125135710
THE FREJUS NUCLEON DECAY EXPERIMENT
109075983
Development of a new first level trigger for the surface array in the Pierre Auger Observatory based on the CycloneTM Altera® FPGA
Abstract The development of a new first level trigger for the surface array in the Pierre Auger Observatory is described. It utilizes the new Altera ® family Cyclone TM which is available since March 2003. Different from previous and the currently used design based on the APEX TM and ACEX ® families, respectively, it offers much higher capacity of logic registers and memories, a simplified board design, lower power consumption, and lower cost. The paper describes the board design, internal structures of the programming routines, various trigger implementations and test results obtained in the laboratory.
210155517
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory VI: Neutrino Oscillations, Supernova Searches, Ice Properties
IceCube DeepCore can study atmospheric neutrino oscillations through a combination of its low energy reach, as low as about 10 GeV, and its unprecedented statistical sample, of about 150,000 triggered atmospheric muon neutrinos per year. With the diameter of the earth as a baseline, the muon neutrino disappearance minimum and tau neutrino appearance maximum are expected at about 25 GeV, which is considerably lower energy than typical IceCube neutrino events, but higher than the energies at which accelerator-based experiments have detected oscillations. νμ disappearance and ντ appearance from neutrino oscillation can be measured in IceCube DeepCore. We present here the status of the newly developed low energy reconstruction algorithms, the expected experimental signatures, and the proposed approach for such neutrino oscillation measurements. Corresponding authors: Sebastian Euler (seuler@icecube.wisc.edu), Laura Gladstone(gladstone@icecube.wisc.edu), Jason Koskinen(koskinen@psu.edu), Donglian Xu(dxu@crimson.ua.edu) III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, D-52056 Aachen, Germany Dept. of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA Dept. of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
123338629
IceCube: A Multipurpose Neutrino Telescope
IceCube is a new high-energy neutrino telescope which will be coming online in the near future. IceCube will be capable of measuring fluxes of all three flavors of neutrino, and its peak neutrino energy sensitivity will be in the TeV–PeV range. Here, after a brief description of the detector, we describe its anticipated performance with a selection of physics topics: supernovae, extraterrestrial diffuse and point sources of neutrinos, gamma-ray bursts, neutrinos from WIMP annihilation, and cosmic ray composition.
2219103
AMANDA - first running experiment to use GRID in production
The Grid technologies are in ongoing development. Using current Grid toolkits like the Globus toolkit gives one the possibility to build up virtual organizations. Although these tookits are in still under development and do not feature all functionality, they can already now be used to set up an efficient computing environment for physics collaborations with only moderate work. We discuss in this paper the use of such a computing structure in two running experiments - the AMANDA (AMANDA = Antarctic muon and neutrino detector array) neutrino telescope and the D0 experiment at Tevatron, Fermilab. One of the main features of our approach is to avoid reprogramming of the existing software which is based on several programming languages (FORTRAN, C/C++, JAVA). This was realized with software layers around the collaboration software taking care about in- and output, user notification, tracking of running jobs, etc. A further important aspect is the resolution of library dependencies, which occur when a user runs self-compiled jobs on machines, where these libraries are not installed. These dependencies are also resolved with this layers.
120215184
A search for gamma radiation above 24 TeV energy from cosmic point sources
Abstract The HEGRA collaboration has searched for γ-ray emission from 36 potential cosmic point sources with the wide angle air Cerenkov detector AIROBICC which is part of the HEGRA cosmic ray detector complex on La Palma. AIROBICC has a γ-ray energy threshold of around 24 TeV and a mean angular resolution of 0.29 °. None of the sources could be found. Upper limits to their fluxes are given. For the VHE γ-ray emitters, the Crab nebula and Mrk 421, these flux limits are below those extrapolated from lower energy observations. Our lower limit for Mrk 421 might be interpreted either as being due to an energy cut-off in the acceleration mechanism or to the onset of γ-interaction with photons of the universal infrared background.
14208300
Heterotic cosmic strings
We show that all three conditions for the cosmological relevance of heterotic cosmic strings, the right tension, stability and a production mechanism at the end of inflation, can be met in the strongly coupled M-theory regime. Whereas cosmic strings generated from weakly coupled heterotic strings have the well-known problems posed by Witten in 1985, we show that strings arising from M5-branes wrapped around 4-cycles (divisors) of a Calabi-Yau in heterotic M-theory compactifications solve these problems in an elegant fashion.
118125996
Moduli Stabilization and String Geometry
I describe recent progress in using conformal field theory techniques to describe the stabilization of moduli fields arising in compactifications of type IIB string theory to four dimensions.
16656187
Runaway in the landscape
We consider flux compactifications of type IIB string theory on the mirror of a rigid Calabi-Yau. In special cases, these models are dual to the type IIA flux vacua with runaway direction in flux space. We show that new weak coupling AdS solutions can be found for large complex structure, while Minkowski solutions with all moduli stabilized are confined to be at strong coupling. The existence of these solutions, as found in a previous work, is nevertheless guaranteed by a nonrenormalization theorem of the type IIB flux superpotential. Based on our results, we are led to the conjecture that supersymmetric runaway directions in flux space are always accompanied by a spectrum of moduli masses reaching down to the AdS scale. This could be violated in a nonsupersymmetric situation.
6918482
Faint Scattering Around Pulsars: Probing the Interstellar Medium on Solar System Size Scales
We have made high-resolution, high-sensitivity dynamic spectra of a sample of strong pulsars at 430 MHz with the Arecibo radio telescope. For four pulsars we find faint but sharply delineated features in the secondary spectra. These are examples of the previously observed "crisscross" or "multiple drift slope" phenomenon presumed to be due to multiple imaging of the pulsar by the interstellar medium (ISM). The unprecedented resolution and dynamic range of our observations allow a deeper level of analysis. Distances to the dominant scattering screen along the line of sight are determined and are shown to agree well with those inferred from other scintillation phenomena. Multiple imaging of the pulsar by the ISM is required. A compact central image surrounded by a faint scattering halo, roughly circularly symmetric, is consistent with the data. Scattering from filaments may also be consistent. The angular extent of the scattering material parallel to the direction of the pulsar velocity is ~5 mas, corresponding to a linear extent of ~2 AU. Further observations of these features should allow better discrimination between models and an identification of the scattering structures.
124628585
Long-term stability of film, TLD, and other integrating dosimeters in warm and humid climates