3,814 research outputs found
On the Direct Detection of Dark Matter Annihilation
We investigate the direct detection phenomenology of a class of dark matter
(DM) models in which DM does not directly interact with nuclei, {but rather}
the products of its annihilation do. When these annihilation products are very
light compared to the DM mass, the scattering in direct detection experiments
is controlled by relativistic kinematics. This results in a distinctive recoil
spectrum, a non-standard and or even absent annual modulation, and the ability
to probe DM masses as low as a 10 MeV. We use current LUX data to show
that experimental sensitivity to thermal relic annihilation cross sections has
already been reached in a class of models. Moreover, the compatibility of dark
matter direct detection experiments can be compared directly in
space without making assumptions about DM astrophysics, mass, or scattering
form factors. Lastly, when DM has direct couplings to nuclei, the limit from
annihilation to relativistic particles in the Sun can be stronger than that of
conventional non-relativistic direct detection by more than three orders of
magnitude for masses in a 2-7 GeV window.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, PRL versio
Halo Independent Direct Detection of Momentum-Dependent Dark Matter
We show that the momentum dependence of dark matter interactions with nuclei
can be probed in direct detection experiments without knowledge of the dark
matter velocity distribution. This is one of the few properties of DM
microphysics that can be determined with direct detection alone, given a signal
of dark matter in multiple direct detection experiments with different targets.
Long-range interactions arising from the exchange of a light mediator are one
example of momentum-dependent DM. For data produced from the exchange of a
massless mediator we find for example that the mediator mass can be constrained
to be MeV for DM in the 20-1000 GeV range in a halo-independent
manner.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures; updated to match published versio
Long-term Running Experience with the Silicon Micro-strip Tracker at the D{\O} detector
The SiliconMicro-strip Tracker (SMT) at the D{\O} experiment in the Fermilab
Tevatron collider has been operating since 2001. In 2006, an additional layer,
referred to as 'Layer 0', was installed to improve impact parameter resolution
and compensate for detector degradation due to radiation damage to the original
innermost SMT layer. The SMT detector provides valuable tracking and vertexing
information for the experiment. This contribution will highlight aspects of the
long term operation of the SMT, including the impact of the silicon readout
test-stand. Due to the full integration of the test-stand into the D{\O}
trigger framework, this test-stand provides an advantageous tool for training
of new experts and studying subtle effects in the SMT while minimizing impact
on the global data acquisition.Comment: Proceedings of TIPP 2011 (Technology and Instrumentation for Particle
Physics 2011), June 9-14 2011, Chicago, US
An evaluation of the presence of pathogens on broilers raised on poultry litter treatment-treated litter
Two trials were conducted to evaluate the presence of salmonella, campylobacter, and generic Escherichia coli on broilers raised on Poultry Litter Treatment (PLT®)-enhanced litter in comparison with those raised on untreated litter. Two Company A farms included three houses on each farm as the treated group and three houses per farm as controls. Two complete growouts were evaluated on each farm. The Company B study included 10 farms with two paired houses per farm, one house as the treated group and one house as the control. One growout was evaluated per farm. The pathogen sampling consisted of litter sampling and whole bird rinses on the farm and in the processing plant. Litter pH, ammonia concentration, total litter bacteria, temperatures, and humidity were also recorded. The study with Company A resulted in lower mean levels of pH, ammonia concentration, total litter bacteria, litter E. coli, and bird rinse counts for salmonella and E. coli in houses treated with PLT®. The results for Company B closely resembled those for Company A, but also included campylobacter data, which showed no difference between treated and control groups. The data indicate that PLT® may be a beneficial component for on-farm pathogen reduction
Gonadal hormones, but not sex, affect the acquisition and maintenance of a Go/No-Go odor discrimination task in mice
In mice, olfaction is crucial for identifying social odors (pheromones) that signal the presence of suitable mates. We used a custom-built olfactometer and a thirst-motivated olfactory discrimination Go/No-Go (GNG) task to ask whether discrimination of volatile odors is sexually dimorphic and modulated in mice by adult sex hormones. Males and females gonadectomized prior to training failed to learn even the initial phase of the task, which involved nose poking at a port in one location obtaining water at an adjacent port. Gonadally intact males and females readily learned to seek water when male urine (S+) was present but not when female urine (S−) was present; they also learned the task when non-social odorants (amyl acetate, S+; peppermint, S−) were used. When mice were gonadectomized after training the ability of both sexes to discriminate urinary as well as non-social odors was reduced; however, after receiving testosterone propionate (castrated males) or estradiol benzoate (ovariectomized females), task performance was restored to pre-gonadectomy levels. There were no overall sex differences in performance across gonadal conditions in tests with either set of odors; however, ovariectomized females performed more poorly than castrated males in tests with non-social odors. Our results show that circulating sex hormones enable mice of both sexes to learn a GNG task and that gonadectomy reduces, while hormone replacement restores, their ability to discriminate between odors irrespective of the saliency of the odors used. Thus, gonadal hormones were essential for both learning and maintenance of task performance across sex and odor type.We thank David Giese for help in programming the apparatus used in GNG testing and Alberto Cruz-Martin for comments on an early version of the manuscript. This work was supported by NIDCD grant DC008962 to JAC. (DC008962 - NIDCD grant)Accepted manuscrip
The homestake surface-underground scintillations: Description
Two new detectors are currently under construction at the Homestake Gold Mine a 140-ton Large Area Scintillation Detector (LASD) with an upper surface area of 130 square meters, a geometry factor (for an isotropic flux) of 1200 square meters, sr, and a depth of 4200 m.w.e.; and a surface air shower array consisting of 100 scintillator elements, each 3 square meters, spanning an area of approximately square kilometers. Underground, half of the LASD is currently running and collecting muon data; on the surface, the first section of the air shower array will begin operation in the spring of 1985. The detectors and their capabilities are described
A Phase Transition for Circle Maps and Cherry Flows
We study weakly order preserving circle maps with a flat interval.
The main result of the paper is about a sharp transition from degenerate
geometry to bounded geometry depending on the degree of the singularities at
the boundary of the flat interval. We prove that the non-wandering set has zero
Hausdorff dimension in the case of degenerate geometry and it has Hausdorff
dimension strictly greater than zero in the case of bounded geometry. Our
results about circle maps allow to establish a sharp phase transition in the
dynamics of Cherry flows
Model for Spreading of Liquid Monolayers
Manipulating fluids at the nanoscale within networks of channels or chemical
lanes is a crucial challenge in developing small scale devices to be used in
microreactors or chemical sensors. In this context, ultra-thin (i.e.,
monolayer) films, experimentally observed in spreading of nano-droplets or upon
extraction from reservoirs in capillary rise geometries, represent an extreme
limit which is of physical and technological relevance since the dynamics is
governed solely by capillary forces. In this work we use kinetic Monte Carlo
(KMC) simulations to analyze in detail a simple, but realistic model proposed
by Burlatsky \textit{et al.} \cite{Burlatsky_prl96,Oshanin_jml} for the
two-dimensional spreading on homogeneous substrates of a fluid monolayer which
is extracted from a reservoir. Our simulations confirm the previously predicted
time-dependence of the spreading, , with as
the average position of the advancing edge at time , and they reveal a
non-trivial dependence of the prefactor on the strength of
inter-particle attraction and on the fluid density at the reservoir as
well as an -dependent spatial structure of the density profile of the
monolayer. The asymptotic density profile at long time and large spatial scale
is carefully analyzed within the continuum limit. We show that including the
effect of correlations in an effective manner into the standard mean-field
description leads to predictions both for the value of the threshold
interaction above which phase segregation occurs and for the density profiles
in excellent agreement with KMC simulations results.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
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