Suppression of Forward Pion Correlations in d+Au Interactions at STAR

During the 2008 run RHIC provided high luminosity in both p+p and d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200GeV$. Electromagnetic calorimeter acceptance in STAR was enhanced by the new Forward Meson Spectrometer (FMS), and is now almost contiguous from $-1<\eta<4$ over the full azimuth. This large acceptance provides sensitivity to the gluon density in the nucleus down to $x\approx 10^{-3}$. Measurements of the azimuthal correlation between a forward $\pi^0$ and an associated particle at large rapidity are sensitive to the low-$x$ gluon density. Data exhibit the qualitative features expected from gluon saturation. A comparison to calculations using the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) model is presented.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, proceeding for the 45th Rencontres de Moriond (QCD

Two Particle Correlations at Forward Rapidity in STAR

During the 2008 run RHIC provided high luminosity in both p+p and d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}= 200$ GeV. Electromagnetic calorimeter acceptance in STAR was enhanced by the new Forward Meson Spectrometer (FMS), and is now almost contiguous from $-1<\eta<4$ over the full azimuth. This large acceptance provides sensitivity to the gluon density in the nucleus down to $x\approx 10^{-3}$, as expected for $2\rightarrow 2$ parton scattering. Measurements of the azimuthal correlation between a forward $\pi^{0}$ and an associated particle at large rapidity are sensitive to the low-x gluon density. Data exhibit the qualitative features expected from gluon saturation. A comparison to calculations using the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) model is presented.Comment: proceeding for the RBRC workshop: "Saturation, the Color Glass Condensate and Glasma: What Have we Learned from RHIC?

Quantum-enhanced imaging and sensing with spatially correlated biphotons

In this thesis I discuss the experimental demonstration of quantum-enhanced imaging and sensing schemes able to surpass the performance of their classical counterparts. This is achieved by exploiting the spatial properties of quantum correlated biphotons. Over the next chapters I first discuss the production and detection of quantum correlated photons using a type-I nonlinear crystal and a single-photon sensitive electron-multiplying CCD camera. I then provide a simple yet powerful description of the spatially resolved detection of biphotons, allowing to accurately model and assess the performance of the quantum-enhanced schemes featured in this thesis. These consist of a shadow-sensing and an imaging scheme able to respectively beat the shot-noise-limit in the optical measurement of the position of a shadow and the diffraction limit in the full-field imaging of real-world objects. A combination of simulated and experimental results are used to investigate both the achieved and theoretically available quantum advantage. Optical losses and detector noise are found to limit the better-than-classical performance of the schemes, which rely on the ability to jointly detect an as high as possible number of spatially correlated biphotons

Two-particle azimuthal correlations at forward rapidity in STAR

During the 2008 run the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven Nation Laboratiory (BNL), NY, provided high luminosity in both p+p and d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200\mathrm{\,GeV}$. Electromagnetic calorimeter acceptance in STAR was enhanced by the new Forward Meson Spectrometer (FMS), and is now almost contiguous from -1<\eta\4 over the full azimuth. This allows measurements of the azimuthal correlation between a forward neutral pion and a second particle in a very large rapidity range. Di-hadron azimuthal correlations provide sensitivity to the low longitudinal momentum fraction ($x$) component of the gluon density in the nuclear target. Initial state nonlinear effects are in fact expected to appear in d+Au collisions when the dense part of the nucleus is probed. The analysis in this thesis shows that such correlations and their dependence on rapidity, transverse momentum and collision centrality are qualitative consistent with the existence of gluon saturation effects in the relativistic nucleus. Theoretical expectations for azimuthal correlations between a dilute system (deuteron) and a saturated target (Gold nucleus) have been explored.Comment: 108 pages, Ph.D. thesi

When the strengthening of historic masonry buildings should be carried out in different phases: the structural reinforcement and monitoring of the Lombard-Romanesque church of Saint Bassiano, in Pizzighettone (CR), Italy

An adequate approach to study the historic masonry buildings must begin with the knowledge and understanding of its structural logic with all its specific peculiarities and vulnerable points, given first by its historic constructive evolution and transformations and then to external causes. Also the global survey of the damage can highlight part of those transformations together with the localization of the most damaged areas. Monitoring selected cracks over time can be very useful to assess the evolution of the damage, avoiding collapses, and to understand the damage causes, useful to design the conservation plan. The accurate intervention of repair and strengthening of the parish church of San Bassiano in Pizzighettone, Cremona, Italy is here presented, where the crack monitoring was carried out to evaluate the partial structural intervention plan, to organize the next intervention phase, anticipating the urgent ones and delaying others, in order to leave open the church to the faithful

The transition from a coherent optical vortex to a Rankine vortex: beam contrast dependence on topological charge

Spatially coherent helically phased light beams carry orbital angular momentum (OAM) and contain phase singularities at their centre. Destructive interference at the position of the phase singularity means the intensity at this point is necessarily zero, which results in a high contrast between the centre and the surrounding annular intensity distribution. Beams of reduced spatial coherence yet still carrying OAM have previously been referred to as Rankine vortices. Such beams no longer possess zero intensity at their centre, exhibiting a contrast that decreases as their spatial coherence is reduced. In this work, we study the contrast of a vortex beam as a function of its spatial coherence and topological charge. We show that beams carrying higher values of topological charge display a radial intensity contrast that is more resilient to a reduction in spatial coherence of the source

Red-leafed species for urban "greening" in the age of global climate change

AbstractUrban trees provide vital ecosystem services such as mitigating heat island, improving air quality by removing various air pollutants, capturing rainwater, and acting as topsoil carbon storage. The aesthetic value of urban trees is also another feature that has to be considered in the context of urban greening. Classical criteria for the selection of urban trees have to respond to new challenges imposed to the cities in a near future. Global climate change factors increase the harshness of our cities, and thereby the plant resilience to abiotic stresses has also to be seriously considered for planning the urban greening. Red-leafed species, characterized by the permanent presence of foliar anthocyanins, show a greater tolerance to different environmental cues than green-leafed species commonly used in our cities. In addition, red tree species own a great aesthetic value which has been underestimated in the context of urban areas, especially in the harsh Mediterranean cities. In this study, we emphasize the "privilege of being red" from different point of view, in order to drive the attention to the possibility to increase the use of red-leafed species for urban "greening". Some possible negative aspects related to their use are rebutted and the direction of future researches are proposed

Sub-shot-noise shadow sensing with quantum correlations

The quantised nature of the electromagnetic field sets the classical limit to the sensitivity of position measurements. However, techniques based on the properties of quantum states can be exploited to accurately measure the relative displacement of a physical object beyond this classical limit. In this work, we use a simple scheme based on the split-detection of quantum correlations to measure the position of a shadow at the single-photon light level, with a precision that exceeds the shot-noise limit. This result is obtained by analysing the correlated signals of bi-photon pairs, created in parametric downconversion and detected by an electron multiplying CCD (EMCCD) camera employed as a split-detector. By comparing the measured statistics of spatially anticorrelated and uncorrelated photons we were able to observe a significant noise reduction corresponding to an improvement in position sensitivity of up to 17% (0.8dB). Our straightforward approach to sub-shot-noise position measurement is compatible with conventional shadow-sensing techniques based on the split-detection of light-fields, and yields an improvement that scales favourably with the detector’s quantum efficiency