Abstract
Charged lepton system symmetry under combined charge, parity, and time-reversal transformation (CPT) remains scarcely tested. Despite stringent quantum-electrodynamic limits, discrepancies ...in predictions for the electron–positron bound state (positronium atom) motivate further investigation, including fundamental symmetry tests. While CPT noninvariance effects could be manifested in non-vanishing angular correlations between final-state photons and spin of annihilating positronium, measurements were previously limited by knowledge of the latter. Here, we demonstrate tomographic reconstruction techniques applied to three-photon annihilations of ortho-positronium atoms to estimate their spin polarisation without magnetic field or polarised positronium source. We use a plastic-scintillator-based positron-emission-tomography scanner to record ortho-positronium (o-Ps) annihilations with single-event estimation of o-Ps spin and determine the complete spectrum of an angular correlation operator sensitive to CPT-violating effects. We find no violation at the precision level of 10
−4
, with an over threefold improvement on the previous measurement.
Background
The Jagiellonian Positron Emission Tomograph is the 3-layer prototype of the first scanner based on plastic scintillators, consisting of 192 half-metre-long strips with readouts at both ...ends. Compared to crystal-based detectors, plastic scintillators are several times cheaper and could be considered as a more economical alternative to crystal scintillators in future PETs. JPET is also a first multi-photon PET prototype. For the development of multi-photon detection, with photon characterized by the continuous energy spectrum, it is important to estimate the efficiency of J-PET as a function of energy deposition. The aim of this work is to determine the registration efficiency of the J-PET tomograph as a function of energy deposition by incident photons and the intrinsic efficiency of the J-PET scanner in detecting photons of different incident energies. In this study, 3-hit events are investigated, where 2-hits are caused by 511 keV photons emitted in
e
+
e
-
annihilations, while the third hit is caused by one of the scattered photons. The scattered photon is used to accurately measure the scattering angle and thus the energy deposition. Two hits by a primary and a scattered photon are sufficient to calculate the scattering angle of a photon, while the third hit ensures the precise labeling of the 511 keV photons.
Results
By comparing experimental and simulated energy distribution spectra, the registration efficiency of the J-PET scanner was determined in the energy deposition range of 70–270 keV, where it varies between 20 and 100
%
. In addition, the intrinsic efficiency of the J-PET was also determined as a function of the energy of the incident photons.
Conclusion
A method for determining registration efficiency as a function of energy deposition and intrinsic efficiency as a function of incident photon energy of the J-PET scanner was demonstrated. This study is crucial for evaluating the performance of the scanner based on plastic scintillators and its applications as a standard and multi-photon PET systems. The method may be also used in the calibration of Compton-cameras developed for the ion−beam therapy monitoring and simultaneous multi-radionuclide imaging in nuclear medicine.
The existence of η-mesic nuclei in which the η meson is bound with nucleus by means of the strong interaction was postulated already in 1986, however till now no experiment confirmed it empirically. ...Discovering of this new kind of an exotic nuclear matter would be very important as it might allow for better understanding of the η meson structure and its interaction with nucleons. The search for η-mesic helium (4He-η) is carried out with high statistic and high acceptance by means of the WASA detector, installed at the cooler synchrotron COSY in the Research Center Jülich. The search is conducted via the measurement of the excitation function for the chosen decay channels of the 4He-η system. In the experiment performed in November 2010 two reactions dd→(4He -η)bs→3Hepπ− and dd→(4He -η)bs→3Henπ0 were measured with the beam momentum ramped from 2.127 GeV/c to 2.422 GeV/c. The report includes the description of experimental method and status of the measurement.
The J-PET tomograph is constructed from plastic scintillator strips arranged axially in concentric cylindrical layers. It enables investigations of positronium decays by measurement of the time, ...position, polarization and energy deposited by photons in the scintillators, in contrast to studies conducted so far with crystal and semiconductor based detection systems where the key selection of events is based on the measurement of the photons’ energies. In this article we show that the J-PET tomograph system is capable of exclusive measurements of the decays of ortho-positronium atoms. We present the first positronium production results, its lifetime distribution measurements and discuss estimation of the influence of various background sources. The tomograph’s performance demonstrated here makes it suitable for precision studies of positronium decays including entanglement of the final state photons, positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy plus molecular imaging diagnostics.
The J-PET scanner, which allows for single bed imaging of the whole human body, is currently under development at the Jagiellonian University. The discussed detector offers improvement of the Time of ...Flight (TOF) resolution due to the use of fast plastic scintillators and dedicated electronics allowing for sampling in the voltage domain of signals with durations of few nanoseconds. In this paper we show that recovery of the whole signal, based on only a few samples, is possible. In order to do that, we incorporate the training signals into the Tikhonov regularization framework and we perform the Principal Component Analysis decomposition, which is well known for its compaction properties. The method yields a simple closed form analytical solution that does not require iterative processing. Moreover, from the Bayes theory the properties of regularized solution, especially its covariance matrix, may be easily derived. This is the key to introduce and prove the formula for calculations of the signal recovery error. In this paper we show that an average recovery error is approximately inversely proportional to the number of acquired samples.
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