited by
electromagnetic showers produced by high-energy neutral particles from the
collisions. The detectors have the capability to resolve the bunch-by-bunch
luminosity at the 40 MHz bunch rate, as well as to survive the extreme level of
radiation during the nominal LHC operation. The devices have operated since the
early commissioning phase of the accelerator over a broad range of luminosities
reaching 1.4*10^34 cm-2 s-1 with a peak pileup of 45 events per bunch crossing.
Even though the nominal design luminosity of the LHC has been exceeded, the
BRAN is operating well. After describing the multiple applications that the
BRAN can be used to monitor the luminosity of the accelerator, we discuss the
technical choices that led to its construction and the different tests
performed prior to the installation in two IRs of the LHC. Performance
simulations are presented together with operational results obtained during p-p
operations, including runs at 40 MHz bunch rate, Pb-Pb operations and p-Pb
operations.Comment: 22 pages, 32 Figure
MeV-mass dark matter and primordial nucleosynthesis
The annihilation of new dark matter candidates with masses in the MeV
range may account for the galactic positrons that are required to explain the
511 keV -ray flux from the galactic bulge. We study the impact of
MeV-mass thermal relic particles on the primordial synthesis of H, He,
and Li. If the new particles are in thermal equilibrium with neutrinos
during the nucleosynthesis epoch they increase the helium mass fraction for
m_X\alt 10 MeV and are thus disfavored. If they couple primarily to the
electromagnetic plasma they can have the opposite effect of lowering both
helium and deuterium. For --10 MeV they can even improve the overall
agreement between the predicted and observed H and He abundances.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, references and two appendices added,
conclusions unchanged; accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.
Crossing borders: new teachers co-constructing professional identity in performative times
This paper draws on a range of theoretical perspectives on the construction of new teachersâ professional identity. It focuses particularly on the impact of the development in many national education systems of a performative culture of the management and regulation of teachersâ work. Whilst the role of interactions with professional colleagues and school managers in the performative school has been extensively researched, less attention has been paid to new teachersâ interactions with students. This paper highlights the need for further research focusing on the process of identity co-construction with students. A key theoretical concept employed is that of liminality, the space within which identities are in transition as teachers adjust to the culture of a new professional workplace, and the nature of the engagement of new teachers, or teachers who change schools, with students. The authors argue that an investigation into the processes of this co-construction of identity offers scope for new insights into the extent to which teachers might construct either a teacher identity at odds with their personal and professional values, or a more âauthenticâ identity that counters performative discourses. These insights will in turn add to our understanding of the complex range of factors impacting on teacher resilience and motivation
Constraints on accelerating universe using ESSENCE and Gold supernovae data combined with other cosmological probes
We use recently observed data: the 192 ESSENCE type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia),
the 182 Gold SNe Ia, the 3-year WMAP, the SDSS baryon acoustic peak, the X-ray
gas mass fraction in clusters and the observational data to constrain
models of the accelerating universe. Combining the 192 ESSENCE data with the
observational data to constrain a parameterized deceleration parameter,
we obtain the best fit values of transition redshift and current deceleration
parameter , .
Furthermore, using CDM model and two model-independent equation of
state of dark energy, we find that the combined constraint from the 192 ESSENCE
data and other four cosmological observations gives smaller values of
and , but a larger value of than the combined
constraint from the 182 Gold data with other four observations. Finally,
according to the Akaike information criterion it is shown that the recently
observed data equally supports three dark energy models: CDM,
and .Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure
Singularity free dilaton-driven cosmologies and pre-little-bang
There are no reasons why the singularity in the growth of the dilaton
coupling should not be regularised, in a string cosmological context, by the
presence of classical inhomogeneities. We discuss a class of inhomogeneous
dilaton-driven models whose curvature invariants are all bounded and regular in
time and space. We prove that the non-space-like geodesics of these models are
all complete in the sense that none of them reaches infinity for a finite value
of the affine parameter. We conclude that our examples represent truly
singularity-free solutions of the low energy beta functions. We discuss some
symmetries of the obtained solutions and we clarify their physical
interpretation. We also give examples of solutions with spherical symmetry. In
our scenario each physical quantity is everywhere defined in time and space,
the big-bang singularity is replaced by a maximal curvature phase where the
dilaton kinetic energy reaches its maximum. The maximal curvature is always
smaller than one (in string units) and the coupling constant is also smaller
than one and it grows between two regimes of constant dilaton, implying,
together with the symmetries of the solutions, that higher genus and higher
curvature corrections are negligible. We argue that our examples describe, in a
string cosmological context, the occurrence of ``little bangs''(i.e. high
curvature phases which never develop physical singularities). They also suggest
the possibility of an unexplored ``pre-little-bang'' phase.Comment: 25 pages in LaTex style, 3 encapsulated figure
Large-scale pathways-based association study in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a devastating neurodegenerative disease, most likely results from complex genetic and environmental interactions. Although a number of association studies have been performed in an effort to find genetic components of sporadic ALS, most of them resulted in inconsistent findings due to a small number of genes investigated in relatively small sample sizes, while the replication of results was rarely attempted. Defects in retrograde axonal transport, vesicle trafficking and xenobiotic metabolism have been implicated in neurodegeneration and motor neuron death both in human disease and animal models. To assess the role of common genetic variation in these pathways in susceptibility to sporadic ALS, we performed a pathway-based candidate gene case-control association study with replication. Furthermore, we determined reliability of whole genome amplified DNA in a large-scale association study. In the first stage of the study, 1277 putative functional and tagging SNPs in 134 genes spanning 8.7 Mb were genotyped in 822 British sporadic ALS patients and 872 controls using whole genome amplified DNA. To detect variants with modest effect size and discriminate among false positive findings 19 SNPs showing a trend of association in the initial screen were genotyped in a replication sample of 580 German sporadic ALS patients and 361 controls. We did not detect strong evidence of association with any of the genes investigated in the discovery sample (lowest uncorrected P-value 0.00037, lowest permutation corrected P-value 0.353). None of the suggestive associations was replicated in a second sample, further excluding variants with moderate effect size. We conclude that common variation in the investigated pathways is unlikely to have a major effect on susceptibility to sporadic ALS. The genotyping efficiency was only slightly decreased (âź1%) and genotyping quality was not affected using whole genome amplified DNA. It is reliable for large scale genotyping studies of diseases such as ALS, where DNA sample collections are limited because of low disease prevalence and short survival time. Š 2007 The Author(s)
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Rad-hard Luminosity Monitoring for the LHC
Luminosity measurements at the high luminosity points of the LHC are very challenging due to the extremely high radiation levels in the order of 180 MGy/yr. They have designed an ionization chamber that uses a flowing inorganic gas mixture and a combination of metals and ceramics. With such a choice, an additional challenge is achieving the necessary speed to be able to resolve bunch-by-bunch luminosity data. They present the design, analysis and experimental results of the early demonstration tests of this device
Measurement of the Bottom-Strange Meson Mixing Phase in the Full CDF Data Set
We report a measurement of the bottom-strange meson mixing phase \beta_s
using the time evolution of B0_s -> J/\psi (->\mu+\mu-) \phi (-> K+ K-) decays
in which the quark-flavor content of the bottom-strange meson is identified at
production. This measurement uses the full data set of proton-antiproton
collisions at sqrt(s)= 1.96 TeV collected by the Collider Detector experiment
at the Fermilab Tevatron, corresponding to 9.6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity.
We report confidence regions in the two-dimensional space of \beta_s and the
B0_s decay-width difference \Delta\Gamma_s, and measure \beta_s in [-\pi/2,
-1.51] U [-0.06, 0.30] U [1.26, \pi/2] at the 68% confidence level, in
agreement with the standard model expectation. Assuming the standard model
value of \beta_s, we also determine \Delta\Gamma_s = 0.068 +- 0.026 (stat) +-
0.009 (syst) ps-1 and the mean B0_s lifetime, \tau_s = 1.528 +- 0.019 (stat) +-
0.009 (syst) ps, which are consistent and competitive with determinations by
other experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett 109, 171802 (2012
Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset
corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected
during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV.
The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the
couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and
right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary
mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b,
leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing
transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W'
boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to
the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for
masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC
data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed
coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant
improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe
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