ABSTRACT The Large Volume Detector (LVD) has been continuously taking data since 1992 at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory. The LVD is sensitive to neutrino bursts from gravitational stellar ...collapses with full detection probability over the Galaxy. We have searched for neutrino bursts in LVD data taken over 7,335 days of operation. No evidence of neutrino signals has been found between 1992 June and 2013 December. The 90% C.L. upper limit on the rate of core collapse and failed supernova explosions out to distances of 25 kpc is found to be 0.114 yr−1.
Experimental data obtained using three scintillation detectors are analyzed. The characteristics of cosmogenic neutrons in underground experiments their analytic dependences are considered. The ...behavior of background counting rate for the LVD detector for two measuring thresholds (0.5 and 5 MeV) are discussed.
We report the measurement of the time of flight of ∼17 GeV ν(μ) on the CNGS baseline (732 km) with the Large Volume Detector (LVD) at the Gran Sasso Laboratory. The CERN-SPS accelerator has been ...operated from May 10th to May 24th 2012, with a tightly bunched-beam structure to allow the velocity of neutrinos to be accurately measured on an event-by-event basis. LVD has detected 48 neutrino events, associated with the beam, with a high absolute time accuracy. These events allow us to establish the following limit on the difference between the neutrino speed and the light velocity: -3.8 × 10(-6) < (v(ν)-c)/c < 3.1 × 10(-6) (at 99% C.L.). This value is an order of magnitude lower than previous direct measurements.
Cosmic radiation is a potential additional tool for atmospheric monitoring. High-energy cosmic rays, interacting in the atmosphere, produce secondary particles, the production and propagation of ...which are ruled by the state of the atmosphere. Atmospheric muons carry information on the stratosphere, as its temperature modulates their intensity. Here, we present a comprehensive investigation of the 24-year series of the muon flux recorded underground with the Large Volume Detector in the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. Using advanced spectral-analysis methods, we reveal, in addition to the well-known annual cycle, two significant variations with periods of about four and ten years. These two multiannual components, however, are not present in the series of the so-called effective temperature—an average parameter commonly used to describe the entire atmospheric profile in relationship to the detected muon flux—but we find them in the series of the raw temperatures in the lower-stratospheric levels. We show that the weaker multiannual cycles emerge in the temperature series thanks to the dampening of the dominant annual radiative cycle at these levels, which are affected by higher-frequency variability related to transport and wave processes. We also show that the multiannual variations are not typical only of the Gran Sasso area but are present at large scales throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The analysis of the series of the muon flux also reveals evidence of daily to monthly scale variations, especially during the highly variable winter period. Although such short-term modulations are also found in the series of the effective temperature, we show that the variations of the two series are brought to better agreement when considering only specific layers of the atmosphere depending on the event. The amplitudes of the multiannual variations are significantly larger than those expected based on the temperature modulations. Such differences may be due to acknowledged difficulties of the adopted temperature reanalysis dataset to thoroughly represent long-term variability scales, so that long-term modulations in the raw temperature series and, consequently, in the effective temperature record would result as artificially attenuated. The muon flux therefore may be envisaged as a high time-resolution integrated proxy of lower-stratospheric temperatures.
We present a new three-dimensional Monte-Carlo code MUSIC (MUon SImulation Code) for muon propagation through the rock. All processes of muon interaction with matter with high energy loss (including ...the knock-on electron production) are treated as stochastic processes. The angular deviation and lateral displacement of muons due to multiple scattering, as well as bremsstrahlung, pair production and inelastic scattering are taken into account. The code has been applied to obtain the energy distribution and angular and lateral deviations of single muons at different depths underground. The muon multiplicity distributions obtained with MUSIC and CORSIKA (Extensive Air Shower simulation code) are also presented. We discuss the systematic uncertainties of the results due to different muon bremsstrahlung cross-sections.
We report the first dark matter search results from XENON1T, a ∼2000-kg-target-mass dual-phase (liquid-gas) xenon time projection chamber in operation at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in ...Italy and the first ton-scale detector of this kind. The blinded search used 34.2 live days of data acquired between November 2016 and January 2017. Inside the (1042±12)-kg fiducial mass and in the 5,40 keV_{nr} energy range of interest for weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter searches, the electronic recoil background was (1.93±0.25)×10^{-4} events/(kg×day×keV_{ee}), the lowest ever achieved in such a dark matter detector. A profile likelihood analysis shows that the data are consistent with the background-only hypothesis. We derive the most stringent exclusion limits on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon interaction cross section for WIMP masses above 10 GeV/c^{2}, with a minimum of 7.7×10^{-47} cm^{2} for 35-GeV/c^{2} WIMPs at 90% C.L.
We report on the first search for nuclear recoils from dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with the XENONnT experiment, which is based on a two-phase time ...projection chamber with a sensitive liquid xenon mass of 5.9 ton. During the (1.09±0.03) ton yr exposure used for this search, the intrinsic ^{85}Kr and ^{222}Rn concentrations in the liquid target are reduced to unprecedentedly low levels, giving an electronic recoil background rate of (15.8±1.3) events/ton yr keV in the region of interest. A blind analysis of nuclear recoil events with energies between 3.3 and 60.5 keV finds no significant excess. This leads to a minimum upper limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section of 2.58×10^{-47} cm^{2} for a WIMP mass of 28 GeV/c^{2} at 90% confidence level. Limits for spin-dependent interactions are also provided. Both the limit and the sensitivity for the full range of WIMP masses analyzed here improve on previous results obtained with the XENON1T experiment for the same exposure.
Direct dark matter detection experiments based on a liquid xenon target are leading the search for dark matter particles with masses above ∼5 GeV/c^{2}, but have limited sensitivity to lighter ...masses because of the small momentum transfer in dark matter-nucleus elastic scattering. However, there is an irreducible contribution from inelastic processes accompanying the elastic scattering, which leads to the excitation and ionization of the recoiling atom (the Migdal effect) or the emission of a bremsstrahlung photon. In this Letter, we report on a probe of low-mass dark matter with masses down to about 85 MeV/c^{2} by looking for electronic recoils induced by the Migdal effect and bremsstrahlung using data from the XENON1T experiment. Besides the approach of detecting both scintillation and ionization signals, we exploit an approach that uses ionization signals only, which allows for a lower detection threshold. This analysis significantly enhances the sensitivity of XENON1T to light dark matter previously beyond its reach.
We report on a search for nuclear recoil signals from solar B-8 neutrinos elastically scattering off xenon nuclei in XENON1T data, lowering the energy threshold from 2.6 to 1.6 keV. We develop a ...variety of novel techniques to limit the resulting increase in backgrounds near the threshold. No significant B-8 neutrinolike excess is found in an exposure of 0.6 t x y. For the first time, we use the nondetection of solar neutrinos to constrain the light yield from 1-2 keV nuclear recoils in liquid xenon, as well as nonstandard neutrino-quark interactions. Finally, we improve upon world-leading constraints on dark matter-nucleus interactions for dark matter masses between 3 and 11 GeV c(-2) by as much as an order of magnitude.
We report on a search for particle dark matter with the XENON100 experiment, operated at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso for 13 months during 2011 and 2012. XENON100 features an ultralow ...electromagnetic background of (5.3 ± 0.6) × 10(-3) events/(keV(ee) × kg × day) in the energy region of interest. A blind analysis of 224.6 live days × 34 kg exposure has yielded no evidence for dark matter interactions. The two candidate events observed in the predefined nuclear recoil energy range of 6.6-30.5 keV(nr) are consistent with the background expectation of (1.0 ± 0.2) events. A profile likelihood analysis using a 6.6-43.3 keV(nr) energy range sets the most stringent limit on the spin-independent elastic weakly interacting massive particle-nucleon scattering cross section for weakly interacting massive particle masses above 8 GeV/c(2), with a minimum of 2 × 10(-45) cm(2) at 55 GeV/c(2) and 90% confidence level.
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