55612742
Recent results from the GRAPES-3 experiment
The GRAPES-3 is a dense extensive air shower array operating with ~400 scintillator detectors and a 560 m 2 large tracking muon detector (E μ > 1 GeV), at Ooty in India. The muon detector has been used to observe acceleration of muons during thunderstorm conditions. The muon multiplicity distribution of the EAS is used to probe the composition of primary cosmic rays below 1 PeV, with an overlap with direct measurements. More recently we have explored the possibility of using the angular distribution of >1 GeV muons to identify the best from among several low- and high-energy hadronic interaction models. We have major expansion plans to enhance the sensitivity of the GRAPES-3 experiment in all of the areas listed above.
67815721
The angular resolution of the GRAPES-3 array from the shadows of the Moon and the Sun
Abstract The absence of a well established point source of very high energy ( ≳ 10 TeV ) γ-rays in the sky, makes the measurement of the angular resolution and the absolute pointing accuracy of an extensive air shower (EAS) array a challenging task. In the past, several groups have utilized the reduction in the isotropic flux of cosmic rays due to the shadows of the Moon and the Sun, to measure the angular resolution and the absolute pointing accuracy of their arrays. The data collected from the GRAPES-3 EAS array, over the period of 4 years from 2000 to 2003, has been used to observe the shadow of the Moon at a level of ∼ 5 σ and that of the Sun at a lower level of significance. The high density of the detectors in GRAPES-3 enabled an angular resolution of 0.7° to be obtained at energies as low as 30 TeV. The angular resolution studies were further extended by using two other techniques, namely, the even–odd and the left–right methods. All three techniques have yielded nearly identical results on the energy dependent angular resolution.
55926788
A large area muon tracking detector for ultra-high energy cosmic ray astrophysics — the GRAPES-3 experiment
Certain aspects of ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic ray astrophysics require correlated studies on the electron and muon components of air showers, namely, the search for cosmic ray sources through g-ray astronomy and studies on the variation of the nuclear composition of primary cosmic rays with energy. While studies on the electron component provide basic information about the arrival direction and energy, it is the muon component that plays a crucial role in distinguishing primary g-rays from charged cosmic ray particles and in determining the composition. A large area (560m), tracking muon detector of the GRAPES-3 experiment, operating at Ooty in southern India, has been designed for detailed studies on both of these aspects of UHE cosmic ray astrophysics. We present here the details of the muon detector, associated electronics and the data acquisition system. A brief discussion of the potential of the muon detector is presented through simulation studies. r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 98.70.Sa; 96.40.Pq; 96.40.De; 98.70.Rz; 95.55.Vj; 13.85.Tp
117567170
The average mass number of primary cosmic rays around the knee region derived from Grapes III array at Ooty
We analyzed three months data on air showers (total 10 showers in 10<Ne<10) observed with the GRAPES III experiment during 2001. The shower array consists of 257 scintillation detectors (1m each) and 16 muon detectors (35 m each). Very large area (560m) of the muon detectors gives good statistics for estimating the number of muons even for small air showers. We present the correlation between muon multiplicity distribution and shower size. This result is compared with simulation (Corsika code with QGS Jet model) for primary energy between 10 eV and 10 eV. We find the average mass number in this energy region follows gradual increase and mixing of proton and heavy nuclei model fits well our observed data.
119032709
Emission of Radiation at Energies > 1014 eV: Binary X-Ray Sources SCO X-1, CYG X-1, HER X-1 and Others
109607695
Vacuum system design for twenty-cell PWT Linac structure
This paper describes the vacuum system design for a 20-cell Plane Wave Transformer (PWT) type LINear ACcelerator (LINAC) structure to obtain a vacuum better than 5×10−8 mbar everywhere inside the linac structure. Specific material out-gassing rate for a 20-cell linac is determined on the basis of vacuum achieved in a similar type of 8-cell linac structure, which is smaller in length, and presently under operation in the Compact Ultrafast TEra-hertz Free Electron Laser (CUTE-FEL) beam transport line at RRCAT.
119711961
Aspects of deuteron production in relativistic heavy ion collisions
One criticism of the thermodynamic model for deuteron production has been that it may not be possible for deuterons to exist inside the fireball. We give arguments why deuterons can exist inside the fireball, although they cannot exist in cold nuclear matter at normal density. We redefine the Berkeley coalescence model and show that with this redefinition, the coalescence model is rather close to the thermodynamic prescription. We show that this redefined coalescence model is equivalent to the quantum mechanical sudden approximation model considered by Kapusta. We construct the grand canonical partition function for interacting fermions up to the second virial coefficient and show that the redefined coalescence model and the simple thermodynamic model are two limits of a more complete theory.
53575170
Eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the staggered Dirac operator at finite temperature
We examine the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the staggered Dirac operator on thermal ensembles created in QCD with two flavors of staggered quarks. We see that across the phase transition a gap opens in the spectrum. For finite volume lattices in the low-temperature phase the eigenvectors are extended, but generic field configurations in the high temperature phase give rise to localized eigenstates. We examine measures of the stability of such localization and find that at finite volumes localization occurs through Mott's mechanism of the formation of mobility edges. However, the band gap between the localized and extended states seem to scale to zero in the limit of large volume.
118999246
Susceptibilities and screening masses in two flavor QCD
We study QCD with two flavors of dynamical staggered quarks at finite temperature, with a bare sea quark mass of about 17 MeV. We report investigations of baryon, isospin, charge and strangeness susceptibilities, as well as screening masses obtained from correlators of local and one-link separated meson operators. These are studied as functions of the valence quark mass at several temperatures. Our results for susceptibilities deviate significantly from ideal gas values, and even more from the weak coupling series. We also report the first measurement of off-diagonal quark number susceptibilities below the transition temperature ${T}_{c},$ where they are the main contribution to charge fluctuations. We present evidence for a close connection between the susceptibilities and the screening masses.
120000887
Angular resolution of the Ooty EAS array based on UHE gamma rays from Her X-1
The angular resolution of an extensive air shower array for studies on cosmic sources of ultra-high-energy gamma rays has been determined by most of the experimental groups generally by inter-comparison between sub-arrays, in the absence of the knowledge of any steady and strong discrete source. The sub-arrays have been obtained mostly by dividing the main array into two arrays, one containing the even-numbered detectors and another having the odd-numbered detectors. Using this method the angular resolution of the 24-detector array operated at Ooty during 1984-7 was estimated to be about 1.5 degrees . Recently the Ooty group has reported the detection of four episodes of pulsed emission of ultra-high-energy photons from Her X-1 which have been shown to be phase locked with a period of 1.2357701 s. The authors have made a study of the angular resolution for the Ooty array using this signal from Her X-1 which had a relatively low background. The angular resolution of the array has been determined to be 1.6 degrees +or-0.4 degrees . This is the first direct measurement of angular resolution of an air shower array using a point source of ultra-high-energy photons.
122805550
Studies of the energy spectrum and composition of the primary cosmic rays at 100?1000 TeV from the GRAPES-3 experiment
The composition and energy spectrum of primary cosmic rays (PCRs) are the only observables at high energies to study the nature of sources accelerating PCRs to �1000 TeV. These observables have been directly measured up to ∼300 TeV with detectors aboard balloons and satellites. But measurements at >1000 TeV have to be obtained indirectly from ground-based observations of extensive air showers. However, their interpretation relies on an inadequate knowledge of hadronic interactions at �1000 TeV. The GRAPES-3 experiment is designed to operate at �30 TeV providing a sizable overlap in energy with direct measurements, enabling the selection of a suitable model of hadronic interactions at ∼1000 TeV. We present salient features of GRAPES-3 including details of muon multiplicity distributions observed with a 560 m 2 detector as a function of shower size from an analysis of data of 545 days. These distributions were compared with expectations from Monte Carlo simulations, using some of the hadronic interaction generators in CORSIKA, to deduce energy spectra of five nuclear groups in the 100–1000 TeV region. A comparison of GRAPES-3 results with direct measurements indicates that SIBYLL provides a good description of hadronic interactions for interpreting our data. These measurements extend energy spectra and composition of PCRs that is consistent with extrapolation of direct measurements. (Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)