Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Flavour physics”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 145 records · Page 8

Form factors for semi-leptonic $B_{(s)} \to D_{(s)}^∗\ell \nu_\ell$ decays

Semileptonic $B_{(s)}$ decays are of great phenomenological interestbecause they allow to extract CKM matrix elements or test lepton flavouruniversality. Taking advantage of existing data, we explore extractingform factors for vector final states using the narrow widthapproximation. Based on RBC/UKQCD's set of 2+1 flavour gauge fieldensembles with Shamir domain-wall fermion and Iwasaki gauge fieldaction, we study semileptonic $B_{(s)}$ decays using domain-wallfermions for light, strange and charm quarks, whereas bottom quarks aresimulated with the relativistic heavy quark (RHQ) action. Exploratoryresults for $B_s \to D_s^* \ell \nu_\ell$ are presented.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Performance Analysis and Radiation Damage Estimation of the Stopping Target Monitor Detectors in Mu2e

The Mu2e experiment aims to search for the charged lepton flavour violating (CLFV) process of a coherent, neutrinoless, conversion of a muon into an electron within the proximity of an aluminium nucleus. Mu2e seeks to measure the ratio (R μe ) of the rate of this conversion process, relative to that of ordinary muon capture. Mu2e will achieve world-leading sensitivity, improving the current limit of Rμe < 7 ×10 -13 (90% C.L.),set by the SINDRUM-II experiment, by an order of 104. This corresponds to a single-event sensitivity of Rμe < 2.87 × 10 -17 (90% C.L.). Many beyond Standard Model (BSM) theories require CLFV to occur at a rate accessible by Mu2e. Any observation of CLFV at Mu2e would have profound implications on particle physics. The Stopping Target Monitor (STM) will be comprised of both a HPGe and a LaBr3 detector which will monitor the signals of photons produced in stopped-muon processes to a required accuracy of 10%. To achieve the desired sensitivity, it is imperative that the detectors perform at their optimal level. The STM detectors are placed within a harsh radiation environment in the form of a high energy ‘flash’ of gamma radiation as well as a flux of fast neutrons. Estimations of radiation damage to HPGe in literature is limited. This thesis reports an approach which utilizes the Kinetic-Energy Released in Matter (KERMA) parameter that considers the energy dependence of the incident flux and the cross-section information for the incident particle. Resampling schemes have been adopted to give a realistic rate over the experiment run time. The results have then been normalized to the radiation damage caused by a 252 Cf source. The estimated time before annealing of the detector is necessary is found to be 75 and 78 months in the case of neutron damage and τ ~ 24 years, 11 months in the case of electron/positron induced damage. This shows significant improvement on the previous estimations.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DK/Dπ scattering and an exotic virtual bound state at the SU(3) flavour symmetric point from lattice QCD

Abstract ElasticS-wave scattering of a charm meson with a light pseudoscalar meson inJ P = 0 + is investigated in the flavour$$ \overline{\textbf{3}} $$ 3 ¯ ,6and$$ \overline{\textbf{15}} $$ 15 ¯ sectors at the SU(3) f flavour point using lattice QCD, working on three volumes withm π ≈ 700 MeV. Large bases of interpolating operators are employed to extract finite-volume spectra, which are subsequently used with the Lüscher method to provide constraints on infinite-volume scattering amplitudes. Examining the singularities of the amplitudes, theS-wave amplitude in the flavour$$ \overline{\textbf{3}} $$ 3 ¯ sector is found to contain a deeply bound state, strongly coupled to elastic threshold, corresponding to the$$ {J}^P={0}^{+}\ {D}_{s0}^{\ast }(2317) $$ J P = 0 + D s 0 ∗ 2317 . In the exotic flavour6sector a virtual bound state is found at$$ \sqrt{s_{\textrm{pole}}} $$ s pole = 2510 – 2610 MeV, roughly 40 – 140 MeV below threshold, whereas the$$ \overline{\textbf{15}} $$ 15 ¯ channel shows weak repulsion.

Physics↗

The Detectors of the Mu2e Experiment

The Mu2e experiment aims to test Charge Lepton Flavour Violation to an unprecedented level, enhancing the current sensitivity by four orders of magnitude for the neutrinoless conversion of muons into electrons. A series of graded solenoids convey an intense, pulsed muon beam to an aluminum target. The main detector components are a low mass straw drift tubes tracker, a pure Cesium Iodide calorimeter and an extruded plastic scintillator cosmic ray veto. Requirements, tests on prototypes and status of the production will be discussed.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Kaon physics without new physics in $$ \varepsilon _K$$

Abstract Despite the observation of significant suppressions of $$b\rightarrow s\mu ^+\mu ^-$$ b → s μ + μ - branching ratios no clear sign of New Physics (NP) has been identified in $$\Delta F=2$$ Δ F = 2 observables $$\Delta M_{d,s}$$ Δ M d , s , $$\varepsilon _K$$ ε K and the mixing induced CP asymmetries $$S_{\psi K_S}$$ S ψ K S and $$S_{\psi \phi }$$ S ψ ϕ . Assuming negligible NP contributions to these observables allows to determine CKM parameters without being involved in the tensions between inclusive and exclusive determinations of $$|V_{cb}|$$ | V cb | and $$|V_{ub}|$$ | V ub | . Furthermore this method avoids the impact of NP on the determination of these parameters present likely in global fits. Simultaneously it provides SM predictions for numerous rare K and B branching ratios that are most accurate to date. Analyzing this scenario within $$Z^\prime $$ Z ′ models we point out, following the 2009 observations of Monika Blanke and ours of 2020, that despite the absence of NP contributions to $$\varepsilon _K$$ ε K , significant NP contributions to $$K^+\rightarrow \pi ^+\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ K + → π + ν ν ¯ , $$K_{L}\rightarrow \pi ^0\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ K L → π 0 ν ν ¯ , $$K_S\rightarrow \mu ^+\mu ^-$$ K S → μ + μ - , $$K_L\rightarrow \pi ^0\ell ^+\ell ^-$$ K L → π 0 ℓ + ℓ - , $$\varepsilon '/\varepsilon $$ ε ′ / ε and $$\Delta M_K$$ Δ M K can be present. In the simplest scenario, this is guaranteed, as far as flavour changes are concerned, by a single non-vanishing imaginary left-handed $$Z^\prime $$ Z ′ coupling $$g^L_{sd}$$ g sd L . This scenario implies very stringent correlations between the Kaon observables considered by us. In particular, the identification of NP in any of these observables implies automatically NP contributions to the remaining ones under the assumption of non-vanishing flavour conserving $$Z^\prime $$ Z ′ couplings to $$q{\bar{q}}$$ q q ¯ , $$\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ ν ν ¯ , and $$\mu ^+\mu ^-$$ μ + μ - . A characteristic feature of this scenario is a strict correlation between $$K^+\rightarrow \pi ^+\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ K + → π + ν ν ¯ and $$K_{L}\rightarrow \pi ^0\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ K L → π 0 ν ν ¯ branching ratios on a branch parallel to the Grossman-Nir bound. Moreover, $$\Delta M_K$$ Δ M K is automatically suppressed as seems to be required by the results of the RBC-UKQCD lattice QCD collaboration. Furthermore, there is no NP contribution to $$K_L\rightarrow \mu ^+\mu ^-$$ K L → μ + μ - which otherwise would bound NP effects in $$K^+\rightarrow \pi ^+\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ K + → π + ν ν ¯ . Of particular interest are the correlations of $$K^+\rightarrow \pi ^+\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ K + → π + ν ν ¯ and $$K_{L}\rightarrow \pi ^0\nu {\bar{\nu }}$$ K L → π 0 ν ν ¯ branching ratios and of $$\Delta M_K$$ Δ M K with the ratio $$\varepsilon '/\varepsilon $$ ε ′ / ε . We investigate the impact of renormalization group effects in the context of the SMEFT on this simple scenario.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Muon-neutrino disappearance with multiple liquid argon time projection chambers in the Fermilab Booster neutrino beam

The Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program consists of three liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) experiments: SBND, MicroBooNE and ICARUS, with 110 m, 470 m and 600 m baselines respectively. The detectors are located in the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermilab which has a peak energy around 0.7 GeV and contains predominantly muon neutrinos. The baseline and energy range of the SBN program is conducive to measuring neutrino oscillation parameters under various sterile neutrino hypotheses. Sterile neutrinos have been proposed as a possible solution to the numerous short baseline anomalies. The proposed particles must be sterile in nature such that they do not interact via the weak force, however they may undergo oscillations with the active neutrino flavours. Their existence may consequently be confirmed through measurements of the appearance and disappearance of the active flavours. The analyses presented in this thesis aimed to calculate and understand the sensitivity of the SBN program to measuring the ?µ disappearance parameters under the (3+1) sterile neutrino oscillation hypothesis. The sensitivity of SBN to measuring the ?µ disappearance sterile oscillation parameters, sin2 2?µµ, ?m2 41, was calculated through semi-exclusive joint fits of the ?µ CC 0p and ?µ CC Other reconstructed neutrino energy spectra. The first iteration used truth-level Monte Carlo (MC) events, and determined that the 5s SBN sensitivity is comparable to the 90% MINOS/MINOS+ confidence level and supersedes the 90% MiniBooNE confidence level across entire phase space. Semi-exclusive joint fits of the aforementioned sample spectra were performed between the MC and multiple mock data sets in SBND. This analysis assessed the accuracy with which the near detector can disentangle systematic from physics effects in the oscillation analysis. The result was a 5.49% discrepancy between the ICARUS Monte Carlo and mock data event rates, when the systematic constraints from the near detector fit were extrapolated to the far detector. The second iteration of the SBN sensitivity analysis involved the application of an event selection procedure developed in SBND, following the full reconstruction chain. ?µ CC 0p events were selected from sample of neutrinos with 84.5% efficiency and 84.3% purity. The sterile neutrino sensitivity was determined once more at the near detector with these samples, and was shown to be consistent with the truth-level studies.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

3-flavour results with NOvA

The NOvA collaboration has presented the 3-flavour oscillation results using a frequentist approach before. In this contribution, we present the results obtained with a bayesian approach. The conclusions with respect to the frequentist approach are unchanged, that is, the upper octant of $\theta_{23}$ is preferred, $\delta_\text{CP}=\frac{3\pi}{2}$ is not preferred at the $2\sigma$ level with normal ordering and $\delta_\text{CP}=\frac{\pi}{2}$ excluded at $3\sigma$ with inverted ordering. As a novelty of the bayesian analysis, the results obtained when $\theta_{13}$ is left as a free parameter in the fit are also.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Measurement of the inclusive WZ production cross section in pp collisions at $\sqrt{\textrm{s}}$ = 13.6 TeV

The inclusive WZ production cross section is measured in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV, using data collected during 2022 with the CMS detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34.7 fb −1 . The measurement uses multileptonic final states and a simultaneous likelihood fit to the number of events in four different lepton flavour categories: eee, ee μ , μμ e, and μμμ . The selection is optimized to minimize the number of background events, and relies on an efficient prompt lepton discrimination strategy. The WZ production cross section is measured in a phase space defined within a 30 GeV window around the Z boson mass, as σ total (pp → WZ) = 55.2 ± 1.2 (stat) ± 1.2 (syst) ± 0.8 (lumi) ± 0.3 (theo) pb. In addition, the cross section is measured in a fiducial phase space closer to the detector-level requirements. All the measurements presented in this paper are in agreement with standard model predictions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Flavour-dependent chemical freeze-out of light nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

We study the production of light nuclei in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7–200 GeV and Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 and 5.02 TeV within a flavour-dependent chemical freeze-out scenario, assuming different flavoured hadrons undergo separate chemical freeze-out. Using the Thermal-FIST package, thermal parameters extracted from fits to various sets of hadron yields, including and excluding light nuclei, are used to calculate the ratios of the yields of light nuclei, namely, d/p, $\overline{d}$/$\overline{p}$, t/p, t/d, 4 He/ 3 He, and 3 H Λ / 3 He. A comparison with experimental data from the STAR and ALICE collaborations shows that a sequential freeze-out scenario provides a better description of light nuclei yield ratios than the traditional single freeze-out approach. These results suggest the flavour-dependent chemical freeze-out for final state light nuclei production persists in heavy-ion collisions at both RHIC and LHC energies.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Core-collapse supernova neutrino emission and detection informed by state-of-the-art three-dimensional numerical models

ABSTRACT Based on our recent three-dimensional core-collapse supernova (CCSN) simulations including both exploding and non-exploding models, we study the detailed neutrino signals in representative terrestrial neutrino observatories, namely Super-Kamiokande (Hyper-Kamiokande), DUNE, JUNO, and IceCube. We find that the physical origin of difference in the neutrino signals between 1D and 3D is mainly proto-neutron-star convection. We study the temporal and angular variations of the neutrino signals and discuss the detectability of the time variations driven by the spiral standing accretion shock instability (spiral SASI) when it emerges for non-exploding models. In addition, we determine that there can be a large angular asymmetry in the event rate (${\gtrsim} 50 {{\ \rm per\ cent}}$), but the time-integrated signal has a relatively modest asymmetry (${\lesssim} 20 {{\ \rm per\ cent}}$). Both features are associated with the lepton-number emission self-sustained asymmetry and the spiral SASI. Moreover, our analysis suggests that there is an interesting correlation between the total neutrino energy (TONE) and the cumulative number of neutrino events in each detector, a correlation that can facilitate data analyses of real observations. We demonstrate the retrieval of neutrino energy spectra for all flavours of neutrino by applying a novel spectrum reconstruction technique to the data from multiple detectors. We find that this new method is capable of estimating the TONE within the error of ∼20 per cent if the distance to the CCSN is ≲6 kpc.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Forward production of prompt neutrinos from charm in the atmosphere and at high energy colliders

The high-energy atmospheric neutrino flux is dominated by neutrinos from the decays of charmed hadrons produced in the forward direction by cosmic ray interactions with air nuclei. We evaluate the charm contributions to the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux as a function of the center-of-mass energy √s of the hadronic collision and of the center-of-mass rapidity y of the produced charm hadron. Uncertainties associated with parton distribution functions are also evaluated as a function of y. We find that the y coverage of LHCb for forward heavy-flavour production, complemented by the angular coverage of present and future forward neutrino experiments at the LHC, bracket the most interesting y regions for the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux. At √s = 14 TeV foreseen for the HL-LHC phase, nucleon collisions in air contribute to the prompt neutrino flux prominently below E ν ~ 10 7 GeV. Measurements of forward charm and/or forward neutrinos produced in hadron collisions up to √s = 100 TeV, which might become possible at the FCC, are relevant for the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux up to E ν = 10 8 GeV and beyond.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

The "Fake" Supernova Neutrinos of SBND: Using Muons Decaying at Rest to Study the Charged Current MeV-Scale $V_e$-Ar Cross Section

In a Type-II core collapse supernova, 99% of the total amount of energy is released in the form of neutrinos. However, the nearest supernova explosion in the last few hundred years was in 1987, over thirty years ago. It was also the first from which particle detectors around the world managed to detect the neutrino flux, yielding important information about their properties and the explosion mechanism. Neutrinos are the most weakly interacting subatomic fundamental particles known to date, and they act as a cooling mechanism for the star. Out of the six neutrino flavours currently known, the majority exiting the explosion are electron neutrinos, ve. Neutrino experiments using liquid argon (LAr) as their detector medium are unique at probing this specific channel. In the meantime, however, until the next explosion, we can still practise for the big event. With the Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) experiment at Fermilab, we can study how electron neutrinos of the same energy coming from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) interact in LAr, and measure the cross section. As BNB measurements are mostly tailored to higher energy neutrinos, I will present an overview of how SBND is aiming to select the low-energy neutrino candidates from muons Decaying At Rest (DAR) in the absorber and target within the BNB beam pipe. This is not a straightforward feat, encompassing special difficulties that include beam and flux systematic uncertainty simulation, system trigger needs and particular reconstruction efforts, and so I will present how each challenge is being addressed in SBND. This will be a novel measurement in the neutrino particle physics community, and will prove fundamental for the next generation of supernova neutrino detectors.

Kotsiopoulou, Lucy [Edinburgh U.]↗

Commissioning of the Mu2e Data AcQuisition System and the Vertical Slice Test of the Straw Tracker

The report discusses the commissioning of the DAQ system of the Mu2e experiment. We studied how the tracker works and especially the tracker readout. We used a generator to send pulses and we tried to understand the output and non-output of the DTC, in order to validate the event and run format and all the failure modes. In section one, we describe Charged Lepton Flavour Violation, the main purpose of Mu2e, in section two we describe Mu2e experiment. Section three presents the tracker description and readout, meanwhile section four the DAQ system and event building. In section five, we start explaining the analysis we have done on events and all the failure modes we discovered. In section six, we have done an analysis of the logger and boardreader rate, we validated the generator frequency in section seven and studied the number of hits in function of the channel number in section eight. To conclude we investigated the channel to channel time differences in section nine and in section ten we explain our Monte Carlo simulation, reproducing ROCs readout.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Quark and gluon two-loop beam functions for leading-jet p T and slicing at NNLO

We compute the complete set of two-loop beam functions for the transverse momentum distribution of the leading jet produced in association with an arbitrary colour-singlet system. Our results constitute the last missing ingredient for the calculation of the jet-vetoed cross section at small veto scales at the next-to-next-to-leading order, as well as an important ingredient for its resummation to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic order. Our calculation is performed in the soft-collinear effective theory framework with a suitable regularisation of the rapidity divergences occurring in the phase-space integrals. We discuss the occurrence of soft-collinear mixing terms that might violate the factorisation theorem, and demonstrate that they are naturally absorbed into the beam functions at two loops in the exponential rapidity regularisation scheme when performing a multipole expansion of the measurement function. As in our recent computation of the two-loop soft function, we present the results as a Laurent expansion in the jet radius R. We provide analytic expressions for all flavour channels in x space with the exception of a set of R-independent non-logarithmic terms that are given as numerical grids. We also perform a fully numerical calculation with exact R dependence, and find that it agrees with our analytic expansion at the permyriad level or better. Our calculation allows us to define a next-to-next-to-leading order slicing method using the leading-jet p T as a slicing variable. As a check of our results, we carry out a calculation of the Higgs and Z boson total production cross sections at the next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A data-driven method to constrain the $\bar{p}$ background in Mu2e

The Mu2e experiment will search for the charged lepton flavour violating process of neutrinoless coherent muon to electron conversion in the field of an Al nucleus. The expected signal is a 104.97 MeV/c electron. One of the expected backgrounds is due to ¯ps produced by the proton beam at the Production Target and annihilating in the Stopping Target (ST). The background from ¯p annihilation is not a dominant one, but it has a large uncertainty and it cannot be suppressed by the timing cuts used to reduce the prompt background. However at Mu2e energies, p¯p annihilation is the only source of events with multiple simultaneous tracks coming from the ST. We exploit this unique feature and reconstruct the multi-track events to estimate the ¯p background.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Leptonic sum rules from flavour models with modular symmetries

Sum rules in the lepton sector provide an extremely valuable tool to classify flavour models in terms of relations between neutrino masses and mixing parameters testable in a plethora of experiments. In this manuscript we identify new leptonic sum rules arising in models with modular symmetries with residual symmetries. These models simultaneously present neutrino mass sum rules, involving masses and Majorana phases, and mixing sum rules, connecting the mixing angles and the Dirac CP-violating phase. The simultaneous appearance of both types of sum rules leads to some non-trivial interplay, for instance, the allowed absolute neutrino mass scale exhibits a dependence on the Dirac CP-violating phase. We derive analytical expressions for these novel sum rules and present their allowed parameter ranges as well as their predictions at upcoming neutrino experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Resonant Extraction and Extinction Measurement for the Mu2e Experiment

The Mu2e experiment, currently under construction at Fermilab, will search for coherent neutrinoless muon to electron conversion, extending the sensitivity of searches for charged lepton flavour violation by four orders of magnitude in 3-5 years of data-taking. This improved sensitivity is made possible by using a pulsed beam structure that is optimized for reducing prompt backgrounds when muons are stopped on an aluminium target. Producing a high-rate pulsed beam is achieved using resonant extraction of a circulating proton beam, an “AC dipole” with a time-varying field to deflect out-of-time protons, and a system to measure the extinction of out-of-time beam particles incident on the muon production target. These proceedings summarize the systems that have been designed to achieve the required level of extinction and to continuously place limits on the presence of out-of-time beam hitting the production target with a sensitivity of <1e-10.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for heavy neutral leptons in decays of W bosons using leptonic and semi-leptonic displaced vertices in $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search is performed for long-lived heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), produced through the decay of a W boson along with a muon or electron. Two channels are explored: a leptonic channel, in which the HNL decays into two leptons and a neutrino, and a semi-leptonic channel, in which the HNL decays into a lepton and a charged pion. The search is performed with 140 fb −1 of $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV proton-proton collision data collected by ATLAS during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider. No excess of events is observed; Dirac-like and Majorana-like HNLs with masses below 14.5 GeV and mixing coefficients as small as 10 −7 are excluded at the 95% confidence level. The results are interpreted under different assumptions on the flavour of the leptons from the HNL decays.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗