An outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease-19 (nCoV-19) infection began in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and now involved the whole word. Several health workers have been infected in different ...countries. We report the case of a young man with documented nCoV-19 infection evaluated with lung ultrasound and discuss potential applications of lung ultrasound in this setting. Lung ultrasound allowed the identification of nCoV-19 infection at bed-side. Moreover, lung ultrasound can have several other advantages, such as reduced health worker exposition to infected patients, repeatability during follow-up, low-costs and easier application in low-resource settings.
The design of the MEG II experiment Baldini, A. M; Baracchini, E; Bemporad, C ...
The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
05/2018, Volume:
78, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The MEG experiment, designed to search for the Formula omitted decay, completed data-taking in 2013 reaching a sensitivity level of Formula omitted for the branching ratio. In order to increase the ...sensitivity reach of the experiment by an order of magnitude to the level of Formula omitted, a total upgrade, involving substantial changes to the experiment, has been undertaken, known as MEG II. We present both the motivation for the upgrade and a detailed overview of the design of the experiment and of the expected detector performance.
The cylindrical drift chamber is the most innovative part of the MEG II detector, the upgraded version of the MEG experiment. The MEG II chamber differs from the MEG one because it is a single volume ...cylindrical structure, instead of a segmented one, chosen to improve its resolutions and efficiency in detecting low energy positrons from muon decays at rest. In this paper, we show the characteristics and performances of this fundamental part of the MEG II apparatus and we discuss the impact of its higher resolution and efficiency on the sensitivity of the MEG II experiment. Because of its innovative structure and high quality resolution and efficiency the MEG II cylindrical drift chamber will be a cornerstone in the development of an ideal tracking detector for future positron-electron collider machines.
The Cylindrical Drift Chamber of the MEG II experiment Chiappini, M.; Baldini, A.M.; Benmansour, H. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
02/2023, Volume:
1047
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) represents the state of the art in the search for the charged Lepton Flavor Violating μ+→e+γ decay, setting the most stringent upper limit on ...the BR (μ+→e+γ)≤4.2×10−13 (90% C.L.). An upgrade of MEG, MEG II, was designed, commissioned and recently started the physics data taking. Its goal is to reach a sensitivity level of 6×10−14. In order to reconstruct the positron momentum vector a Cylindrical Drift CHamber (CDCH) with unprecedented peculiarities was built, featuring angular and momentum resolutions at the 6.5 mrad and 100 keV/c level. The CDCH is a 2-meter long, 60 cm in diameter, low-mass, single volume detector with high granularity: 9 layers of 192 drift cells, few mm wide, defined by ∼12000 wires in a stereo configuration for longitudinal hit localization. The filling gas mixture is Helium:Isobutane 90:10. The total radiation length is 1.5×10−3 X0, thus minimizing the Multiple Coulomb Scattering and allowing for a single-hit resolution <120μm. After the assembly at INFN Pisa, the CDCH was transported to PSI and integrated into the MEG II experimental apparatus since 2018. The commissioning phase lasted for the past three years until the operational stability was reached in 2020. The analysis software is continuously developing and the tuning of the reconstruction algorithms is one of the main activities. The latest updates on the positron momentum vector resolutions and tracking efficiency are presented.
Commissioning and preliminary performance of the MEG II drift chamber Chiappini, M.; Chiarello, G.; Baldini, A.M. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
10/2022, Volume:
1041
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In the quest for Lepton Flavor Violation (LFV) the MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) represents the state of the art in the search for the charged LFV decay μ+→e+γ, setting the most ...stringent upper limit on the BR(μ+→e+γ)≤4.2×10−13 (90% C.L.). An upgrade of MEG, MEG II, was designed and it recently started the physics data taking, with the aim to reach a sensitivity level of 6×10−14. The Cylindrical Drift CHamber (CDCH) is a key detector in order to improve the e+ angular and momentum resolutions at the 6.5 mrad and 100 keV/c level. The CDCH is a low-mass single volume detector with high granularity: 9 layers of 192 drift cells each, few mm wide, defined by 12000 wires in a stereo configuration for longitudinal hit localization. After the assembly, the CDCH was transported to PSI for the commissioning phase and it has been integrated into the MEG II experimental apparatus since 2018. The operational stability was reached in 2020 and the complete readout electronics was tested for the first time in 2021. A preliminary analysis of 2020–2021 data is presented.
The ultra light Drift Chamber of the MEG II experiment Baldini, A.M.; Cavoto, G.; Cei, F. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
04/2020, Volume:
958
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute searches for the charged Lepton Flavor Violating μ+→e+γ decay. MEG has already determined in a first data taking phase the world best upper limit on ...the branching ratio: BR(μ+→e+γ)<4.2×10−13 An upgrade of the whole detector has been approved to obtain a substantial increase in sensitivity. Currently MEG is in upgrade phases, this phase involves all the detectors. The new positron tracker is a high transparency single volume, fully stereo cylindrical Drift Chamber (CDCH), immersed in a non uniform longitudinal B-field, with length of 1.93 m, internal radius of 17 cm and external radius of 30 cm. It is composed of 9 concentric layers, divided into 12 identical sector of 16 drift cells. The single drift cell is approximately square, with a 20 μm gold plated W sense wire surrounded by 40 μm silver plated Al field wires in a ratio of 5:1. The total number of wires amounts to 11904 for an equivalent radiation length per track turn of about 1.5x10−3 X0 when the chamber is filled with a gas mixture of helium and iso-butane. Due to the high wire density (12wires∕cm2), the use of the classical feed-through technique as wire anchoring system could hardly be implemented and therefore it was necessary to develop new wiring strategies. The number of wires and the stringent requirements impose the use of an automatic system (wiring robot) to operate the wiring procedures. Several tests have been performed in different prototypes of the drift chamber, exposed to cosmic rays, test beams and radioactive sources, to fulfill the requirement on the spatial resolution to be less than 110 μm. In this paper we describe the CDCH construction and the first tests during the 2018 Engineering Run.
The Divertor Tokamak Test facility (DTT) will be a new experimental facility located at Frascati, Rome, Italy, whose main goal will be to have a better understanding on hot plasma interactions with ...plasma-facing components (PFCs) and aid in the development of ITER and successively DEMO. The improved conceptual design of the beamline for the DTT neutral beam heating (NBH) system is here overviewed, with a particular focus on the technical solutions adopted to fulfill the requirements and maximize beamline performances. The proposed system features a beamline providing deuterium neutrals (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">D^{0} </tex-math></inline-formula>) with an energy of 510 keV and an injected power of 10 MW. Various design options have been considered, and a comprehensive set of simulations has been carried out using several physics and engineering codes to drive the choice of the most suitable design options and optimize them, aiming at finding a good compromise among different design requirements.
The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab searches for the charged-lepton flavor violating (CLFV) conversion of a negative muon into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus, with a distinctive ...signature of a monoenergetic electron of energy slightly below the muon rest mass (104.967 MeV). The Mu2e goal is to improve by four orders of magnitude the search sensitivity with respect to the previous experiments. Any observation of a CLFV signal will be a clear indication of new physics. The Mu2e detector is composed of a tracker, an electromagnetic calorimeter, and an external veto for cosmic rays surrounding the solenoid. The calorimeter plays an important role in providing particle identification capabilities, a fast online trigger filter, a seed for track reconstruction while working in vacuum, in the presence of 1-T axial magnetic field and in a harsh radiation environment. The calorimeter requirements are to provide a large acceptance for 100-MeV electrons and reach at these energies: 1) a time resolution better than 0.5 ns; 2) an energy resolution <10%; and 3) a position resolution of 1 cm. The calorimeter design consists of two disks, each one made of 674-undoped cesium iodine crystals read by two large area arrays of UV-extended silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). We report here the construction and the test of the Module-0 prototype. The Module-0 has been exposed to an electron beam in the energy range around 100 MeV at the Beam Test Facility in Frascati. Preliminary results of timing and energy resolution at normal incidence are shown. A discussion of the technical aspects of the calorimeter engineering is also reported in this paper.