Gamma-ray spectroscopy and dosimetry are complementary techniques used to locate and identify radioactive sources containing gamma-ray-emitting radioisotopes. Gamma-ray spectroscopy is extensively ...studied for various applications across multiple fields, including homeland security, environmental radioactivity monitoring, tackling illegal trade of radioiso-topes, and medical sciences.
Introducing our newly established startup, Flying DEMon s.r.l., comprised of young researchers, academic professors, and backed by university support. Our venture aims to advance project development, leveraging the grant awarded through the E-TEC2 contest initiated by ENAC. The team will showcase their comprehensive work plan, highlighting the project’s competitiveness and self-sustaining potential.
The objective of our startup is to harness cutting-edge technologies in the field of gamma spectroscopy and dosimetry, adaptable for deployment via Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). This innovation holds significant promise for environmental monitoring, facilitating tasks such as pinpointing widespread radioactive sources or identifying concealed and hard-to-reach nuclear waste. Additionally, this advancement holds potential for applications in military, security, and industrial oversight.
Our research focus primarily revolves around real-time and rapid gamma-ray analysis in open-field environments. Our group not only supports the core project objectives but also enables its applicability in diverse and non-traditional sectors, such as Agritech.
Gamma-ray spectroscopy and gamma-ray imaging are two complementary techniques used for the localization and the identification of radioactive sources containing gamma-ray emitting radioisotopes. The ...radioactivity monitoring is focused on the detection of both artificial and environmental radioactive sources like Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM). This kind of contamination becomes dangerous when the detection of the unwanted substances exhibits a concentration significantly above the environmental radioactive background radiation levels. For this purpose, we have developed, tested and shown a High Efficiency fast-Response GAmma (HERGA) detector useful for the identification of radionuclides and for gamma-ray imaging. A first version of the gamma detector prototype was composed of 16 CsI(Tl) scintillating crystals of 3x3x10 cm3 size, arranged in 4x4 matrix coupled with standard Photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). An image reconstruction of a radioactive gamma emitter source is possible using the coded mask technique, in which a 7x7 mask, made of Plastic and Tungsten tiles, is placed in front of the detector and a pattern recognition algorithm based on classical statistical methods (Kolmogorov Smirnov) is used to reconstruct the source position. The measurements carried out showed a point spread function (PSF) of a few mrad for pointlike sources. The Minimum Detectable Activity (MDA) was also determined in the case of pointlike radioactive sources. In this contribution we will present an update of the HERGA detector prototype in which Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) are used in place of the PMTs. SiPMs provide similar or even better performance compared to the standard PMT sand provide benefits in terms of lower power consumption and reduced cost and compactness. The advantages of the SiPM technology are also characterized by the robustness of the photosensor that makes the new prototype compact, portable, ideal for in-situ and real-time. We will show a comparison between the results obtained with the newest SiPM read-out technology with respect to those obtained with the PMT one, in terms of energy and spatial resolution. The imaging performance is also in phase of testing in order to localize extended radioactive sources such as for example
NORM samples or to detect inaccessible or hidden nuclear waste.
Performance of the ALICE SPD cooling system Francescon, A; Rinella, G Aglieri; Altini, V ...
Journal of physics. Conference series,
01/2012, Volume:
395, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The new generation of silicon detectors for particle physics requires very reduced mass and high resistance to radiations with very limited access to the detector for maintenance. The Silicon Pixel ...Detector (SPD) is one of the 18 detectors of the ALICE (A Large Io Collider Experiment) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. It constitute the two innermost layers of the Inner Tracking System (ITS) and it is the closest detector to th interaction point. An evaporative cooling system, based on C4F10 evaporation at 1.9 bar, was chosen to extrac the 1.35 kW power dissipated by the on-detector electronics. The whole system wa extensively tested and commissioned before its installation inside the ALICE experimenta area. Since then we had to deal with a decrease of the flow in some lines of the system tha imposed severe restrictions on the detector operation. Recently, a test bench has been built in order to carry out a series of tests to reproduce the misbehaviour of the system and investigat proper actions to cure the problem. The performance of the systems and the most interesting results of the above mentioned test will be presented.
The anomalies observed at RHIC for the baryon — meson ratios have prompted a number of theoretical works on the nature of the hadrochemistry in the hadronisation stage of the pp collisions and in the ...evolution of the dense system formed in heavy ion collisions. Although the predictions differ in the theoretical approach, generally a substantial increase in the baryon production is predicted in the range 10–30 GeV/c. We will present the possibilities of a gas ring imaging Cherenkov detector of limited acceptance which would be able to identify track-by-track protons until 24 GeV/c for the ALICE experiment.
The ALICE experiment at LHC is mainly dedicated to heavy-ion physics. An overview of its performances, some predictions related to its first measurements and QGP observable measurements will be given.
The LHC will deliver unexplored energy regimes for proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions. As shown by the RHIC experiments, particle identification over a large momentum range is essential to ...disentangle physics processes, especially in the intermediate p\(_T\) (1 \(<p_{T}<5\) GeV/c) region. The novel design of the High-Momentum Particle Identification Detector (HMPID), based on large surface CsI photocathodes, is able to identify \(\pi^{\pm}\), \(K^{\pm}\), \(p\) and \(\bar{p}\) in the momentum region where bulk medium properties and hard scatterings interplay. Furthermore, measurement of resonance particles such as the \(\phi \to K^+K^-\) could provide information on the system evolution. The HMPID layout and segmentation are optimized to study particle correlations at high momenta describing the early phase and the dynamical evolution of the collision. At LHC, the increased hard cross section will significantly be enhanced compared to RHIC. Jet reconstruction via Deterministic Annealing can address jet quenching and detailed measurements of jet properties. In this paper, we present these selected topics from the possible HMPID contributions to the physics goals of LHC.
Relativistic reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of accreting black holes. In the presence of high quality data and with the correct astrophysical model, X-ray reflection ...spectroscopy can be quite a powerful tool to probe the strong gravity region, study the morphology of the accreting matter, measure black hole spins, and possibly test Einstein’s theory of general relativity in the strong field regime. In the last decade, there has been significant progress in the development of the analysis of these features, thanks to more sophisticated astrophysical models and new observational facilities. Here we review the state-of-the-art in relativistic reflection modeling, listing assumptions and simplifications that may affect, at some level, the final measurements and may be investigated better in the future. We review black hole spin measurements and the most recent efforts to use X-ray reflection spectroscopy for testing fundamental physics.
ABSTRACT
We present the publicly available model reltrans that calculates the light-crossing delays and energy shifts experienced by X-ray photons originally emitted close to the black hole when they ...reflect from the accretion disc and are scattered into our line of sight, accounting for all general relativistic effects. Our model is fast and flexible enough to be simultaneously fit to the observed energy-dependent cross-spectrum for a large range of Fourier frequencies, as well as to the time-averaged spectrum. This not only enables better geometric constraints than only modelling the relativistically broadened reflection features in the time-averaged spectrum, but additionally enables constraints on the mass of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei and stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. We include a self-consistently calculated radial profile of the disc ionization parameter and properly account for the effect that the telescope response has on the predicted time lags. We find that a number of previous spectral analyses have measured artificially low source heights due to not accounting for the former effect and that timing analyses have been affected by the latter. In particular, the magnitude of the soft lags in active galactic nuclei may have been underestimated, and the magnitude of lags attributed to thermal reverberation in X-ray binaries may have been overestimated. We fit reltrans to the lag-energy spectrum of the Seyfert galaxy Mrk 335, resulting in a best-fitting black hole mass that is smaller than previous optical reverberation measurements (∼7 million compared with ∼14–26 million M⊙).
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