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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.

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At least 19 records

Search for Low-Mass Dark Matter with CDMSlite Using a Profile Likelihood Fit

The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search low ionization threshold experiment (CDMSlite) searches for interactions between dark matter particles and germanium nuclei in cryogenic detectors. The experiment has achieved a low energy threshold with improved sensitivity to low-mass (<10 GeV/c2) dark matter particles. We present an analysis of the final CDMSlite data set, taken with a different detector than was used for the two previous CDMSlite data sets. This analysis includes a data "salting" method to protect against bias, improved noise discrimination, background modeling, and the use of profile likelihood methods to search for a dark matter signal in the presence of backgrounds. We achieve an energy threshold of 70 eV and significantly improve the sensitivity for dark matter particles with masses between 2.5 and 10 GeV/c2 compared to previous analyses. We set an upper limit on the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section in germanium of 5.4×10-42 cm2 at 5 GeV/c2, a factor of ~2.5 improvement over the previous CDMSlite result.

Agnese, R↗

Search for flavour-changing neutral current top-quark decays t → qZ in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13 $ TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for flavour-changing neutral-current processes in top-quark decays is presented. Data collected with the ATLAS detector from proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13 $ TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb-1, are analysed. The search is performed using top-quark pair events, with one top quark decaying through the t → qZ (q = u, c) flavour-changing neutral-current channel, and the other through the dominant Standard Model mode t → bW. Only Z boson decays into charged leptons and leptonic W boson decays are considered as signal. Consequently, the final-state topology is characterized by the presence of three isolated charged leptons (electrons or muons), at least two jets, one of the jets originating from a b-quark, and missing transverse momentum from the undetected neutrino. Here, the data are consistent with Standard Model background contributions, and at 95% confidence level the search sets observed (expected) upper limits of 1.7 × 10 -4 (2.4 × 10 -4 ) on the t → uZ branching ratio and 2.4 × 10 -4 (3.2 × 10 -4 ) on the t → cZ branching ratio, constituting the most stringent limits to date.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A 3π Search for Planet Nine at 3.4 μm with WISE and NEOWISE

The recent “Planet Nine” hypothesis has led to many observational and archival searches for this giant planet proposed to orbit the Sun at hundreds of astronomical units. While trans-Neptunian object searches are typically conducted in the optical, models suggest Planet Nine could be self-luminous and potentially bright enough at ∼3–5 μm to be detected by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). We have previously demonstrated a Planet Nine search methodology based on time-resolved WISE coadds, allowing us to detect moving objects much fainter than would be possible using single-frame extractions. In the present work, we extend our 3.4 μm (W1) search to cover more than three-quarters of the sky and incorporate four years of WISE observations spanning a seven-year time period. This represents the deepest and widest-area WISE search for Planet Nine to date. We characterize the spatial variation of our survey’s sensitivity and rule out the presence of Planet Nine in the parameter space searched at W1 < 16.7 in high Galactic latitude regions (90% completeness).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Search for pair production of up-type vector-like quarks and for four-top-quark events in final states with multiple b-jets with the ATLAS detector

A search for pair production of up-type vector-like quarks ( T ) with a significant branching ratio into a top quark and either a Standard Model Higgs boson or a Z boson is presented. The same analysis is also used to search for four-top-quark production in several new physics scenarios. The search is based on a dataset of pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ =13 TeV recorded in 2015 and 2016 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb -1 . Data are analysed in the lepton+jets final state, characterised by an isolated electron or muon with high transverse momentum, large missing transverse momentum and multiple jets, as well as the jets + E T miss final state, characterised by multiple jets and large missing transverse momentum. The search exploits the high multiplicity of jets identified as originating from b -quarks, and the presence of boosted, hadronically decaying top quarks and Higgs bosons reconstructed as large-radius jets, characteristic of signal events. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed, and 95% CL upper limits are set on the production cross sections for the different signal processes considered. These cross-section limits are used to derive lower limits on the mass of a vector-like T quark under several branching ratio hypotheses assuming contributions from T → W b , Zt , Ht decays. The 95% CL observed lower limits on the T quark mass range between 0 . 99 TeV and 1 . 43 TeV for all possible values of the branching ratios into the three decay modes considered, significantly extending the reach beyond that of previous searches. Additionally, upper limits on anomalous four-top-quark production are set in the context of an effective field theory model, as well as in an universal extra dimensions model.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DeepHyper: Asynchronous Hyperparameter Search for Deep Neural Networks

Hyperparameters employed by deep learning (DL) methods play a substantial role in the performance and reliability of these methods in practice. Unfortunately, finding performance-optimizing hyperparameter settings is a notoriously difficult task. Hyperparameter search methods typically have limited production-strength implementations or do not target scalability within a highly parallel machine, portability across different machines, experimental comparison between different methods, and tighter integration with workflow systems. In this paper, we present DeepHyper, a Python package that provides a common interface for the implementation and study of scalable hyperparameter search methods. It adopts the Balsam workflow system to hide the complexities of running large numbers of hyperparameter configurations in parallel on high-performance computing (HPC) systems. We implement and study asynchronous model-based search methods that consist of sampling a small number of input hyperparameter configurations and progressively fitting surrogate models over the input-output space until exhausting a user-defined budget of evaluations. We evaluate the efficacy of these methods relative to approaches such as random search, genetic algorithms, Bayesian optimization, and hyperband on DL benchmarks on CPU- and GPU-based HPC systems.

Balaprakash, Prasanna↗

Searching for Strongly-Interacting Dark Matter with the Heavy Photon Search Experiment

The Heavy Photon Search Experiment (HPS) is a fixed-target experiment at Jefferson Lab’s Hall B, designed to explore a hidden sector (HS) of particles containing dark matter and a new force mediator known as the “heavy photon” (A'). The A' is a massive spin-1 gauge boson associated with a new U (1)D symmetry in the HS that kinetically mixes with the Standard Model () photon with a weak coupling strength parameterized by ¿, with ¿2 ~ 10-2 -10-10. HPS utilizes a high-intensity electron beam on a thin tungsten target to produce heavy photons in the MeV-GeV mass range via “dark bremsstrahlung,” a process analogous to SM bremsstrahlung but suppressed by ¿2. The A' can decay resonantly to SM leptons, allowing HPS to conduct both mass resonance searches for prompt decays (large ¿) and displaced vertex searches for long-lived particles (small ¿). In addition to the minimal A' model, HPS probes more complex extensions such as the QCD-like strongly-interacting massive particles (SIMPs) HS containing “dark” pions (pD) and vector mesons (VD), with pD as dark matter candidates. These particles introduce new thermal dark matter freeze- out scenarios and visible signals through long-lived VD decays to SM leptons, which are accessible to HPS. This analysis conducted a displaced vertex search for VD ¿ e-e+ in the mass range 30 MeV to 124 MeV and ¿ between 10-6 < ¿ < 10-2 using data from the 2016 Engineering Run (10.753 nb-1) at 2.3 GeV. Unlike the minimal A' search, SIMP signal kinematics required new approaches to signal normalization and SM background rejection. The strongest signal evidence was a local p-value of 0.01317 for mVD = 119 MeV, corresponding to a global significance of 0.9s. Although no signal was found, this search excluded a region of the SIMP parameter space at 90 % confidence. This work demonstrates HPS’s competitive capability to probe SIMP sectors within cosmologically significant parameters and introduces a new method for HPS displaced vertex searches using track vertical impact parameter cuts

Spellman, Alic [Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, C↗

Search for pair production of heavy vector-like quarks decaying into high-p T W bosons and top quarks in the lepton-plus-jets final state in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is presented for the pair production of heavy vector-like B quarks, primarily targeting B quark decays into a W boson and a top quark. The search is based on 36.1 fb -1 of pp collisions at s√=13 TeV recorded in 2015 and 2016 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Data are analysed in the lepton-plus-jets final state, characterised by a high-transverse-momentum isolated electron or muon, large missing transverse momentum, and multiple jets, of which at least one is b-tagged. No significant deviation from the Standard Model expectation is observed. The 95% confidence level lower limit on the B mass is 1350 GeV assuming a 100% branching ratio to Wt. In the SU(2) singlet scenario, the lower mass limit is 1170 GeV. The 100% branching ratio limits are found to be also applicable to heavy vector-like X production, with charge +5/3, that decay into Wt. In conclusion, this search is also sensitive to a heavy vector-like B quark decaying into other final states (Zb and Hb) and thus mass limits on B production are set as a function of the decay branching ratios.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Combination of Searches for Higgs Boson Pair Production in Proton-Proton Collisions at s =13 TeV

This Letter describes a search for Higgs boson pair production using the combined results from four final states: bbγγ, bbττ, bbbb, and bbVV, where V represents a W or Z boson. The search is performed using data collected in 2016 by the CMS experiment from LHC proton-proton collisions at s=13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb-1. Limits are set on the Higgs boson pair production cross section. A 95% confidence level observed (expected) upper limit on the nonresonant production cross section is set at 22.2 (12.8) times the standard model value. A search for narrow resonances decaying to Higgs boson pairs is also performed in the mass range 250-3000 GeV. No evidence for a signal is observed, and upper limits are set on the resonance production cross section. © 2019 CERN.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A 3.95–8.00 GHz Search for Radio Technosignatures in the Restricted Earth Transit Zone

We report on a search for artificial narrowband signals of 20 stars within the restricted Earth Transit Zone (rETZ) as a part of the ten-year Breakthrough Listen (BL) search for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). The rETZ is the region of the sky from which an observer would see Earth transit the Sun with an impact parameter of less than 0.5. This region of the sky is geometrically unique, providing a potential way for an ETI to discover the solar system. The targets were nearby (7–143 pc) and the search covered an electromagnetic frequency range of 3.95–8.00 GHz. We used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope to perform these observations with the standard BL data recorder. We searched these data for artificial narrowband (∼Hz) signals with Doppler drift rates of ±20 Hz s{sup −1}. We find no evidence for radio technosignatures from ETI in our observations. The observing campaign would have allowed for detections of emissions that were 10{sup −3} to 0.88 times as powerful as the signaling capability of the Arecibo radar transmitter. We conclude that at least 0.6% of the systems in the rETZ within 150 pc do not possess the type of transmitters searched in this survey. To our knowledge, this is the first targeted search for ETI of the rETZ. All data used in this paper are publicly available via the BL Public Data Archive (http://seti.berkeley.edu/bldr2).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Searching for Technosignatures in Observations of TESS Targets of Interest

Exoplanetary systems are prime targets for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). With the recent uptick in the identification of candidate and confirmed exoplanets through the work of missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), we are beginning to understand that Earth-like planets are common. In this work, we extend the Breakthrough Listen (BL) search for extraterrestrial intelligence to include targeted searches of stars identified by TESS as potential exoplanet hosts. We report on 113 30 minute cadence observations collected for 28 targets selected from the TESS Input Catalog from among those identified as containing signatures of transiting planets. The targets were searched for narrowband signals from 1 to 11 GHz using the turboSETI pipeline architecture modified for compatibility with the Google Cloud environment. Data were searched for drift rates of ±4 Hz s{sup −1} above a minimum signal-to-noise threshold of 10, following the parameters of previous searches conducted by Price et al. and Enriquez et al. The observations presented in this work establish some of the deepest limits to date over such a wide band (1–11 GHz) for life beyond Earth. We determine that fewer than 12.72% of the observed targets possess transmitters operating at these frequencies with an equivalent isotropic radiated power greater than our derived threshold of 4.9×10{sup 14} W.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗