Search

In this paper, we propose an experiment, LANSCE-mQ, aiming to detect fractionally charged and millicharged particles (mCP) using an 800 MeV proton beam fixed target at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) facility. This search can shed new light on numerous fundamental questions, including charge quantization, the predictions of string theories and grand unification theories, the gauge symmetry of the Standard Model, dark sector models, and the tests of cosmic reheating. We propose to install two-layer scintillation detectors made of plastic (such as EJ-200) or CeBr3 to search for mCPs. Dedicated Geant4 detector simulations and in situ measurements have been conducted to obtain a preliminary determination of the background rate. The dominant backgrounds are beam-induced neutrons and coincident dark current signals from the photomultiplier tubes, while beam-induced gammas and cosmic muons are subdominant. We determined that LANSCE-mQ, the dedicated mCP experiment, has the leading mCP sensitivity for mass between ~ 1 MeV to 300 MeV., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures

The ESA's Mars Express solar corona experiments were performed at two solar conjunctions in the years 2015 and 2017 by a number of radio telescopes in the European VLBI Network. This paper presents the methods to measure the frequency and phase fluctuations of the spacecraft radio signal, and the applications to study the characteristics of the plasma turbulence effects on the signal at a single station and at multiple stations via cross-correlation. The power spectra of the frequency fluctuations observed between 4.9 and 76.3 $\rm R_{s}$ have a power-law shape close to a Kolmogorov spectrum over the frequency interval $ \nu_{lo}< \nu <\nu_{up}$, where the nominal value of $\nu_{lo}$ is set to 3 mHz and $\nu_{up}$ is in the range of 0.03 $\sim$ 0.15 Hz. The RMS of the frequency fluctuations is presented as a function of the heliocentric distance. Furthermore, we analyse the variations of the electron column density fluctuations at solar offsets 4.9 $\rm{R_{s}}$ and 9.9 $\rm{R_{s}}$ and the cross-correlation products between the VLBI stations. The power density of the differential fluctuations between different stations decreases at $\nu < 0.01$ Hz. Finally, the fast flow speeds of solar wind $>700$ $\rm{km~s^{-1}}$ are derived from the cross-correlation of frequency fluctuations at $\nu < 0.01$ Hz. The fast flow speeds of solar wind correspond to the high heliolatitude of the coronal region that the radio rays passed. The VLBI observations and analysis methods can be used to study the electron column density fluctuations and the turbulence at multiple spatial points in the inner solar wind by providing multiple lines of sight between the Earth and the spacecraft.

The future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will explore several fundamental questions in a broad Bjorken-x ($x_{BJ}$) and $Q^{2}$ phase space. Heavy flavor and jet products are ideal probes to precisely study the tomography of nucleon/nuclei structure, help solve the proton spin puzzle and understand the hadronizaton processes in vacuum or in the QCD medium. Due to the asymmetric collisions at the EIC, most of the final state hadrons are produced in the nucleon/nuclei beam going (forward) direction. A silicon vertex/tracking is critical to precisely measure these forward hadrons at the EIC. Details of different conceptual designs of the proposed Forward Silicon Tracker (FST) and the relevant detector performance are presented in this technical note. The associated heavy flavor and jet studies with the evaluated FST performance are discussed as well., Comment: 47 pages, 64 figures, technical note for a proposed forward silicon tracker detector and associated detector/physics simulation studies for the future Electron-Ion Collider by the Los Alamos National Laboratory team. This work is supported by the Los Alamos National Laboratory LDRD office 20200022DR project

We study hidden sector and long-lived particles at past (CHARM and NuCal), present (NA62 and SeaQuest/DarkQuest), and future (LongQuest) experiments that are at the high-energy frontier of the intensity frontier. We focus on exploring the minimal vector portal and variere-lifetime particles (VLP). VLP models have mostly been devised to explain experimental anomalies while avoiding existing constraints, and we demonstrate that proton fixed-target experiments provide one of the most powerful probes for the sub-GeV to few GeV mass range of the VLP models, using inelastic dark matter (iDM) as an example. We consider an iDM model with small mass splitting that yields the observed dark matter (DM) relic abundance, and a scenario with a sizable mass splitting that can also explain the muon $g-2$ anomaly. We set strong limits based on the CHARM and NuCal experiments, which come close to excluding iDM as full-abundance thermal DM candidates in the MeV to GeV mass range, for the mass arrangements and small mass splittings we consider. We also study the future projections based on NA62 and SeaQuest/DarkQuest, and update the constraints of the minimal dark photon parameter space. We found that NuCal sets the only existing constraint in $\epsilon \sim 10^{-8} - 10^{-4}$ regime reaching $\sim$ 800 MeV in dark photon mass due to the resonant enhancement of the proton bremsstrahlung production. Finally, we propose LongQuest, a three-stage thorough retool of the SeaQuest experiment with short ($\lesssim$ 5 m), medium ($\sim$ 5 m), and long baseline ($\gtrsim$ 35 m) tracking stations/detectors, as a multi-purpose machine to explore dark sector particles with a wide range of couplings to the standard model sector., Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures

Three-dimensional global magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the solar wind - magnetosphere - ionosphere system are carried out to explore the dependence of the magnetospheric reconnection voltage, the ionospheric transpolar potential, and the field aligned currents (FACs) on the solar wind driver and ionosphere load for the cases with pure southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). It is shown that the reconnection voltage and the transpolar potential increase monotonically with decreasing Pedersen conductance ($\Sigma_{\rm P}$), increasing southward IMF strength ($B_{\rm s}$) and solar wind speed ($v_{\rm sw}$). Moreover, both of the region 1 and the region 2 FACs increase when $B_{\rm s}$ and $v_{\rm sw}$ increase, whereas the two currents behave differently in response to $\Sigma_{\rm P}$. As $\Sigma_{\rm P}$ increases, the region 1 FAC increases monotonically, but the region 2 FAC shows a non-monotonic response to the increase of $\Sigma_{\rm P}$: it first increases in the range of (0, 5) Siemens and then decreases for $\Sigma_P >$ 5 Siemens., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure

The latest results for open charm and $J/\psi$ production in p-p, d-Au and Au-Au from the PHENIX and STAR experiments at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV at RHIC are presented. The preliminary data show open charm production follows binary scaling in d-Au and Au-Au collisions at RHIC. In d-Au collisions, a suppression in $J/\psi$ production has been observed at the forward rapidity (d direction), at the backward rapidity (Au direction), $J/\psi$ production seems strongly dependent on collisions centrality. The implications of heavy flavor production in cold (d-Au) and hot (Au-Au) nuclear media at RHIC are discussed., Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, Moriond04 QCD talk

We have developed new techniques to detect hadrons with the PHENIX muon spectrometers. This allows us to study the centrality dependent nuclear modification factor $R_{CP}$ with high $p_{T}$ hadrons in both forward (d direction) and backward (Au direction) rapidities, $1 < |\eta| < 2$, in dAu collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV$. Preliminary results show a suppression (enhancement) of high $p_{T}$ hadron production in central $0-20%$ dAu collisions relative to the peripheral one ($60-88%$ in centrality) at forward (backward) rapidity., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Quark Matter 2004 talk