ANTARES is a neutrino detector based on a three-dimensional grid of photomultipliers tubes (PMT's) arranged in several detection lines anchored to the seabed at depth of 2.5km in the Mediterranean ...Sea (40km off the Toulon coast in France), its main physics goal is the reconstruction and identification of high energy neutrinos of extra-terrestrial origin. The PMT's register the Cherenkov light induced by relativistic charged leptons produced by the interaction of neutrinos with material in the detector surroundings. The propagation of Cherenkov light strongly depends on the optical properties of the sea water, the understanding of which is crucial in order to achieve the expected detector performance. To reach the ANTARES physics goals, good time and positioning calibration systems are required.
The ANTARES optical beacon system consists of a set of pulsed light sources strategically located throughout the detector. The system is mainly used for time calibration but can also be used as a tool to study the water optical properties and their stability. In this contribution we will present the current status of our measurements of the group velocity and transmission length of light carried out between 2008 and 2011. A set of water models strategically defined will be discussed as well as some preliminary results concerning track reconstruction parameters.
We studied single neutral pion production via muon antineutrino charged-current interactions in plastic scintillator (CH) using the MINERvA detector exposed to the NuMI low-energy, wideband ...antineutrino beam at Fermilab. Measurement of this process constrains models of neutral pion production in nuclei, which is important because the neutral-current analog is a background for appearance oscillation experiments. Furthermore, the differential cross sections for π0 momentum and production angle, for events with a single observed π0 and no charged pions, are presented and compared to model predictions. These results comprise the first measurement of the π0 kinematics for this process.
A
bstract
NEXT-100 is an electroluminescent high-pressure xenon gas time projection chamber that will search for the neutrinoless double beta (0
νββ
) decay of
136
Xe. The detector possesses two ...features of great value for 0
νββ
searches: energy resolution better than 1% FWHM at the
Q
value of
136
Xe and track reconstruction for the discrimination of signal and background events. This combination results in excellent sensitivity, as discussed in this paper. Material-screening measurements and a detailed Monte Carlo detector simulation predict a background rate for NEXT-100 of at most 4 × 10
−4
counts keV
−1
kg
−1
yr
−1
. Accordingly, the detector will reach a sensitivity to the 0
νββ
-decay half-life of 2.8 × 10
25
years (90% CL) for an exposure of 100 kg·year, or 6.0 × 10
25
years after a run of 3 effective years.
A
bstract
The NEXT experiment aims to observe the neutrinoless double beta decay of
136
Xe in a high-pressure xenon gas TPC using electroluminescence (EL) to amplify the signal from ionization. One ...of the main advantages of this technology is the possibility to reconstruct the topology of events with energies close to
Q
ββ
. This paper presents the first demonstration that the topology provides extra handles to reject background events using data obtained with the NEXT-DEMO prototype.
Single electrons resulting from the interactions of
22
Na 1275 keV gammas and electronpositron pairs produced by conversions of gammas from the
228
Th decay chain were used to represent the background and the signal in a double beta decay. These data were used to develop algorithms for the reconstruction of tracks and the identification of the energy deposited at the end-points, providing an extra background rejection factor of 24
.
3 ± 1
.
4 (stat.)%, while maintaining an efficiency of 66
.
7 ± 1
.
% for signal events.
A
bstract
In the era of precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters, upcoming neutrino experiments will also be sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. KM3NeT/ORCA is a ...neutrino detector optimised for measuring atmospheric neutrinos from a few GeV to around 100 GeV. In this paper, the sensitivity of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector to neutrino decay has been explored. A three-flavour neutrino oscillation scenario, where the third neutrino mass state
ν
3
decays into an invisible state, e.g. a sterile neutrino, is considered. We find that KM3NeT/ORCA would be sensitive to invisible neutrino decays with 1
/α
3
=
τ
3
/m
3
<
180 ps
/
eV at 90% confidence level, assuming true normal ordering. Finally, the impact of neutrino decay on the precision of KM3NeT/ORCA measurements for
θ
23
,
Δ
m
31
2
and mass ordering have been studied. No significant effect of neutrino decay on the sensitivity to these measurements has been found.
This article reports the first observation of the Moon and the Sun shadows in the sky distribution of cosmic-ray induced muons measured by the KM3NeT/ORCA detector. The analysed data-taking period ...spans from February 2020 to November 2021, when the detector had 6 Detection Units deployed at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, each composed of 18 Digital Optical Modules. The shadows induced by the Moon and the Sun were detected at their nominal position with a statistical significance of 4.2
σ
and 6.2
σ
, and an angular resolution of
σ
res
=
0
.
49
∘
and
σ
res
=
0
.
66
∘
, respectively, consistent with the prediction of
0
.
53
∘
from simulations. This early result confirms the effectiveness of the detector calibration, in time, position and orientation and the accuracy of the event direction reconstruction. This also demonstrates the performance and the competitiveness of the detector in terms of pointing accuracy and angular resolution.
The measurement of the flux of muons produced in cosmic ray air showers is essential for the study of primary cosmic rays. Such measurements are important in extensive air shower detectors to assess ...the energy spectrum and the chemical composition of the cosmic ray flux, complementary to the information provided by fluorescence detectors. Detailed simulations of the cosmic ray air showers are carried out, using codes such as CORSIKA, to estimate the muon flux at sea level. These simulations are based on the choice of hadronic interaction models, for which improvements have been implemented in the post-LHC era. In this work, a deficit in simulations that use state-of-the-art QCD models with respect to the measurement deep underwater with the KM3NeT neutrino detectors is reported. The KM3NeT/ARCA and KM3NeT/ORCA neutrino telescopes are sensitive to TeV muons originating mostly from primary cosmic rays with energies around 10 TeV. The predictions of state-of-the-art QCD models show that the deficit with respect to the data is constant in zenith angle; no dependency on the water overburden is observed. The observed deficit at a depth of several kilometres is compatible with the deficit seen in the comparison of the simulations and measurements at sea level.
In this work, thermal and magnetic properties for an electron with cylindrical confinement in presence of external electric and magnetic fields have been investigated. It was found that the ...corresponding time-independent Schrödinger equation can be separated into the product of the radially symmetric and an axial equation. Moreover, an approximated expression for the energy spectrum of the system has been obtained in terms of the exact solutions for the radial equation and an approximation up to first order for the axial equation. The well-known thermal and magnetic properties as the heat capacity, magnetization and the magnetic susceptibility have been analyzed via the canonical partition function. It was disclosed that the results for thermal and magnetic properties differ significantly from results previously obtained by others authors. Moreover, these results are in agreement with the diamagnetic properties of GaAs.
•A correction on the partition function reported by Gumber et al. is presented.•We find several deviations of the thermodynamic properties reported by Gumber et al.•We include the spin contribution to calculate the magnetic phase diagram which is consistent with previous works.
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