Search results for "PLASMA"
showing 10 items of 4043 documents
PenRed: An extensible and parallel Monte-Carlo framework for radiation transport based on PENELOPE
2021
Monte Carlo methods provide detailed and accurate results for radiation transport simulations. Unfortunately, the high computational cost of these methods limits its usage in real-time applications. Moreover, existing computer codes do not provide a methodology for adapting these kind of simulations to specific problems without advanced knowledge of the corresponding code system, and this restricts their applicability. To help solve these current limitations, we present PenRed, a general-purpose, stand-alone, extensible and modular framework code based on PENELOPE for parallel Monte Carlo simulations of electron-photon transport through matter. It has been implemented in C++ programming lan…
Improved calculations of β decay backgrounds to new physics in liquid xenon detectors
2020
We present high-precision theoretical predictions for the electron energy spectra for the ground-state to ground-state β decays of 214Pb, 212Pb, and 85Kr most relevant to the background of liquid xenon dark matter detectors. The effects of nuclear structure on the spectral shapes are taken into account using large-scale shell-model calculations. Final spectra also include atomic screening and exchange effects. The impact of nuclear structure effects on the 214Pb and 212Pb spectra below ≈100 keV, pertinent for several searches for new physics, are found to be comparatively larger than those from the atomic effects alone. We find that the full calculation for 214Pb (212Pb) predicts 15.0%–23.2…
Quantum walks as simulators of neutrino oscillations in a vacuum and matter
2016
We analyze the simulation of Dirac neutrino oscillations using quantum walks, both in vacuum and in matter. We show that this simulation, in the continuum limit, reproduces a set of coupled Dirac equations that describe neutrino flavor oscillations, and we make use of this to establish a connection with neutrino phenomenology, thus allowing to fix the parameters of the simulation for a given neutrino experiment. We also analyze how matter effects for neutrino propagation can be simulated in the quantum walk. In this way, important features, such as the MSW effect, can be incorporated. Thus, the simulation of neutrino oscillations with the help of quantum walks might be useful to explore the…
Higgs-like spectator field as the origin of structure
2021
We show that the observed primordial perturbations can be entirely sourced by a light spectator scalar field with a quartic potential, akin to the Higgs boson, provided that the field is sufficiently displaced from vacuum during inflation. The framework relies on the indirect modulation of reheating, which is implemented without any direct coupling between the spectator field and the inflaton and does not require non-renormalisable interactions. The scenario gives rise to local non-Gaussianity with $f_{\rm NL}\simeq 5$ as the typical signal. As an example model where the indirect modulation mechanism is realised for the Higgs boson, we study the Standard Model extended with right-handed neu…
Net-charge fluctuations in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt[sNN]=2.76TeV.
2013
We report the first measurement of the net-charge fluctuations in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV, measured with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The dynamical fluctuations per unit entropy are observed to decrease when going from peripheral to central collisions. An additional reduction in the amount of fluctuations is seen in comparison to the results from lower energies. We examine the dependence of fluctuations on the pseudo-rapidity interval, which may account for the dilution of fluctuations during the evolution of the system. We find that the ALICE data points are between the theoretically predicted values for a hadron gas and a Quark-Gluon Plasma.…
Theory overview of Heavy Ion collisions
2016
This presentation discusses some recently active topics in the theoretical interpretation of high energy heavy ion collisions at the LHC and at RHIC. We argue that the standard paradigm for understanding the spacetime evolution of the bulk of the matter produced in the collision is provided by viscous relativistic hydrodynamics, which can be used to systematically extract properties of the QCD medium from experimental results. The initial conditions of this hydrodynamical evolution are increasingly well understood in terms of gluon saturation, and can be quantified using Classical Yang-Mills fields and QCD effective kinetic theory. Hard and electromagnetic probes of the plasma provide addit…
Upgrade of the ALICE Experiment Letter Of Intent
2014
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is studying the physics of strongly interacting matter, and in particular the properties of the Quark–Gluon Plasma (QGP), using proton–proton, proton–nucleus and nucleus–nucleus collisions at the CERN LHC (Large Hadron Collider). The ALICE Collaboration is preparing a major upgrade of the experimental apparatus, planned for installation in the second long LHC shutdown in the years 2018–2019. These plans are presented in the ALICE Upgrade Letter of Intent, submitted to the LHCC (LHC experiments Committee) in September 2012. In order to fully exploit the physics reach of the LHC in this field, high- precision measurements of the heavy-flavour production…
Fluid dynamics with saturated minijet initial conditions in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
2014
Using next-to-leading order perturbative QCD and a conjecture of saturation to suppress the production of low-energy partons, we calculate the initial energy densities and formation times for the dissipative fluid dynamical evolution of the quark-gluon plasma produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We identify the framework uncertainties and demonstrate the predictive power of the approach by a good global agreement with the measured centrality dependence of charged particle multiplicities, transverse momentum spectra and elliptic flow simultaneously for the Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC and Au+Au at RHIC. In particular, the shear viscosity in the different phases of QCD matter is…
Lepton universality violation with lepton flavor conservation in B-meson decays
2015
Anomalies in semileptonic B-meson decays present interesting patterns that might be revealing the shape of the new physics to come. Under the assumption that neutrino and charged lepton mass terms are the only sources of flavor violation and given the hierarchy between the two, we find that charged lepton universality violation without charged lepton flavor violation naturally arises. This can account for a deficit of B + → K + μμ over B + → K + ee decays with new physics coupled predominantly to muons and a new physics scale of a few TeV. A generic prediction of this scenario is a large enhacement of tauonic B decay rates that, in particular, could accommodate an excess in B → D (∗) τ ν. F…
Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL forward trapping detector in 2.11 fb −1 of 13 TeV proton–proton collisions at the LHC
2018
We update our previous search for trapped magnetic monopoles in LHC Run 2 using nearly six times more integrated luminosity and including additional models for the interpretation of the data. The MoEDAL forward trapping detector, comprising 222 kg of aluminium samples, was exposed to 2.11 fb−1 of 13 TeV proton–proton collisions near the LHCb interaction point and analysed by searching for induced persistent currents after passage through a superconducting magnetometer. Magnetic charges equal to the Dirac charge or above are excluded in all samples. The results are interpreted in Drell–Yan production models for monopoles with spins 0, 1/2 and 1: in addition to standard point-like couplings, …