Publications

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• The KM3NeT infrastructure: Status and first results

  Annarita Margiotta on behalf of the KM3NeT Collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 030 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  KM3NeT is a research infrastructure in construction under the Mediterranean Sea. It hosts two large volume neutrino Cherenkov telescopes: ARCA at a depth of 3500 m, located offshore Sicily, and ORCA, 2500 m under the sea level, offshore the southern French coast. The two detectors share the same detection principle and technology and the same data acquisition design, the only difference being the geometrical arrangement of the optical sensors. This allows to span a wide range of neutrino energy and cover a large scientific program: The study of neutrino properties, first of all neutrino mass ordering, the identification and study of high energy neutrino astrophysical sources, indirect dark matter searches and core collapse supernovae detection.

  3 citations

• 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.

• Mass testing of SiPMs for the CMVD at IICHEP

  Mamta Jangra, Raj Bhupen, Gobinda Majumder, Kiran Gothe, Mandar Saraf, Nandkishor Parmar, Bheesette Satyanarayana, Ravindra R. Shinde, Shobha K. Rao, Suresh S. Upadhya, Vivek M. Datar, Douglas A. Glenzinski, Alan Bross, Anna Pla-Dalmau, Vishnu V. Zutshi, Robert Craig Group, Edmond Craig Dukes

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 025 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A Cosmic Muon Veto Detector (CMVD) is being built around the mini-Iron Calorimeter (mini-ICAL) detector at the transit campus of the India based Neutrino Observatory, Madurai. The CMV detector will be made using extruded plastic scintillators with embedded wavelength shifting (WLS) fibres which propagate re-emitted photons of longer wavelengths to silicon photo-multipliers (SiPMs). The SiPMs detect these scintillation photons, producing electronic signals. The design goal for the cosmic muon veto efficiency of the CMV is $>$99.99% and fake veto rate less than 10$^{-5}$. A testing system was developed, using an LED driver, to measure the noise rate and gain of each SiPM, and thus determine its overvoltage ($V_{ov}$). This paper describes the test results and the analysed characteristics of about 3.5k SiPMs.

• India based neutrino observatory, physics reach and status report

  D. Indumathi

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 024 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is a proposed underground facility located in India that will primarily house the magnetised Iron CALorimeter (ICAL) detector to study atmospheric neutrinos produced by interactions of cosmic rays with Earth's atmosphere. The physics goal is to to make precision measurements of the neutrino mixing and oscillation parameters through such a study. We present here the results from detailed simulations studies, as well as a status report on the project. In particular, we highlight the sensitivity of ICAL to the open issue of the neutrino mass ordering, which can be determined independent of the CP phase at ICAL.

• 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.

• 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.

• The full coverage approach to the detection of Extensive Air Showers

  Giuseppe Di Sciascio

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 019 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A shower array exploiting the full coverage approach with a high segmentation of the readout allow to image the front of atmospheric showers with unprecedented resolution and detail. The grid distance determines the energy threshold (small energy showers are lost in the gap between detectors) and the quality of the shower sampling. Therefore, this experimental solution is needed to detect showers with a threshold in the 100 GeV range. The full coverage approach has been exploited in the ARGO-YBJ experiment. In this contribution we will summarise the advantages of this technique and discuss possible applications in new wide field of view detectors.

• Measuring the attenuation length of muon number in the air shower with muon detectors of 3/4 LHAASO array

  Xiaoting Feng, Hengying Zhang, Cunfeng Feng, Lingling Ma on behalf of the LHAASO Collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 017 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  LHAASO KM2A consists of 5915 scintillation detectors and 1188 muon detectors, and the muon detectors cover 4% area of the whole array with 30 m interdetector spacing. The muon number in air shower events, with very high energy, is investigated with the data recorded by muon detector of the 3/4 LHAASO array in 2021. The attenuation length of muon number in the air shower is measured by fitting the muon number with constant flux in various zenith angles, based on the constant intensity cut method. The variation of the attenuation length as shower energy from hundreds TeV to tens PeV is presented. The results of simulation also is presented for comparing.

• Recent results from LHCb for astroparticle physics

  Hans Dembinski on behalf of the LHCb collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 016 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The LHCb experiment is a general-purpose forward spectrometer designed for the study of heavy flavour physics at the LHC. The acceptance in the pseudorapidity range $2 < \eta < 5$ with full tracking and particle identification capabilities down to very small transverse momentum make LHCb also ideal to study hadron production in the forward region. Measuring and modelling these processes is essential for the simulation of interactions of high-energy cosmic rays with matter, like Earth's atmosphere or the interstellar medium. We present recently published analyses from the LHCb collaboration relevant for this application.

• The composition of cosmic rays according to the data on EAS cores

  S. B. Shaulov, V. A. Ryabov, S. E. Pyatovsky, A. L. Shepetov, V. V. Zhukov

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 014 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The main purpose of this work is to find the causes of the break of the cosmic ray spectrum at an energy of 3 PeV, which is called the knee. The solution of the problem is associated with the determination of the nuclear composition of cosmic rays in the knee area. The conclusions of this work are based on the analysis of the characteristics of the EAS cores obtained using X-ray emulsion chambers. According to these data, a number of anomalous effects are observed in the knee region, such as scaling violation in the spectra of secondary hadrons, an excess of muons in EAS with gamma families and others. At the same energies equivalent to 1-100 PeV the laboratory system colliders show scaling behavior. So analysis of the data on the EAS cores suggests that the knee in their spectrum is formed by a component of cosmic rays of a non-nuclear nature, possibly consisting of stable (quasi-stable) particles of hypothetical strange quark matter, which named strangelets. This is the only model of the knee compatible with the magnetic rigidity of the nuclear spectra break R=100 TV. In fact, stranglets are stable heavy quasi-nuclei with a positive electric charge of Z=30-1000, so the mechanism of their acceleration coincides with the nuclear one. The break of the cosmic ray spectrum can be associated with a significantly larger mass of strangelets compared to nuclei.