Search for a Low Energy Excess in MicroBooNE

MicroBooNE (the Micro Booster Neutrino Experiment) is a liquid argon time-projection chamber (TPC) experiment designed for short-baseline neutrino physics, currently running at Fermilab. It aims to address the anomalous excess of low-energy events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment. Recent progress towards the search for the low-energy events have brought to develop fully automated event selection algorithm to identify charged-current electron neutrino event candidates with no pions and at least one proton in the final state ($\nu_e~\text{CC} 0\pi \text{N}p$) using the Pandora multi-algorithm pattern recognition. Several cross checks and sidebands have been studied so far to validate the analysis.Comment: Contribution to the 2019 EW/QCD/Gravitation session of the 54th Rencontres de Moriond, 4 pages, LaTeX, 6 figure

About the rapidity and helicity distributions of the W bosons produced at LHC

$W$ bosons are produced at LHC from a forward-backward symmetric initial state. Their decay to a charged lepton and a neutrino has a strong spin analysing power. The combination of these effects results in characteristic distributions of the pseudorapidity of the leptons decaying from $W^+$ and $W^-$ of different helicity. This observation may open the possibility to measure precisely the $W^+$ and $W^-$ rapidity distributions for the two transverse polarisation states of $W$ bosons produced at small transverse momentum.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

End to end numerical simulations of the MAORY multiconjugate adaptive optics system

MAORY is the adaptive optics module of the E-ELT that will feed the MICADO imaging camera through a gravity invariant exit port. MAORY has been foreseen to implement MCAO correction through three high order deformable mirrors driven by the reference signals of six Laser Guide Stars (LGSs) feeding as many Shack-Hartmann Wavefront Sensors. A three Natural Guide Stars (NGSs) system will provide the low order correction. We develop a code for the end-to-end simulation of the MAORY adaptive optics (AO) system in order to obtain high-delity modeling of the system performance. It is based on the IDL language and makes extensively uses of the GPUs. Here we present the architecture of the simulation tool and its achieved and expected performance.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2014 in Montr\'eal, Quebec, Canada, with number 9148-25

The numerical simulation tool for the MAORY multiconjugate adaptive optics system

The Multiconjugate Adaptive Optics RelaY (MAORY) is and Adaptive Optics module to be mounted on the ESO European-Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). It is a hybrid Natural and Laser Guide System that will perform the correction of the atmospheric turbulence volume above the telescope feeding the Multi-AO Imaging Camera for Deep Observations Near Infrared spectro-imager (MICADO). We developed an end-to-end Monte- Carlo adaptive optics simulation tool to investigate the performance of a the MAORY and the calibration, acquisition, operation strategies. MAORY will implement Multiconjugate Adaptive Optics combining Laser Guide Stars (LGS) and Natural Guide Stars (NGS) measurements. The simulation tool implements the various aspect of the MAORY in an end to end fashion. The code has been developed using IDL and uses libraries in C++ and CUDA for efficiency improvements. Here we recall the code architecture, we describe the modeled instrument components and the control strategies implemented in the code.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, Proceeding 9909 310 of the conference SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2016, 26 June 1 July 2016 Edinburgh, Scotland, U

Laser Guide Stars for Extremely Large Telescopes: Efficient Shack-Hartmann Wavefront Sensor Design using Weighted center-of-gravity algorithm

Over the last few years increasing consideration has been given to the study of Laser Guide Stars (LGS) for the measurement of the disturbance introduced by the atmosphere in optical and near-infrared astronomical observations from the ground. A possible method for the generation of a LGS is the excitation of the Sodium layer in the upper atmosphere at approximately 90 km of altitude. Since the Sodium layer is approximately 10 km thick, the artificial reference source looks elongated, especially when observed from the edge of a large aperture. The spot elongation strongly limits the performance of the most common wavefront sensors. The centroiding accuracy in a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, for instance, decreases proportionally to the elongation (in a photon noise dominated regime). To compensate for this effect a straightforward solution is to increase the laser power, i.e. to increase the number of detected photons per subaperture. The scope of the work presented in this paper is twofold: an analysis of the performance of the Weighted Center of Gravity algorithm for centroiding with elongated spots and the determination of the required number of photons to achieve a certain average wavefront error over the telescope aperture.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figure

Physics Behind Precision

This document provides a writeup of contributions to the FCC-ee mini-workshop on "Physics behind precision" held at CERN, on 2-3 February 2016.Comment: https://indico.cern.ch/event/469561

Reconstruction and measurement of (100) MeV energy electromagnetic activity from π0 arrow γγ decays in the MicroBooNE LArTPC

We present results on the reconstruction of electromagnetic (EM) activity from photons produced in charged current νμ interactions with final state π0s. We employ a fully-automated reconstruction chain capable of identifying EM showers of (100) MeV energy, relying on a combination of traditional reconstruction techniques together with novel machine-learning approaches. These studies demonstrate good energy resolution, and good agreement between data and simulation, relying on the reconstructed invariant π0 mass and other photon distributions for validation. The reconstruction techniques developed are applied to a selection of νμ + Ar → μ + π0 + X candidate events to demonstrate the potential for calorimetric separation of photons from electrons and reconstruction of π0 kinematics

Antonino Espinosa Saldaña as art critic (1930-1950)

Este trabajo estudia la crítica de arte realizada por Antonino Espinosa Saldaña entre 1930 y 1950. Para esta labor se hace un análisis histórico crítico, sobre la base de los ensayos y publicaciones realizados por nuestro autor a diferentes artistas de la época. Espinosa asimila la coyuntura europea artística y, a través de la teoría del arte y de la crítica, intenta dar nuevos aportes sin dejar de lado algunos prejuicios y excesiva referencia al arte europeo. Así, nos deja interesantes comentarios sobre artistas contemporáneos que muestran el espíritu en transición de la época.This research studies the art critic made by Antonino Espinosa Saldaña between 1930 and 1950. For this work a critical historical analysis is made, based on the essays and publications made by our author to different artists of the time. Espinosa assimilates the European artistic situation and through the theory of art and criticism, tries to give new contributions without neglecting some prejudices and excessive eurocentrism. Leaving interesting comments about artists of the time who saw the spirit of the time

Calibration of the charge and energy loss per unit length of the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber using muons and protons

We describe a method used to calibrate the position- and time-dependent response of the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber anode wires to ionization particle energy loss. The method makes use of crossing cosmic-ray muons to partially correct anode wire signals for multiple effects as a function of time and position, including cross-connected TPC wires, space charge effects, electron attachment to impurities, diffusion, and recombination. The overall energy scale is then determined using fully-contained beam-induced muons originating and stopping in the active region of the detector. Using this method, we obtain an absolute energy scale uncertainty of 2% in data. We use stopping protons to further refine the relation between the measured charge and the energy loss for highly-ionizing particles. This data-driven detector calibration improves both the measurement of total deposited energy and particle identification based on energy loss per unit length as a function of residual range. As an example, the proton selection efficiency is increased by 2% after detector calibration