15,815 research outputs found
Half-Life of O
We have measured the half-life of O, a superallowed decay isotope. The O was produced by the
C(He,n)O reaction using a carbon aerogel target. A
low-energy ion beam of O was mass separated and implanted in a thin
beryllium foil. The beta particles were counted with plastic scintillator
detectors. We find s. This result is
higher than an average value from six earlier experiments, but agrees more
closely with the most recent previous measurement.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Baseline design of the filters for the LAD detector on board LOFT
The Large Observatory for X-ray Timing (LOFT) was one of the M3 missions
selected for the phase A study in the ESA's Cosmic Vision program. LOFT is
designed to perform high-time-resolution X-ray observations of black holes and
neutron stars. The main instrument on the LOFT payload is the Large Area
Detector (LAD), a collimated experiment with a nominal effective area of ~10 m
2 @ 8 keV, and a spectral resolution of ~240 eV in the energy band 2-30 keV.
These performances are achieved covering a large collecting area with more than
2000 large-area Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) each one coupled to a collimator
based on lead-glass micro-channel plates. In order to reduce the thermal load
onto the detectors, which are open to Sky, and to protect them from out of band
radiation, optical-thermal filter will be mounted in front of the SDDs.
Different options have been considered for the LAD filters for best compromise
between high quantum efficiency and high mechanical robustness. We present the
baseline design of the optical-thermal filters, show the nominal performances,
and present preliminary test results performed during the phase A study.Comment: Proc. SPIE 9144, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014:
Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 91446
Large gauge invariant non-standard neutrino interactions
Theories beyond the Standard Model must necessarily respect its gauge
symmetry. This implies strict constraints on the possible models of
non-standard neutrino interactions, which we analyze. The focus is set on the
effective low-energy dimension six and eight operators involving four leptons,
decomposing them according to all possible tree-level mediators, as a guide for
model building. The new couplings are required to have sizeable strength, while
processes involving four charged leptons are required to be suppressed. For
non-standard interactions in matter, only diagonal tau-neutrino interactions
can escape these requirements and can be allowed to result from dimension six
operators. Large non-standard neutrino interactions from dimension eight
operators alone are phenomenologically allowed in all flavour channels and
shown to require at least two new mediator particles. The new couplings must
obey general cancellation conditions both at the dimension six and eight
levels, which result from expressing the operators obtained from the mediator
analysis in terms of a complete basis of operators. We illustrate with one
example how to apply this information to model building.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures, 5 tables. Final version in PR
Neutrino mass from higher than d=5 effective operators in SUSY, and its test at the LHC
We discuss neutrino masses from higher than d=5 effective operators in a
supersymmetric framework, where we explicitly demonstrate which operators could
be the leading contribution to neutrino mass in the MSSM and NMSSM. As an
example, we focus on the d=7 operator L L H_u H_u H_d H_u, for which we
systematically derive all tree-level decompositions. We argue that many of
these lead to a linear or inverse see-saw scenario with two extra neutral
fermions, where the lepton number violating term is naturally suppressed by a
heavy mass scale when the extra mediators are integrated out. We choose one
example, for which we discuss possible implementations of the neutrino flavor
structure. In addition, we show that the heavy mediators, in this case SU(2)
doublet fermions, may indeed be observable at the LHC, since they can be
produced by Drell-Yan processes and lead to displaced vertices when they decay.
However, the direct observation of lepton number violating processes is on the
edge at LHC.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, 6 table
First appraisal to define prospective seismogenic sources from historical earthquake damages in southern Upper Rhine Graben
The southern portion ofthe Upper Rhine Graben, a major oblique rift among France, Germany and Switzerland, shows a weak
instrumental seismic record despite its remarkable physiographic imprint within the Northern Alpine foreland. Since traces of active
deformation can be found in this region and based on experience in other European areas with high seismic hazard and dense
population, we searched for past earthquakes recorded in historical catalogues. Based on the fact that tectonic deformation
cumulates through geological time and considering that long-term effects tend to leave characteristic signatures on present-day
landscape arrangement, our goal was to identify faults that could have caused the damage of recorded historical events.
We isolated five main earthquakes, ofmoderate Richter magnitude, essentially located on the E flank of the graben (as is the case
with recent seismic activity). To such events, we were able to associate a specific prospective structure through the use ofa procedure
thus far successfully employed in Southern European contexts. We concentrated on three events which showed (a) notable sensitivity
to the density of the historical felt reports and (b) accordance with on-going subtle deformation pattern. Another, most relevant
earthquake (M 5.5) yielded a promising match with the known deformation network in the region.
As a template to better constrain earthquake cycle and damage potential, historical seismicity offers an invaluable tool, since it
contains a specific record, although not always unambiguous. Cross-checking such data with pertinent geological information
allows to devise a realistic fault geometry capable of being responsible for a specific seismic event
Anomalous Higgs Couplings at the LHC
We discuss the impact and potential discovery of physics beyond the Standard
Model, coupling to the Higgs sector, at the LHC. Using a model-independent
effective Lagrangian approach, pure Higgs and Higgs-gauge operators are
analyzed, and their origin in terms of tree-level exchange of unknown heavy
messengers is systematically derived. It is demonstrated that early signals at
the LHC may result from a simultaneous modification of Higgs-fermion and
Higgs-gauge boson couplings induced by those operators, pointing towards
singlet scalar or a triplet vector -- barring fine-tuned options. Of course,
the Higgs discovery itself will also be affected by such new couplings. With
increasing statistics, the remaining options can be discriminated from each
other. On the other hand, the discovery of a new scalar doublet may require
technology beyond the LHC, since the Higgs self-couplings have to be measured.
Our conclusions are based on the complete set of tree-level decompositions of
the effective operators unbiased by a specific model.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figures, version to appear in Phys.Rev.
Distinguishing multi-partite states by local measurements
We analyze the distinguishability norm on the states of a multi-partite
system, defined by local measurements. Concretely, we show that the norm
associated to a tensor product of sufficiently symmetric measurements is
essentially equivalent to a multi-partite generalisation of the non-commutative
2-norm (aka Hilbert-Schmidt norm): in comparing the two, the constants of
domination depend only on the number of parties but not on the Hilbert spaces
dimensions.
We discuss implications of this result on the corresponding norms for the
class of all measurements implementable by local operations and classical
communication (LOCC), and in particular on the leading order optimality of
multi-party data hiding schemes.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 1 unreferenced referenc
Neutral Evolution as Diffusion in phenotype space: reproduction with mutation but without selection
The process of `Evolutionary Diffusion', i.e. reproduction with local
mutation but without selection in a biological population, resembles standard
Diffusion in many ways. However, Evolutionary Diffusion allows the formation of
local peaks with a characteristic width that undergo drift, even in the
infinite population limit. We analytically calculate the mean peak width and
the effective random walk step size, and obtain the distribution of the peak
width which has a power law tail. We find that independent local mutations act
as a diffusion of interacting particles with increased stepsize.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Paper now representative of published articl
Unambiguous determination of spin dephasing times in ZnO
Time-resolved magneto-optics is a well-established optical pump probe
technique to generate and to probe spin coherence in semiconductors. By this
method, spin dephasing times T_2^* can easily be determined if their values are
comparable to the available pump-probe-delays. If T_2^* exceeds the laser
repetition time, however, resonant spin amplification (RSA) can equally be used
to extract T_2^*. We demonstrate that in ZnO these techniques have several
tripping hazards resulting in deceptive values for T_2^* and show how to avoid
them. We show that the temperature dependence of the amplitude ratio of two
separate spin species can easily be misinterpreted as a strongly temperature
dependent T_2^* of a single spin ensemble, while the two spin species have
T_2^* values which are nearly independent of temperature. Additionally,
consecutive pump pulses can significantly diminish the spin polarization, which
remains from previous pump pulses. While this barely affects T_2^* values
extracted from delay line scans, it results in seemingly shorter T_2^* values
in RSA.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure
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