Production of multi-strange baryons in 7 TeV proton-proton collisions with ALICE

In the perspective of comparisons between proton-proton and heavy-ion physics, understanding the production mechanisms (soft and hard) in pp that lead to strange particles is of importance. Measurements of charged multi-strange (anti-)baryons (Omega and Xi) are presented for pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. This report is based on results obtained by ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) from the 2010 data-taking. Taking advantage of the characteristic cascade-decay topology, the identification of Xi-, anti-Xi+, Omega- and anti-Omega+ can be performed, over a wide range of momenta (e.g. from 0.6 to 8.5 GeV/c for Xi-, with the present statistics analysed). The production at central rapidity (|y| < 0.5) as a function of transverse momentum, dN/dptdy, is presented. These results are compared to PYTHIA Perugia 2011 predictions.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Strangeness In Quark Matter (SQM 2011), 18-24 Sept. 2011, Krakow. To be published in Acta Physica Polonica B (APPB

Measurements of inclusive J/psi production in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV with the ALICE experiment

Charmonium is a prominent probe of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), expected to be formed in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion (A-A) collisions. It has been predicted that the J/psi(c-cbar) particle is dissolved in the deconfined medium created in A-A systems. However this suppression can be counterbalanced via regeneration of the charm/anti-charm bound state in QGP or via statistical production at the phase boundary. At LHC energies, the latter mechanisms are expected to play a more important role, due to a charm production cross section significantly larger than at lower energies. Measurements obtained by the ALICE experiment for inclusive J/psi production are shown, making use of Pb-Pb data at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV, collected in 2010 and 2011. In particular, the focus is given on the nuclear modification factor, R_AA, derived for forward (2.5 < y < 4) and mid rapidities (|y| < 0.9), both down to zero transverse momentum (pT). The centrality, y and pT dependences of R_AA are presented and discussed in the context of theoretical models, together with PHENIX and CMS results.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. To be published in PoS. Proceedings of the Xth QCHS conference (Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum), 2012, 8-12 October 2012, Munich. See corresponding presentation under TUM indico : http://intern.universe-cluster.de/indico/contributionDisplay.py?contribId=246&sessionId=36&confId=229

Gemini Planet Imager Observational Calibrations IV: Wavelength Calibration and Flexure Correction for the Integral Field Spectrograph

We present the wavelength calibration for the lenslet-based Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) that serves as the science instrument for the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). The GPI IFS features a 2.7" x 2.7" field of view and a 190 x 190 lenslet array (14.3 mas/lenslet) operating in $Y$, $J$, $H$, and $K$ bands with spectral resolving power ranging from $R$ $\sim$ 35 to 78. Due to variations across the field of view, a unique wavelength solution is determined for each lenslet characterized by a two-dimensional position, the spectral dispersion, and the rotation of the spectrum with respect to the detector axes. The four free parameters are fit using a constrained Levenberg-Marquardt least-squares minimization algorithm, which compares an individual lenslet's arc lamp spectrum to a simulated arc lamp spectrum. This method enables measurement of spectral positions to better than 1/10th of a pixel on the GPI IFS detector using Gemini's facility calibration lamp unit GCAL, improving spectral extraction accuracy compared to earlier approaches. Using such wavelength calibrations we have measured how internal flexure of the spectrograph with changing zenith angle shifts spectra on the detector. We describe the methods used to compensate for these shifts when assembling datacubes from on-sky observations using GPI.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Proceedings of the SPIE, 9147-27

A Partially Reflecting Random Walk on Spheres Algorithm for Electrical Impedance Tomography

In this work, we develop a probabilistic estimator for the voltage-to-current map arising in electrical impedance tomography. This novel so-called partially reflecting random walk on spheres estimator enables Monte Carlo methods to compute the voltage-to-current map in an embarrassingly parallel manner, which is an important issue with regard to the corresponding inverse problem. Our method uses the well-known random walk on spheres algorithm inside subdomains where the diffusion coefficient is constant and employs replacement techniques motivated by finite difference discretization to deal with both mixed boundary conditions and interface transmission conditions. We analyze the global bias and the variance of the new estimator both theoretically and experimentally. In a second step, the variance is considerably reduced via a novel control variate conditional sampling technique

Monte Carlo approximations of the Neumann problem

We introduce Monte Carlo methods to compute the solution of elliptic equations with pure Neumann boundary conditions. We first prove that the solution obtained by the stochastic representation has a zero mean value with respect to the invariant measure of the stochastic process associated to the equation. Pointwise approximations are computed by means of standard and new simulation schemes especially devised for local time approximation on the boundary of the domain. Global approximations are computed thanks to a stochastic spectral formulation taking into account the property of zero mean value of the solution. This stochastic formulation is asymptotically perfect in terms of conditioning. Numerical examples are given on the Laplace operator on a square domain with both pure Neumann and mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary conditions. A more general convection-diffusion equation is also numerically studied