The Influence of Radiation Damage on the Deflection of High-Energy Beams in Bent Silicon Crystals

Experimental results obtained for deflection of 450 GeV/c protons channeling along the {111} planes in a bent, strongly irradiated silicon crystal are presented. A comparison between the deflection efficiencies in irradiated areas and non-irradiated areas in the crystal shows that irradiation by 2.4 · 1020 protons/cm2 leads to a reduction of around 30 % in deflection efficiency. As a consequence, beam-splitting and extraction from an accelerator by means of a bent crystal are feasible solutions at high energies even for intense beams and during long periods

Record deflection efficiencies measured for high energy protons in a bent germanium crystal

New experimental results on the deflection of high energy protons in a bent germanium crystal are presented. At 450 GeV/c, the 50 mm long crystal gave record deflection efficiencies up to 60% for small angles (1 mrad), while at angles as large as 12 mrad, the efficiency is about 25 times larger than for a silicon crystal of the same size. The experimental results are in good agreement with a model for channeling and deflection developed by Ellison and give - together with a similar comparison for a 200 GeV/c beam - confidence in extrapolations to higher energies (e.g. to LHC), other crystal materials or different deflection angles

GENERATION AND DETECTION OF THE POLARIZATION OF MULTI-GEV PHOTONS BY USE OF TWO DIAMOND CRYSTALS

Abstract Presented are experimental results for the difference in pair production probability (the asymmetry) for 5–150 GeV photons polarized parallel and perpendicular to a (110) plane in a 1.5 mm thick diamond 〈100〉 crystal. The photons are produced by interaction of 150 GeV electrons with an aligned diamond 〈100〉 crystal of 0.5 mm thickness. A significant asymmetry is found over the whole energy range, which corresponds to a high degree of linear polarization of the photons as well as a difference in the refractive index. This proof-of-principle result gives the possibility of producing high energy photons with circular polarization by use of a crystal. This might open for several opportunities in high energy physics like for instance the investigation of the contribution of the gluons to the spin of the nucleon

Measurement of pair-production by high energy photons in an aligned tungsten crystal

A new measurement has been made of the rate of pair production in a 3.2 mm thick tungsten crystal, exposed to photons with energies in the range 10 to 150 GeV, for angles of incidence up to 10 mrad from the crystal axis. A strong enhancement of the pair-production rate is observed when the beam is aligned along the crystal axis, as compared to a random orientation. This effect can be exploited in the NA48 CP- violation experiment by using a thin crystal rather than an amorphous material to convert photons, thus minimising the scattering of kaons in the converter

Formation of nanoscale ferromagnetic MnAs crystallites in low-temperature grown GaAs

3 páginas, 3 figuras, 1 tabla.We report the formation of nanosize ferromagnetic MnAs crystallites imbedded in low-temperature grown GaAs using Mn+ ion implantation and subsequent annealing. The structural and magnetic properties of the crystallites have been characterized by transmission electron microscopy, electron beam induced x-ray fluorescence, and superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry. After an optimized thermal annealing at 750 °C, MnAs crystallites of 50 nm in size are formed. These nanomagnets show room temperature ferromagnetism.This work has been supported by QUEST, an NSF Science and Technology center (Grant No. DMR91.20007). P.J.W. is a postdoctoral fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) J.M.G. is a postdoctoral fellow of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.Peer reviewe

Operational experience, improvements, and performance of the CDF Run II silicon vertex detector

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) pursues a broad physics program at Fermilab's Tevatron collider. Between Run II commissioning in early 2001 and the end of operations in September 2011, the Tevatron delivered 12 fb-1 of integrated luminosity of p-pbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV. Many physics analyses undertaken by CDF require heavy flavor tagging with large charged particle tracking acceptance. To realize these goals, in 2001 CDF installed eight layers of silicon microstrip detectors around its interaction region. These detectors were designed for 2--5 years of operation, radiation doses up to 2 Mrad (0.02 Gy), and were expected to be replaced in 2004. The sensors were not replaced, and the Tevatron run was extended for several years beyond its design, exposing the sensors and electronics to much higher radiation doses than anticipated. In this paper we describe the operational challenges encountered over the past 10 years of running the CDF silicon detectors, the preventive measures undertaken, and the improvements made along the way to ensure their optimal performance for collecting high quality physics data. In addition, we describe the quantities and methods used to monitor radiation damage in the sensors for optimal performance and summarize the detector performance quantities important to CDF's physics program, including vertex resolution, heavy flavor tagging, and silicon vertex trigger performance.Comment: Preprint accepted for publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods A (07/31/2013

Predicting consumer biomass, size-structure, production, catch potential, responses to fishing and associated uncertainties in the world's marine ecosystems

Existing estimates of fish and consumer biomass in the world’s oceans are disparate. This creates uncertainty about the roles of fish and other consumers in biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem processes, the extent of human and environmental impacts and fishery potential. We develop and use a size-based macroecological model to assess the effects of parameter uncertainty on predicted consumer biomass, production and distribution. Resulting uncertainty is large (e.g. median global biomass 4.9 billion tonnes for consumers weighing 1 g to 1000 kg; 50% uncertainty intervals of 2 to 10.4 billion tonnes; 90% uncertainty intervals of 0.3 to 26.1 billion tonnes) and driven primarily by uncertainty in trophic transfer efficiency and its relationship with predator-prey body mass ratios. Even the upper uncertainty intervals for global predictions of consumer biomass demonstrate the remarkable scarcity of marine consumers, with less than one part in 30 million by volume of the global oceans comprising tissue of macroscopic animals. Thus the apparently high densities of marine life seen in surface and coastal waters and frequently visited abundance hotspots will likely give many in society a false impression of the abundance of marine animals. Unexploited baseline biomass predictions from the simple macroecological model were used to calibrate a more complex size- and trait-based model to estimate fisheries yield and impacts. Yields are highly dependent on baseline biomass and fisheries selectivity. Predicted global sustainable fisheries yield increases ≈4 fold when smaller individuals (< 20 cm from species of maximum mass < 1kg) are targeted in all oceans, but the predicted yields would rarely be accessible in practice and this fishing strategy leads to the collapse of larger species if fishing mortality rates on different size classes cannot be decoupled. Our analyses show that models with minimal parameter demands that are based on a few established ecological principles can support equitable analysis and comparison of diverse ecosystems. The analyses provide insights into the effects of parameter uncertainty on global biomass and production estimates, which have yet to be achieved with complex models, and will therefore help to highlight priorities for future research and data collection. However, the focus on simple model structures and global processes means that non-phytoplankton primary production and several groups, structures and processes of ecological and conservation interest are not represented. Consequently, our simple models become increasingly less useful than more complex alternatives when addressing questions about food web structure and function, biodiversity, resilience and human impacts at smaller scales and for areas closer to coasts

Organism-sediment interactions govern post-hypoxia recovery of ecosystem functioning

Hypoxia represents one of the major causes of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning loss for coastal waters. Since eutrophication-induced hypoxic events are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, understanding the response of ecosystems to hypoxia is of primary importance to understand and predict the stability of ecosystem functioning. Such ecological stability may greatly depend on the recovery patterns of communities and the return time of the system properties associated to these patterns. Here, we have examined how the reassembly of a benthic community contributed to the recovery of ecosystem functioning following experimentally-induced hypoxia in a tidal flat. We demonstrate that organism-sediment interactions that depend on organism size and relate to mobility traits and sediment reworking capacities are generally more important than recovering species richness to set the return time of the measured sediment processes and properties. Specifically, increasing macrofauna bioturbation potential during community reassembly significantly contributed to the recovery of sediment processes and properties such as denitrification, bedload sediment transport, primary production and deep pore water ammonium concentration. Such bioturbation potential was due to the replacement of the small-sized organisms that recolonised at early stages by large-sized bioturbating organisms, which had a disproportionately stronger influence on sediment. This study suggests that the complete recovery of organism-sediment interactions is a necessary condition for ecosystem functioning recovery, and that such process requires long periods after disturbance due to the slow growth of juveniles into adult stages involved in these interactions. Consequently, repeated episodes of disturbance at intervals smaller than the time needed for the system to fully recover organism-sediment interactions may greatly impair the resilience of ecosystem functioning.