122702152
SEARCH FOR TACHYONS IN EXTENSIVE AIR SHOWERS
The authors have searched for precursors to air showers using a 0.64 m2 scintillation detector system located under a thick layer of absorber inside a multiplate cloud chamber. They find no evidence for a finite flux of tachyon-like particles in an operating time of 3621 hours compared with the observation of six events in 40 hours with a 2.1 m2 detector as reported by Ashton et al. (1977).
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
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.
119032709
Emission of Radiation at Energies > 1014 eV: Binary X-Ray Sources SCO X-1, CYG X-1, HER X-1 and Others
121254838
Sporadic emission of ultra high energy gamma rays from Crab pulsar
In a further study of sporadic emission from pulsars we find evidence for short lived intense emission from the Crab pulsar.
119261053
Renormalization Group Evolution of Neutrino Parameters in Presence of Seesaw Threshold Effects and Majorana Phases
We examine the renormalization group evolution (RGE) for different mixing scenarios in the presence of seesaw threshold effects from high energy scale (GUT) to the low electroweak (EW) scale in the Standard Model (SM) and Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We consider four mixing scenarios namely Tri–Bimaximal Mixing, Bimaximal Mixing, Hexagonal Mixing and Golden Ratio Mixing which come from different flavor symmetries at the GUT scale. We find that the Majorana phases play an important role in the RGE running of these mixing patterns along with the seesaw threshold corrections. We present a comparative study of the RGE of all these mixing scenarios both with and without Majorana CP phases when seesaw threshold corrections are taken into consideration. We find that in the absence of these Majorana phases both the RGE running and seesaw effects may lead to θ13<5° at low energies both in the SM and MSSM. However, if the Majorana phases are incorporated into the mixing matrix the running can be enhanced both in the SM and MSSM. Even by incorporating non-zero Majorana CP phases in the SM, we do not get θ13 in its present 3σ range. The current values of the two mass squared differences and mixing angles including θ13 can be produced in the MSSM case with tan⁡β=10 and non-zero Majorana CP phases at low energy. We also calculate the order of effective Majorana mass and Jarlskog Invariant for each scenario under consideration.
15571259
A new method for computation of QCD thermodynamics: EOS, specific heat and speed of sound
We propose a new variant of the operator method for the computation of the equation of state of QCD, which yields positive pressure for all temperatures and all values of temporal lattice spacings. Using this new method, we calculate the continuum limit of pressure, energy density, entropy density, specific heat, and the speed of sound, in quenched QCD, for 0.9 \le T/T_c \le 3.
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.
118595328
QCD at finite chemical potential with six time slices
We investigate the Taylor expansion of the baryon number susceptibility, and hence, pressure, in a series in the baryon chemical potential ({mu}{sub B}) through a lattice simulation with two flavors of light dynamical staggered quarks at a finer lattice cutoff a=1/6T. We determine the QCD cross over coupling at {mu}{sub B}=0. We find the radius of convergence of the series at various temperatures, and bound the location of the QCD critical point to be T{sup E}/T{sub c}{approx_equal}0.94 and {mu}{sub B}{sup E}/T<1.8. We also investigate the extrapolation of various susceptibilities and linkages to finite chemical potential.
118245922
Cygnus experiment at Los Alamos
The Cygnus experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory has been designed to study, with high angular accuracy, point sources of gamma rays of energy above 1014 eV. The experimental detector consists of an air shower array to observe gamma-ray showers and a shielded, large-area track detector to study the muon content of the showers. In this paper we present preliminary data from the array and describe its performance.