Search results for "Instrumentation"
showing 10 items of 4914 documents
Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory for the observation of early photons from gamma-ray bursts
2013
One of the least documented and understood aspects of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is the rise phase of the optical light curve. The Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory (UFFO) is an effort to address this question through extraordinary opportunities presented by a series of space missions including a small spacecraft observatory. The UFFO is equipped with a fast-response Slewing Mirror Telescope (SMT) that uses a rapidly moving mirror or mirror array to redirect the optical beam rather than slewing the entire spacecraft to aim the optical instrument at the GRB position. The UFFO will probe the early optical rise of GRBs with sub-second response, for the first time, opening a completely new frontier in …
Spectrum and charge ratio of vertical cosmic ray muons up to momenta of 2.5 TeV/c
2013
The ALEPH detector at LEP has been used to measure the momentum spectrum and charge ratio of vertical cosmic ray muons underground. The sea-level cosmic ray muon spectrum for momenta up to 2.5 TeV/c has been obtained by correcting for the overburden of 320 meter water equivalent (mwe). The results are compared with Monte Carlo models for air shower development in the atmosphere. From the analysis of the spectrum the total flux and the spectral index of the cosmic ray primaries is inferred. The charge ratio suggests a dominantly light composition of cosmic ray primaries with energies up to 10^15 eV.
Penning discharge in the KATRIN pre-spectrometer
2014
The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is a next-generation, large-scale tritium β-decay experiment to determine the neutrino mass by investigating the kinematics of tritium β-decay with a sensitivity of 200 meV/c2 using the MAC-E filter technique. In order to reach this sensitivity a low background level of 10−2 counts per second (cps) is required. A major background concern in MAC-E filters is the presence of Penning traps. A Penning trap is a special configuration of electromagnetic fields that allows the storage of electrically charged particles. This paper describes the mechanism of Penning discharges and the corresponding measurements performed at the test setup of the KAT…
Compton imaging with AGATA and SmartPET for DESPEC
2011
DESPEC (DEcay SPECtroscopy) is a spectrometer, currently under construction, which is to be used at the FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) facility at GSI Darmstadt, Germany, as part of the NuSTAR (Nuclear STructure, Astrophysics and Reactions) project. Its goal is to analyse the decay of exotic nuclei produced via the Super-FRS (SUPERconducting FRagment Separator). The optimal configuration of certain elements of the spectrometer, namely a HPGe (High Purity Germanium) tracking array, is still under consideration. Work currently being carried out at the University of Liverpool using a segmented, coaxial HPGe detector (AGATA B009) and a pixelated, planar HPGe detector (SmartPET …
Endcap Disc DIRC for PANDA at FAIR
2018
The Endcap Disc DIRC (EDD) has been developed to provide an excellent particle identification in the future PANDA experiment by separating pions and kaons up to a momentum of 4 GeV/c with a separation power of 3 s.d.. The detector is placed in the forward endcap of the PANDA target spectrometer. It consists of a fused silica plate and focusing elements placed at the outer rim, which focus the Cherenkov light on the photo cathodes of the attached MCP-PMTs. A compact and fast readout of the signals is realized with special ASICs. The performance has been studied and validated with different prototype setups in various testbeam facilities.
The Cryogenic Anticoincidence Detector for ATHENA-XMS
2012
The TES cryogenic detectors, due to their high spectral resolution and imaging capability in the soft X-ray domain, are the reference devices for the next proposed space missions whose aims are to characterize the spectra of faint or diffuse sources. ATHENA is the re-scoped IXO mission, and one of its focal plane instrument is the X-ray Microcalorimeter Spectrometer (XMS) working in the energy range 0.3-10 keV. XMS will be able to achieve the proposed scientific goals if a background lower than 0.02 cts/cm2/s/keV is guaranteed. The studies performed by GEANT4 simulations depict a scenario where it is mandatory to use an active Anti-Coincidence (AC) to reduce the expected background in the L…
Enhancing the sensitivity of recoil-beta tagging
2013
Tagging with β-particles at the focal plane of a recoil separator has been shown to be an effective technique for the study of exotic proton-rich nuclei. This article describes three new pieces of apparatus used to greatly improve the sensitivity of the recoil-beta tagging technique. These include a highly-pixelated double-sided silicon strip detector, a plastic phoswich detector for discriminating high-energy β-particles, and a charged-particle veto box. The performance of these new detectors is described and characterised, and the resulting improvements are discussed.
Electrostatically operated micromirrors for a Hadamard transform spectrometer
2002
The paper presents the development of a linear micromirror array which can be used as a switchable entrance mask for a double-array Hadamard transform spectrometer. In addition to the detector array the double-array spectrometer has a linear multi-slit array realised by independently switchable micromirrors at the entrance side. Two different switch positions of the electrostatically operated mirrors allow the reflection of light into or away from the spectrometer. With this arrangement (mirror array, concave grating and array detector) and the use of the Hadamard transform principle it is possible to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and the resolution of the system compared to convention…
A Mott polarimeter operating at MeV electron beam energies.
2011
We have developed a Mott electron polarimeter for the Mainzer microtron (MAMI) accelerator in Mainz, Germany. At beam energies ranging between 1.0 and 3.5 MeV two double focusing magnet spectrometers collect elastically backscattered electrons from gold targets. In spite of the small spectrometer acceptance, a sufficient statistical efficiency is achieved to provide very fast measurements if beam currents typical for experiments at MAMI are being used. High reproducibility is achieved, demonstrating that the results of asymmetry measurements are independent of the primary beam current in a range from 0.004 to 45 μA at a level of <1% relative variation. Compared to low energy polarimeters of…
Oscillating ultra-cold neutron spectrometer
2019
The energy spectrum of ultra-cold neutrons (UCN) is very often a key point to determine the systematic effects in precision measurements utilizing UCN. The proposed novel method allows the in-situ measurements of the UCN velocity distribution and its time evolution. In addition, the proposed UCN spectrometer can be a handy diagnostic tool for monitoring the UCN spectrum in critical places in the transport system connecting an UCN source with experiments. In this paper, we present the preliminary results from measurements and simulations using the oscillating UCN spectrometer at the PSI UCN source.