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Nishimura, Y.

Publications and source records attributed to Nishimura, Y..

At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Search for an Excess of Events in the Super-Kamiokande Detector in the Directions of the Astrophysical Neutrinos Reported by the IceCube Collaboration

We introduce the results of a search in the Super-Kamiokande (SK) detector for excesses of neutrinos with energies above a few GeV that are in the direction of the track events reported in IceCube. Data from all SK phases (SK-I through SK-IV) were used, spanning a period from April 1996 to April 2016 and corresponding to an exposure of 225 kilotonne-years . We considered the 14 IceCube track events from a data set with 1347 livetime days taken from 2010 to 2014. We use Poisson counting to determine if there is an excess of neutrinos detected in SK in a 10 ° search cone (5 ° for the highest energy data set) around the reconstructed direction of the IceCube event. No abundant excess was found in any of the search directions we examined. We also looked for coincidences with a recently reported IceCube multiplet event. No events were detected within a ± 500 s time window around the first detected event, and no significant excess was seen from that direction over the lifetime of SK.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Fast heating of fuel assembled in a spherical deuterated polystyrene shell target by counter-irradiating tailored laser pulses delivered by a HAMA 1 Hz ICF driver

Fast heating is a method of heating an assembled high-density plasma into a hot state by irradiating it with short-duration (sub-picosecond), high-intensity ($>$ $10^{18}$ W ${\rm cm}^{-2}$ ) laser pulses before the plasma expands and dissolves hydrodynamically. In this paper, we present detailed experimental results of fast heating fuel assembled in a spherical deuterated polystyrene shell target of 500 ${\mu}$ m diameter and 7 μm thickness with counterbeam illumination by using a HAMA 1 Hz, 5.9 J inertial confinement fusion laser driver with pulse tailoring. These tailored pulses contain three pulses in sequence: a 'foot' pulse of 2.4 J/25 ns, a 'spike' pulse of 0.5 J/300 ps and a 'heater' pulse of 0.4 J/110 fs; these pulses are designed to assemble the fuel and heat it. By varying the energy of the foot pulse, we find that fast heating the fuel is achieved only if the fuel is weakly ablated by the foot pulse and then shock-assembled by the spike pulse into the target centre so that the heater pulse can access the fuel with a focal intensity greater than $10^{18}$ W ${\rm cm}^{-2}$ . Without a foot pulse, the heater pulse contributes to assembling the fuel. For higher foot-pulse energies, the heater pulse drives a hydrodynamic motion with speeds of the order 107 cm ${\rm s}^{-1}$ with intensities of the order $10^{17}$ W ${\rm cm}^{-2}$ , resulting in re-assembling and additional heating of the pre-assembled fuel. Once a shock-assembled core is achieved at the target centre, we succeed qualitatively in fast heating the core for shots in sequence with variations of laser energy within 18%. The coupling efficiency from the heating laser to the core is inferred to be $(10 \pm 2)$ % in total: $(8 \pm 1.6)$ % for the ionized bulk electrons and $(2 \pm 0.4)$ % for the bulk ions. The fusion neutron spectrum detected on the laser axis exhibits peaks at 1.0 MeV, 1.7 MeV and 3.8 MeV. These peaks are attributed to the $C(d, n){\hspace{0pt}}^{13}$ N and $d(d, n){\hspace{0pt}}^3$ He reactions induced by counterpropagating fast deuterons accelerated by the photon pressure of the heating pulses.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Solar neutrino measurements in Super-Kamiokande-IV

We report that upgraded electronics, improved water system dynamics, better calibration and analysis techniques allowed Super-Kamiokande-IV to clearly observe very low-energy B 8 solar neutrino interactions, with recoil electron kinetic energies as low as ~ 3.5 MeV . Super-Kamiokande-IV data-taking began in September of 2008; this paper includes data until February 2014, a total livetime of 1664 days. The measured solar neutrino flux is ( 2.308 ± 0.020 ( stat ) - 0.040 + 0.039 ( syst ) ) × 1 0 6 / ( cm 2 sec ) assuming no oscillations. The observed recoil electron energy spectrum is consistent with no distortions due to neutrino oscillations. An extended maximum likelihood fit to the amplitude of the expected solar zenith angle variation of the neutrino-electron elastic scattering rate in SK-IV results in a day/night asymmetry of ( - 3.6 ± 1.6 ( stat ) ± 0.6 ( syst ) ) % . The SK-IV solar neutrino data determine the solar mixing angle as sin 2 θ 12 = 0.327 - 0.031 + 0.026 , all SK solar data (SK-I, SK-II, SK III and SK-IV) measures this angle to be sin 2 θ 12 = 0.334 - 0.023 + 0.027 , the determined mass-squared splitting is Δ m 21 2 = 4.8 - 0.8 + 1.5 × 10 - 5 eV 2 .

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Physical mechanism causing rapid changes in ultrarelativistic electron pitch angle distributions right after a shock arrival: Evaluation of an electron dropout event: Drift Shell Splitting on the Dayside

Three mechanisms have been proposed to explain relativistic electron flux depletions (dropouts) in the Earth's outer radiation belt during storm times: adiabatic expansion of electron drift shells due to a decrease in magnetic field strength, magnetopause shadowing and subsequent outward radial diffusion, and precipitation into the atmosphere (driven by EMIC wave scattering). Which mechanism predominates in causing electron dropouts commonly observed in the outer radiation belt is still debatable. In the present study, we evaluate the physical mechanism that may be primarily responsible for causing the sudden change in relativistic electron pitch angle distributions during a dropout event observed by Van Allen Probes during the main phase of the 27 February 2014 storm. During this event, the phase space density of ultrarelativistic (>1MeV) electrons was depleted by more than 1 order of magnitude over the entire radial extent of the outer radiation belt (3 < L* < 5) in less than 6 h after the passage of an interplanetary shock. We model the electron pitch angle distribution under a compressed magnetic field topology based on actual solar wind conditions. Although these ultrarelativistic electrons exhibit highly anisotropic (peaked in 90°), energy-dependent pitch angle distributions, which appear to be associated with the typical EMIC wave scattering, comparison of the modeled electron distribution to electron measurements indicates that drift shell splitting is responsible for this rapid change in electron pitch angle distributions. This further indicates that magnetopause loss is the predominant cause of the electron dropout right after the shock arrival.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Simulation of energy-dependent electron diffusion processes in the Earth's outer radiation belt

The radial and local diffusion processes induced by various plasma waves govern the highly energetic electron dynamics in the Earth's radiation belts, causing distinct characteristics in electron distributions at various energies. In this study, we present our simulation results of the energetic electron evolution during a geomagnetic storm using the University of California, Los Angeles 3-D diffusion code. Following the plasma sheet electron injections, the electrons at different energy bands detected by the Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer (MagEIS) and Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) instruments on board the Van Allen Probes exhibit a rapid enhancement followed by a slow diffusive movement in differential energy fluxes, and the radial extent to which electrons can penetrate into depends on energy with closer penetration toward the Earth at lower energies than higher energies. We incorporate radial diffusion, local acceleration, and loss processes due to whistler mode wave observations to perform a 3-D diffusion simulation. Here, our simulation results demonstrate that chorus waves cause electron flux increase by more than 1 order of magnitude during the first 18 h, and the subsequent radial extents of the energetic electrons during the storm recovery phase are determined by the coupled radial diffusion and the pitch angle scattering by EMIC waves and plasmaspheric hiss. The radial diffusion caused by ULF waves and local plasma wave scattering are energy dependent, which lead to the observed electron flux variations with energy dependences. Lastly, this study suggests that plasma wave distributions in the inner magnetosphere are crucial for the energy-dependent intrusions of several hundred keV to several MeV electrons.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

The global context of the 14 November 2012 storm event

From 2 to 5 UT on 14 November 2012, the Van Allen Probes observed repeated particle flux dropouts during the main phase of a geomagnetic storm as the satellites traversed the post-midnight to dawnside inner magnetosphere. Each flux dropout corresponded to an abrupt change in the magnetic topology, i.e., from a more dipolar configuration to a configuration with magnetic field lines stretched in the dawn-dusk direction. Geosynchronous GOES spacecraft located in the dusk and near-midnight sectors and the LANL constellation with wide local time coverage also observed repeated flux dropouts and stretched field lines with similar occurrence patterns to those of the Van Allen Probe events. THEMIS recorded multiple transient abrupt expansions of the evening-side magnetopause ~20–30 min prior to the sequential Van Allen Probes observations. Ground-based magnetograms and all sky images demonstrate repeatable features in conjunction with the dropouts. We combine the various in-situ and ground-based measurements to define and understand the global spatiotemporal features associated with the dropouts observed by the Van Allen Probes. We discuss various proposed hypotheses for the mechanism that plausibly caused this storm-time dropout event as well as formulate a new hypothesis that explains the combined in-situ and ground-based observations: the earthward motion of magnetic flux ropes containing lobe plasmas that form along an extended magnetotail reconnection line in the near-Earth plasma sheet.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Generation mechanism of the slowly drifting narrowband structure in the type IV solar radio bursts observed by AMATERAS

We investigate the type IV burst event observed by AMATERAS on 2011 June 7, and reveal that the main component of the burst was emitted from the plasmoid eruption identified in the EUV images of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/AIA. We show that a slowly drifting narrowband structure (SDNS) appeared in the burst's spectra. Using statistical analysis, we reveal that the SDNS appeared for a duration of tens to hundreds of milliseconds and had a typical bandwidth of 3 MHz. To explain the mechanism generating the SDNS, we propose wave-wave coupling between Langmuir waves and whistler-mode chorus emissions generated in a post-flare loop, which were inferred from the similarities in the plasma environments of a post-flare loop and the equatorial region of Earth's inner magnetosphere. We assume that a chorus element with a rising tone is generated at the top of a post-flare loop. Using the magnetic field and plasma density models, we quantitatively estimate the expected duration of radio emissions generated from coupling between Langmuir waves and chorus emissions during their propagation in the post-flare loop, and we find that the observed duration and bandwidth properties of the SDNS are consistently explained by the proposed generation mechanism. While observations in the terrestrial magnetosphere show that the chorus emissions are a group of large-amplitude wave elements generated naturally and intermittently, the mechanism proposed in the present study can explain both the intermittency and the frequency drift in the observed spectra.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗