Search results for "neutri"
showing 10 items of 1793 documents
Effective Field Theories for heavy probes in a hot QCD plasma and in the early universe
2017
There are many interesting problems in heavy-ion collisions and in cosmology that involve the interaction of a heavy particle with a medium. An example is the dissociation of heavy quarkonium seen in heavy-ion collisions. This was believed to be due to the screening of chromoelectric fields that prevents the heavy quarks from binding, however in the last years several perturbative and lattice computations have pointed out to the possibility that dissociation is due to the finite lifetime of a quarkonium state inside the medium. Regarding cosmology, the study of the behavior of heavy Majorana neutrinos in a hot medium is important to understand if this model can explain the origin of dark ma…
Rotational effects on the oscillation frequencies of newly born proto-neutron stars
2003
In this paper we study the effects of rotation on the frequencies of the quasi-normal modes of a proto-neutron star (PNS) born in a gravitational collapse during the first minute of life. Our analysis starts a few tenths of seconds after the PNS formation, when the stellar evolution can be described by a sequence of equilibrium configurations. We use the evolutionary models developed by Pons et al. (1999; 2001) that describe how a non rotating star cools down and contracts while neutrino diffusion and thermalization processes dominate the stellar dynamics. For assigned values of the evolution time, we set the star into slow rotation and integrate the equations of stellar perturbations in th…
Analysis of the total β-electron spectrum of 92Rb : Implications for the reactor flux anomalies
2022
We present here a microscopic nuclear-structure calculation of a β-electron spectrum including all the β-decay branches of a high Q-value reactor fission product contributing significantly to the reactor antineutrino energy spectrum. We perform large-scale nuclear shell-model calculations of the total electron spectrum for the β− decay of 92Rb to states in 92Sr using a computer cluster. We exploit the β-branching data of a recent total absorption γ-ray spectroscopy (TAGS) measurement to determine the effective values of the weak axial-vector coupling, gA, and the weak axial charge, gA(γ5). By using the TAGS data we avoid the bias stemming from the pandemonium effect which is a systematic er…
Total Absorption Spectroscopy of Fission Fragments Relevant for Reactor Antineutrino Spectra and Decay Heat Calculations
2016
Beta decay of fission products is at the origin of decay heat and antineutrino emission in nuclear reactors. Decay heat represents about 7% of the reactor power during operation and strongly impacts reactor safety. Reactor antineutrino detection is used in several fundamental neutrino physics experiments and it can also be used for reactor monitoring and non-proliferation purposes. 92,93Rb are two fission products of importance in reactor antineutrino spectra and decay heat, but their β-decay properties are not well known. New measurements of 92,93Rb β-decay properties have been performed at the IGISOL facility (Jyväskylä, Finland) using Total Absorption Spectroscopy (TAS). TAS is complemen…
Beta-decay studies for applied and basic nuclear physics
2020
In this review we will present the results of recent beta-decay studies using the total absorption technique that cover topics of interest for applications, nuclear structure and astrophysics. The decays studied were selected primarily because they have a large impact on the prediction of a) the decay heat in reactors, important for the safety of present and future reactors and b) the reactor electron antineutrino spectrum, of interest for particle/nuclear physics and reactor monitoring. For these studies the total absorption technique was chosen, since it is the only method that allows one to obtain beta decay probabilities free from a systematic error called the Pandemonium effect. The me…
Shell-model computed cross sections for charged-current scattering of astrophysical neutrinos off 40Ar
2018
Charged-current (anti)neutrino-$^{40}\mathrm{Ar}$ cross sections for astrophysical neutrinos have been calculated. The initial and final nuclear states were calculated using the nuclear shell model. The folded solar-neutrino scattering cross section was found to be $1.78(23)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}42}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$, which is higher than what the previous papers have reported. The contributions from the ${1}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ and ${2}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ multipoles were found to be significant at supernova-neutrino energies, confirming the random-phase approximation (RPA) result of a previous study. The effects of neutrino flavor conve…
The NUMEN project @ LNS: Status and perspectives
2017
The NUMEN project aims at accessing experimentally driven information on Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) involved in the half-life of the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ), by high-accuracy measurements of Heavy Ion (HI) induced Double Charge Exchange (DCE) reaction cross sections. In particular, the (18O,18Ne) and (20Ne,20O) reactions are used as tools for β+β+ and β−β− decays, respectively. In the experiments, performed at INFN - Laboratory Nazionali del Sud (LNS) in Catania, the beams are accelerated by the Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) and the reaction ejectiles are detected the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. The measured cross sections are challengingly low (a few nb), being the tota…
Phenomenology of low-scale Seesaw Models
2016
All the observed particles are well accommodated in the Standard Model, together with the basic forces. However, there are both experimental and theoretical hints that the Standard Model can not be a complete theory and that New Physics is needed. Some of the theoretical problems are: i) The flavor-puzzle, i.e., why are there three copies of particles differing only by their mass. Most of the free parameters in the Standard Model are linked to this puzzle. They have been measured, but their values do not follow any clear pattern and their origin remains elusive. ii) The strong CP problem, that is, why the CP symmetry is conserved in the strong interactions in the Standard Model, which is no…
Supernova-neutrino induced reactions on molybdenum via neutral-currents
2012
In this thesis which consists of an introductory part and six publications the neutralcurrent neutrino-nucleus scatterings o the stable molybdenum nuclei are studied using microscopic nuclear models. The main focus is on supernova neutrinos and the nuclear responses to them for the aforementioned nuclei are computed by folding the computed cross sections with realistic neutrino-energy spectra. In this work both the coherent and incoherent contributions to the cross sections are considered. The contributions from the prominent multipole channels to the incoherent cross sections are also discussed in great detail.