Bistatic Radar Configuration for Soil Moisture Retrieval: Analysis of the Spatial Coverage

Some outcomes of a feasibility analysis of a spaceborne bistatic radar mission for soil moisture retrieval are presented in this paper. The study starts from the orbital design of the configuration suitable for soil moisture estimation identified in a previous study. This configuration is refined according to the results of an analysis of the spatial resolution. The paper focuses on the assessment of the spatial coverage i.e., on the verification that an adequate overlap between the footprints of the antennas is ensured and on the duty cycle, that is the fraction of orbital period during which the bistatic data are acquired. A non-cooperating system is considered, in which the transmitter is the C-band Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar aboard Envisat. The best performances in terms of duty cycle are achieved if the transmitter operates in Wide Swath Mode. The higher resolution Image Swath Modes that comply with the selected configuration have a duty cycle that is never less than 12% and can exceed 21%. When Envisat operates in Wide Swath Mode, the bistatic system covers a wide latitude range across the equator, while in some of the Image Swath Modes, the bistatic measurements, collected from the same orbit, cover mid-latitude areas. In the latter case, it might be possible to achieve full coverage in an Envisat orbit repeat cycle, while, for a very large latitude range such as that covered in Wide Swath Mode, bistatic acquisitions could be obtained over about 65% of the area

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements