Engineering topics

Seth, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Seth, S..

6 records

DOE OSTI2019

Data-Driven Modeling of Electron Recoil Nucleation in PICO C$_3$F$_8$ Bubble Chambers

The primary advantage of moderately superheated bubble chamber detectors is their simultaneous sensitivity to nuclear recoils from weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter and insensitivity to electron recoil backgrounds. A comprehensive analysis of PICO gamma calibration data demonstrates for the first time that electron recoils in C3F8 scale in accordance with a new nucleation mechanism, rather than one driven by a hot spike as previously supposed. Using this semiempirical model, bubble chamber nucleation thresholds may be tuned to be sensitive to lower energy nuclear recoils while maintaining excellent electron recoil rejection. The PICO-40L detector will exploit this model to achieve thermodynamic thresholds as low as 2.8 keV while being dominated by single-scatter events from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering of solar neutrinos. In one year of operation, PICO-40L can improve existing leading limits from PICO on spin-dependent WIMP-proton coupling by nearly an order of magnitude for WIMP masses greater than 3 GeV c-2 and will have the ability to surpass all existing non-xenon bounds on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon coupling for WIMP masses from 3 to 40 GeV c-2.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2019

Studies on Ti, Zn and Ti + Zn Bilayer Coatings on Interstitial Free Steel for Enhancement of Wear and Corrosion Resistance

The present study concerns a detailed investigation of the microstructure, phase identity, composition, residual stress, wear and corrosion behavior of Ti, Zn and Zn + Ti coatings developed on IF steel by sputter deposition technique. A significant improvement in average microhardness (350-700 VHN) is noticed following sputter deposition compared to that of as-received IF steel (190 VHN). The highest microhardness recorded is 500 VHN for Ti, 350 VHN for Zn and 700 VHN for Ti + Zn bilayer, respectively. Improvement in surface hardness is accompanied by a marked improvement in wear resistance of the sputter-deposited surface against hardened steel ball. The corrosion rate of coated sample in 3.56 wt.% NaCl solution is marginally decreased (2.95 × 10{sup −2} to 3.25 × 10{sup −2} mm/year) as compared to that of as-received IF steel (3.55 × 10{sup −2} mm/year). Ti-deposited IF steel registers the minimum corrosion rate (2.95 × 10{sup −2} mm/year) among all the coated samples.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2019

Dark Matter Search Results from the Complete Exposure of the PICO-60 C$_3$F$_8$ Bubble Chamber

Final results are reported from operation of the PICO-60 C3F8 dark matter detector, a bubble chamber filled with 52 kg of C3F8 located in the SNOLAB underground laboratory. The chamber was operated at thermodynamic thresholds as low as 1.2 keV without loss of stability. A new blind 1404-kg-day exposure at 2.45 keV threshold was acquired with approximately the same expected total background rate as the previous 1167-kg-day exposure at 3.3 keV. This increased exposure is enabled in part by a new optical tracking analysis to better identify events near detector walls, permitting a larger fiducial volume. These results set the most stringent direct-detection constraint to date on the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP)-proton spin-dependent cross section at 3.2×10-41 cm2 for a 25 GeV WIMP, improving on previous PICO results for 3–5 GeV WIMPs by an order of magnitude.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2018

Developing a Bubble Chamber Particle Discriminator Using Semi-Supervised Learning

The identification of non-signal events is a major hurdle to overcome for bubble chamber dark matter experiments such as PICO-60. The current practice of manually developing a discriminator function to eliminate background events is difficult when available calibration data is frequently impure and present only in small quantities. In this study, several different discriminator input/preprocessing formats and neural network architectures are applied to the task. First, they are optimized in a supervised learning context. Next, two novel semi-supervised learning algorithms are trained, and found to replicate the Acoustic Parameter (AP) discriminator previously used in PICO-60 with a mean of 97% accuracy.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

NASA NTRS1992

Pilot weather advisor

The results of the work performed by ViGYAN, Inc., to demonstrate the Pilot Weather Advisor cockpit weather data system using a broadcast satellite communication system are presented. The Pilot Weather Advisor demonstrated that the technical problems involved with transmitting significant amount of weather data to an aircraft in-flight or on-the-ground via satellite are solvable with today's technology. The Pilot Weather Advisor appears to be a viable solution for providing accurate and timely weather information for general aviation aircraft.

Kilgore, W. A.↗

NASA NTRS1969

Switching systems

Fault diagnosibility and test point development for digital networks and switching systems

Finkelstein, H.↗