44 research outputs found
A multiyear assessment of air quality benefits from China’s emerging shale gas revolution: Urumqi as a case study
China is seeking to unlock its shale gas in order to curb its notorious urban air pollution, but robust assessment of the impact on PM2.5 pollution of replacing coal with natural gas for winter heating is lacking. Here, using a whole-city heating energy shift opportunity offered by substantial reductions in coal combustion during the heating periods in Urumqi, northwest China, we conducted a four-year study to reveal the impact of replacing coal with natural gas on the mass concentrations and chemical components of PM2.5. We found a significant decline in PM2.5, major soluble ions and metal elements in PM2.5 in January of 2013 and 2014 compared with the same periods in 2012 and 2011, reflecting the positive effects on air quality of using natural gas as a heating fuel throughout the city. This occurred following complete replacement with natural gas for heating energy in October 2012. The weather conditions during winter did not show any significant variation over the four years of the study. Our results indicate that China and other developing nations will benefit greatly from a change in energy source, that is, increasing the contribution of either natural gas or shale gas to total energy consumption with a concomitant reduction in coal consumption
Low-mass dark matter search results from full exposure of PandaX-I experiment
We report the results of a weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark
matter search using the full 80.1\;live-day exposure of the first stage of the
PandaX experiment (PandaX-I) located in the China Jin-Ping Underground
Laboratory. The PandaX-I detector has been optimized for detecting low-mass
WIMPs, achieving a photon detection efficiency of 9.6\%. With a fiducial liquid
xenon target mass of 54.0\,kg, no significant excess event were found above the
expected background. A profile likelihood analysis confirms our earlier finding
that the PandaX-I data disfavor all positive low-mass WIMP signals reported in
the literature under standard assumptions. A stringent bound on the low mass
WIMP is set at WIMP mass below 10\,GeV/c, demonstrating that liquid xenon
detectors can be competitive for low-mass WIMP searches.Comment: v3 as accepted by PRD. Minor update in the text in response to
referee comments. Separating Fig. 11(a) and (b) into Fig. 11 and Fig. 12.
Legend tweak in Fig. 9(b) and 9(c) as suggested by referee, as well as a
missing legend for CRESST-II legend in Fig. 12 (now Fig. 13). Same version as
submitted to PR
Check on the features of potted 20-inch PMTs with 1F3 electronics prototype at Pan-Asia
The Jiangmen underground neutrino observatory (JUNO) is a neutrino project
with a 20-kton liquid scintillator detector located at 700-m underground. The
large 20-inch PMTs are one of the crucial components of the JUNO experiment
aiming to precision neutrino measurements with better than 3% energy resolution
at 1 MeV. The excellent energy resolution and a large fiducial volume provide
many exciting opportunities for addressing important topics in neutrino and
astro-particle physics. With the container #D at JUNO Pan-Asia PMT testing and
potting station, the features of waterproof potted 20-inch PMTs were measured
with JUNO 1F3 electronics prototype in waveform and charge, which are valuable
for better understanding on the performance of the waterproof potted PMTs and
the JUNO 1F3 electronics. In this paper, basic features of JUNO 1F3 electronics
prototype run at Pan-Asia will be introduced, followed by an analysis of the
waterproof potted 20-inch PMTs and a comparison with the results from
commercial electronics used by the container #A and #B
Mass testing of the JUNO experiment 20-inch PMTs readout electronics
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose,
large size, liquid scintillator experiment under construction in China. JUNO
will perform leading measurements detecting neutrinos from different sources
(reactor, terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos) covering a wide energy range
(from 200 keV to several GeV). This paper focuses on the design and development
of a test protocol for the 20-inch PMT underwater readout electronics,
performed in parallel to the mass production line. In a time period of about
ten months, a total number of 6950 electronic boards were tested with an
acceptance yield of 99.1%
Implementation and performances of the IPbus protocol for the JUNO Large-PMT readout electronics
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large neutrino
detector currently under construction in China. Thanks to the tight
requirements on its optical and radio-purity properties, it will be able to
perform leading measurements detecting terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos
in a wide energy range from tens of keV to hundreds of MeV. A key requirement
for the success of the experiment is an unprecedented 3% energy resolution,
guaranteed by its large active mass (20 kton) and the use of more than 20,000
20-inch photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs) acquired by high-speed, high-resolution
sampling electronics located very close to the PMTs. As the Front-End and
Read-Out electronics is expected to continuously run underwater for 30 years, a
reliable readout acquisition system capable of handling the timestamped data
stream coming from the Large-PMTs and permitting to simultaneously monitor and
operate remotely the inaccessible electronics had to be developed. In this
contribution, the firmware and hardware implementation of the IPbus based
readout protocol will be presented, together with the performances measured on
final modules during the mass production of the electronics
Validation and integration tests of the JUNO 20-inch PMTs readout electronics
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large neutrino
detector currently under construction in China. JUNO will be able to study the
neutrino mass ordering and to perform leading measurements detecting
terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos in a wide energy range, spanning from
200 keV to several GeV. Given the ambitious physics goals of JUNO, the
electronic system has to meet specific tight requirements, and a thorough
characterization is required. The present paper describes the tests performed
on the readout modules to measure their performances.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figure