Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Direct measurements of cosmic rays with the calorimetric electron telescope on the international space station

  Y. Akaike, O. Adriani, K. Asano, Y. Asaoka, E. Berti, G. Bigongiari, W. R. Binns, M. Bongi, P. Brogi, A. Bruno, J. H. Buckley, N. Cannady, G. Castellini, C. Checchia, M. L. Cherry, G. Collazuol, K. Ebisawa, A. W. Ficklin, H. Fuke, S. Gonzi, T. G. Guzik, T. Hams, K. Hibino, M. Ichimura, K. Ioka, W. Ishizaki, M. H. Israel, K. Kasahara, J. Kataoka, R. Kataoka, Y. Katayose, C. Kato, N. Kawanaka, Y. Kawakubo, K. Kobayashi, K. Kohri, H. S. Krawczynski, J. F. Krizmanic, P. Maestro, P. S. Marrocchesi, A. M. Messineo, J. W. Mitchell, S. Miyake, A. A. Moiseev, M. Mori, N. Mori, H. M. Motz, K. Munakata, S. Nakahira, J. Nishimura, G. A. de Nolfo, S. Okuno, J. F. Ormes, S. Ozawa, L. Pacini, P. Papini, B. F. Rauch, S. B. Ricciarini, K. Sakai, T. Sakamoto, M. Sasaki, Y. Shimizu, A. Shiomi, P. Spillantini, F. Stolzi, S. Sugita, A. Sulaj, M. Takita, T. Tamura, T. Terasawa, S. Torii, Y. Tsunesada, Y. Uchihori, E. Vannuccini, J. P. Wefel, K. Yamaoka, S. Yanagita, A. Yoshida, K. Yoshida, W. V. Zober

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 040 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The CALorimetric Electron Telescope, CALET, has been measuring high-energy cosmic rays on the International Space Station since October 13, 2015. The scientific objectives addressed by the mission are to search for possible nearby sources of high-energy electrons and potential signatures of dark matter, and to investigate the details of galactic cosmic-ray acceleration and propagation. The calorimetric instrument, which is 30 radiation lengths or 1.3 proton interaction lengths thick with fine imaging capability, is optimized to measure cosmic-ray electrons by achieving large proton rejection and excellent energy resolution well into the TeV region. In addition, very wide dynamic range of energy measurement and individual charge identification capability enable us to measure proton and nuclei spectra from a few tens GeV to a PeV scale. Nearly 20 million cosmic-ray shower events over 10 GeV per month are triggered and the continuous observation has been kept without any major interruption since the start of operation. Using the data obtained over 6.5 years of operation, we will present a brief summary of the CALET observation including electron spectrum, and proton and nuclei spectra as well as the performance study on orbit with MC simulations.

• Cosmic ray measurements with IceCube and IceTop

  Dennis Soldin (for the IceCube Collaboration)

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 002 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov detector in the deep ice at the geographic South Pole. The dominant event yield in the deep ice detector consists of penetrating atmospheric muons with energies above approximately 300 GeV, produced in cosmic ray air showers. In addition, the surface array, IceTop, measures the electromagnetic component and GeV muons of air showers. Hence, IceCube and IceTop yield unique opportunities to study cosmic rays with unprecedented statistics in great detail. We will present recent results of comic ray measurements from IceCube and IceTop. In this overview, we will highlight measurements of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays from 250 TeV up to the EeV range and their mass composition above 3 PeV. We will also report recent results from measurements of the muon content in air showers and discuss their consistency with predictions from current hadronic interaction models.

• Updated results on the cosmic ray energy spectrum and composition from the GRAPES-3 experiment

  F. Varsi, S. Ahmad, M. Chakraborty, A. Chandra, S. R. Dugad, U. D. Goswami, S. K. Gupta, B. Hariharan, Y. Hayashi, P. Jagadeesan, A. Jain , P. Jain, S. Kawakami, H. Kojima, S. Mahapatra, P. K. Mohanty, R. Moharana, Y. Muraki, P. K. Nayak, T. Nonaka, A. Oshima, B. P. Pant, D. Pattanaik, G. Pradhan, M. Rameez, K. Ramesh, L. V. Reddy, R. Sahoo, R. Scaria, S. Shibata, K. Tanaka, M. Zuberi

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 031 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Here, we present the updated results on the cosmic ray energy spectrum and composition analysis from the GRAPES-3 experiment over the energy range of 50 TeV to 1000 TeV since ICRC 2021. The simulation of cosmic ray showers was performed using the post-LHC high energy hadronic interaction model QGSJetII-04 and low energy hadronic model FLUKA. A detailed GEANT4 simulation of the GRAPES-3 muon telescope was performed. The composition was obtained by fitting simulated muon multiplicity distributions for proton, helium, nitrogen, aluminium, and iron primaries to the observed data. The energy spectrum connects to the direct measurements with a fairly good agreement in flux.

• Dark matter directionality approach using ZnWO$_4$ crystal scintillators

  Vincenzo Caracciolo, Volodymyr Yakovych Degoda, Pierluigi Belli, Rita Bernabei, Y. A. Borovlev, Fabio Cappella, Riccardo Cerulli, Fedor A. Danevich, Antonella Incicchitti, Alice Leoncini, Vittorio Merlo, N. Cherubini, Dmytro V. Kasperovych, Y. P. Kogut, G. P. Podust, Oksana G. Polischuk, A. G. Postupaeva, V. N. Shlegel, Volodymyr I. Tretyak

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 021 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The development of low-background anisotropic detectors can offer a unique way to study those Dark Matter (DM) candidate particles able to induce nuclear recoils through the directionality technique. Among the anisotropic scintillators, the ZnWO$_{4}$ has unique features and is an excellent candidate for the purposes. Both the light output and the scintillation pulse shape depend on the impinging direction of heavy particles with respect to the crystallographic axes and can supply two independent modes to study the directionality and discriminate $\gamma/\beta$ radiation. Measurements to study the anisotropic and scintillation performances of ZnWO$_4$ are reported.

• The Scintillating Bubble Chamber Experiment

  Ben Broerman

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 023 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is combining the well-established liquid argon and bubble chamber technologies to search for low-mass, GeV-scale dark matter. Liquid-noble bubble chambers benefit from the excellent electron-recoil insensitivity inherent in bubble chambers with the addition of energy reconstruction provided from the scintillation signal for background rejection. The projected sensitivity with a quasi-background-free 10-kg-year exposure at a 100 eV nuclear recoil threshold is approximately 10$^{-43}$ cm$^2$ for a 1 GeV/c$^2$ dark matter mass.

• TAIGA - An advanced hybrid detector complex for astroparticle physics and high energy gamma-ray astronomy

  N. M. Budnev, I. Astapov, P. Bezyazeekov, E. Bonvech, A. Borodin, A. Bulan, D. Chernov, A. Chiavassa, A. Dyachok, A. Gafarov, A. Garmash, V. Grebenyuk, E. Gress, O. Gress, T. Gress, A. Grinyuk, O. Grishin, A. D. Ivanova, A. L. Ivanova, N. Kalmykov, V. Kindin, S. Kiryuhin, R. Kokoulin, K. Kompaniets, E. Korosteleva, V. Kozhin, E. Kravchenko, A. Kryukov, L. Kuzmichev, A. Lagutin, M. Lavrova, Y. Lemeshev, B. Lubsandorzhiev, N. Lubsandorzhiev, A. Lukanov, D. Lukyantsev, S. Malakhov, R. Mirgazov, R. Monkhoev, E. Osipova, A. Pakhorukov, L. Pankov, A. Pan, A. Panov, A. Petrukhin, I. Poddubnyi, D. Podgrudkov, V. Ponomareva, E. Popova, E. Postnikov, V. Prosin, V. Ptuskin, A. Pushnin, R. Raikin, A. Razumov, G. Rubtsov, E. Ryabov, V. Samoliga, A. Satyshev, A. Silaev, A. Silaev, A. Sidorenkov, A. Skurikhin, A. Sokolov, L. Sveshnikova, V. Tabolenko, L. Tkachev, A. Tanaev, M. Ternovoy, R. Togoo, N. Ushakov, A. Vaidyanathan, P. Volchugov, N. Volkov, D. Voronin, A. Zagorodnikov, D. Zhurov, I. Yashin

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 027 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The physical motivations, present status, main results in study of cosmic rays and in the field of gamma-ray astronomy as well future plans of the TAIGA-1 (Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic ray physics and Gamma Astronomy) project are presented. The TAIGA observatory addresses ground-based gamma-ray astronomy and astroparticle physics at energies from a few TeV to several PeV, as well as cosmic ray physics from 100 TeV to several EeV. The pilot TAIGA-1 complex is located in the Tunka valley, 50 km west from the southern tip of the lake Baikal.

• DEASA studies and applications to space physics and muon tomography

  Sonali Bhatnagar

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 023 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The high energy cosmic rays entering the Earth’s atmosphere throw light upon many aspects of Astroparticle and Particle Physics. This work outlines investigative learning about these high energy primaries based on a mini array DEASA in Agra, India. DEASA (Dayalbagh Educational Air Shower Array) consists of eight plastic scintillators each with an area of 1 square meter. This array covers an area of 260 square meters and is the first array in the northern part of our country. A real-life application of these highly energetic particles has been to find the best material to protect the astronaut from them in form of galactic cosmic rays (GCR). Geant4 based hadronic binary model was used in simulation of phantom, vehicle, SEP (Solar Energetic Particles) and GCR shield. The SEP shielding material was fixed as water and GCR shield was varied among aluminum, Polystyrene and Polyethylene. The poly materials were found to be the best due to large amount of hydrogen (H) and low atomic number (Z). In this work the equivalent dose deposited in the phantom with Polystyrene material for GCR shield was calculated to be minimum (107 sievert) as compared to the other materials. In the second application, the high energy muons have been studied to image nuclear caskets through muon tomography. In this Monte Carlo based simulation, a dry cask container containing different number of the UO2 rods have been bombarded with definite energy muons to measure the muon scattering . The parameters computed in this work are energy loss, radiation length and scattering angle which can calibrate these containers for correct identification of nuclear wastage.

• Neutron production in ($\alpha$,n) reactions in SOURCES4

  Vitaly A. Kudryavtsev, Piotr Krawczun, Rayna Bocheva

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 018 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Neutrons produced in spontaneous fission and ($\alpha,n$) reactions can induce background events in underground experiments looking for rare processes. A number of computer codes are available to calculate cross-sections of ($\alpha,n$) reactions, branching ratios to various states and neutron yields. SOURCES4 code has been used in this work to calculate neutron yields and energy spectra with input cross-sections and branching ratios taken from experimental data and models from EMPIRE2.19/3.2.3 and TALYS1.9 codes. A comparison of SOURCES4 calculations with experimental data from alpha beams and radioactive decay chains is presented.

• ALICE at the LHC and astrophysics: From providing input for the search for antinuclei in space to constraining the equation of state of neutron stars

  Alexander Kalweit on behalf of the ALICE collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 022 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The ALICE experiment at the LHC was originally designed to study the creation of the quark-gluon-plasma in heavy-ion collisions, a new state of matter in which quarks and gluons are not confined into hadrons. More recently, the versatility of both the Large Hadron Collider and the ALICE apparatus have given additionally access to a unique set of nuclear and hadronic physics measurements. The main results from this new and dynamic research area will be presented. The application of these findings to astrophysical challenges, ranging from the equation of state of neutron stars to the search for dark matter in space, will be discussed.

• Measurement of low-energy Compton and neutron scattering in Si CCDs for dark matter searches

  Radomir Smida for the DAMIC-M Collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 015 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  For optimal sensitivity to low-mass dark matter candidates experiments like DAMIC-M employ skipper charged-coupled devices (CCDs) with detection threshold of just a few ionization charges. Ionization signals from small-angle Compton scatters of environmental $\gamma$-rays, an important component of the background in dark matter searches, must thus be characterized down to $O$(10 eV) energy. Using a $^{241}$Am $\gamma$-ray source, we report a precise measurement of scattering on Si atomic shell electrons in a skipper CCD with single-electron resolution. Notable differences are observed between data and theoretical expectations in the L-shell energy region ($<$150 eV). We also present preliminary data from a skipper CCD exposed to low-energy neutrons ($<$24 keV) from a $^{124}$Sb$^9$Be photoneutron source, demonstrating a measurement of the nuclear recoil ionization efficiency in Si down to few ionization charges.