Integration and Conventional Systems at STAR

At the beginning of the design and construction of the STAR Detector, the collaboration assigned a team of physicists and engineers the responsibility of coordinating the construction of the detector. This group managed the general space assignments for each sub-system and coordinated the assembly and planning for the detector. Furthermore, as this group was the only STAR group with the responsibility of looking at the system as a whole, the collaboration assigned it several tasks that spanned the different sub-detectors. These items included grounding, rack layout, cable distribution, electrical, power and water, and safety systems. This paper describes these systems and their performance.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, Contribution to a NIM Volume Dedicated to the Detectors and the Accelerator at RHI

The BRAN luminosity detectors for the LHC

This paper describes the several phases which led, from the conceptual design, prototyping, construction and tests with beam, to the installation and operation of the BRAN (Beam RAte of Neutrals) relative luminosity monitors for the LHC. The detectors have been operating since 2009 to contribute, optimize and maintain the accelerator performance in the two high luminosity interaction regions (IR), the IR1 (ATLAS) and the IR5 (CMS). The devices are gas ionization chambers installed inside a neutral particle absorber 140 m away from the Interaction Points in IR1 and IR5 and monitor the energy deposited by electromagnetic showers produced by high-energy neutral particles from the collisions. The detectors have the capability to resolve the bunch-by-bunch luminosity at the 40 MHz bunch rate, as well as to survive the extreme level of radiation during the nominal LHC operation. The devices have operated since the early commissioning phase of the accelerator over a broad range of luminosities reaching 1.4*10^34 cm-2 s-1 with a peak pileup of 45 events per bunch crossing. Even though the nominal design luminosity of the LHC has been exceeded, the BRAN is operating well. After describing the multiple applications that the BRAN can be used to monitor the luminosity of the accelerator, we discuss the technical choices that led to its construction and the different tests performed prior to the installation in two IRs of the LHC. Performance simulations are presented together with operational results obtained during p-p operations, including runs at 40 MHz bunch rate, Pb-Pb operations and p-Pb operations.Comment: 22 pages, 32 Figure

Dilepton Production at SPS-energy Heavy Ion Collisions

The production of dileptons is studied within a hadronic transport model. We investigate the sensitivity of the dilepton spectra to the initial configuration of the hadronic phase in a ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision. Possible in medium correction due to the modifications of pions and the pion form factor in a hadronic gas are discussed.Comment: Dedicated to Gerry Brown in honor of the 32nd celebration of his 39th birthday. 31 pages Latex including 13 eps-figures, uses psfig.sty and epsf.st

The STAR Time Projection Chamber: A Unique Tool for Studying High Multiplicity Events at RHIC

The STAR Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is used to record collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The TPC is the central element in a suite of detectors that surrounds the interaction vertex. The TPC provides complete coverage around the beam-line, and provides complete tracking for charged particles within +- 1.8 units of pseudo-rapidity of the center-of-mass frame. Charged particles with momenta greater than 100 MeV/c are recorded. Multiplicities in excess of 3,000 tracks per event are routinely reconstructed in the software. The TPC measures 4 m in diameter by 4.2 m long, making it the largest TPC in the world.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure

Dilepton production from p-p to Ca-Ca at the Bevalac

The DLS collaboration has recently completed a high statistics study of dilepton production at the Bevalac. In particular, we have measured dielectrons (e+e-) from p-p and p-d collisions to understand the basic dilepton production mechanisms in the energy range from 1.05 - 4.9 GeV. These data can be used to determine the basic processes which contribute to nucleon-nucleon dilepton production such as hadronic bremsstrahlung, vector meson processes, and hadronic Dalitz decay. The data show that a simple elastic bremsstrahlung calculation is insufficient to explain the data. Theoretical models are compared with the data. A new high statistics study of Ca-Ca at 1.05 A GeV has been made to study the collectivity of A-A collisions

IceCube - the next generation neutrino telescope at the South Pole

IceCube is a large neutrino telescope of the next generation to be constructed in the Antarctic Ice Sheet near the South Pole. We present the conceptual design and the sensitivity of the IceCube detector to predicted fluxes of neutrinos, both atmospheric and extra-terrestrial. A complete simulation of the detector design has been used to study the detector's capability to search for neutrinos from sources such as active galaxies, and gamma-ray bursts.Comment: 8 pages, to be published with the proceedings of the XXth International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics, Munich 200

Muon Track Reconstruction and Data Selection Techniques in AMANDA

The Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) is a high-energy neutrino telescope operating at the geographic South Pole. It is a lattice of photo-multiplier tubes buried deep in the polar ice between 1500m and 2000m. The primary goal of this detector is to discover astrophysical sources of high energy neutrinos. A high-energy muon neutrino coming through the earth from the Northern Hemisphere can be identified by the secondary muon moving upward through the detector. The muon tracks are reconstructed with a maximum likelihood method. It models the arrival times and amplitudes of Cherenkov photons registered by the photo-multipliers. This paper describes the different methods of reconstruction, which have been successfully implemented within AMANDA. Strategies for optimizing the reconstruction performance and rejecting background are presented. For a typical analysis procedure the direction of tracks are reconstructed with about 2 degree accuracy.Comment: 40 pages, 16 Postscript figures, uses elsart.st

Results from the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA)

We show new results from both the older and newer incarnations of AMANDA (AMANDA-B10 and AMANDA-II, respectively). These results demonstrate that AMANDA is a functioning, multipurpose detector with significant physics and astrophysics reach. They include a new higher-statistics measurement of the atmospheric muon neutrino flux and preliminary results from searches for a variety of sources of ultrahigh energy neutrinos: generic point sources, gamma-ray bursters and diffuse sources producing muons in the detector, and diffuse sources producing electromagnetic or hadronic showers in or near the detector.Comment: Invited talk at the XXth International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics (Neutrino 2002), Munich, Germany, May 25-30, 200

Sensitivity of the IceCube Detector to Astrophysical Sources of High Energy Muon Neutrinos

We present the results of a Monte-Carlo study of the sensitivity of the planned IceCube detector to predicted fluxes of muon neutrinos at TeV to PeV energies. A complete simulation of the detector and data analysis is used to study the detector's capability to search for muon neutrinos from sources such as active galaxies and gamma-ray bursts. We study the effective area and the angular resolution of the detector as a function of muon energy and angle of incidence. We present detailed calculations of the sensitivity of the detector to both diffuse and pointlike neutrino emissions, including an assessment of the sensitivity to neutrinos detected in coincidence with gamma-ray burst observations. After three years of datataking, IceCube will have been able to detect a point source flux of E^2*dN/dE = 7*10^-9 cm^-2s^-1GeV at a 5-sigma significance, or, in the absence of a signal, place a 90% c.l. limit at a level E^2*dN/dE = 2*10^-9 cm^-2s^-1GeV. A diffuse E-2 flux would be detectable at a minimum strength of E^2*dN/dE = 1*10^-8 cm^-2s^-1sr^-1GeV. A gamma-ray burst model following the formulation of Waxman and Bahcall would result in a 5-sigma effect after the observation of 200 bursts in coincidence with satellite observations of the gamma-rays.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures, 6 table