Placement of a fast ion loss detector array for neutral beam injected particles in Wendelstein 7-X

In light of measuring the fast ionized particle confinement in the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X, particles generated by the neutral beam injection system are simulated to determine the placement of an array of faraday-cup fast ion loss detectors. This array is important due to the localization of the loss pattern, which changes drastically with experimental parameters. The Monte Carlo codes BEAMS3D and ASCOT5 are used for the simulations, following the particles from injection to wall collision. Different magnetic configurations and plasma pressures are investigated in this manner, and a configuration suitable for measuring the loss fraction is found. It qualitatively reproduces the global losses, is installable in locations of current carbon wall-tiles and the individual detector output appears well-suited for experimental purposes.

The LISA-Taiji Network: Precision Localization of Coalescing Massive Black Hole Binaries

We explore a potential LISA-Taiji network to fast and accurately localize the coalescing massive black hole binaries. For an equal-mass binary located at redshift of 1 with a total intrinsic mass of 105M⊙, the LISA-Taiji network may achieve almost four orders of magnitude improvement on the source localization region compared to an individual detector. The precision measurement of sky location from the gravitational-wave signal may completely identify the host galaxy with low redshifts prior to the final black hole merger. Such identification of the host galaxy is vital for the follow-up variability in electromagnetic emissions of the circumbinary disc when the binary merges to a new black hole and enables the coalescing massive black hole binaries to be used as a standard siren to probe the expansion history of the Universe.

Study of the performance of prototypes of straw tube tracker by measuring cosmic rays

Straw tube detector developed for the PANDA experiment in [1], will be used for tracking and identifcation of charged particles in the Forward Tracker (FT). The detector read-out will be incorporated in PANDA DAQ running in trigger-less mode by means of Synchronization Of Data Acquisition Network (SODAnet). SODAnet is the protocol used to synchronize individual detector subsystems by providing a common clock signal and timestamps. The reconstruction of events out of many fragments is done with the Burst Building Network. The first tests of such system have been performed with prototypes of FT and ElectroMagnetic Calorimeter modules (EMC) in [1] measuring cosmic rays. Those tests allow to evaluate the detectors as well as the synchronization and processing systems. The reconstruction of particle tracks has been developed and evaluated. The results on the track reconstruction, spatial resolution and energy loss via Time over Threshold (TOT) method is described together with the DAQ performance.

A diffraction effect in X-ray area detectors

When an X-ray area detector based on a single-crystalline material, for instance a state-of-the-art hybrid pixel detector, is illuminated from a point source by monochromatic radiation, a pattern of lines appears which overlays the detected image. These lines are easily seen in scattering experiments with smooth patterns, such as small-angle X-ray scattering. The origin of this effect is Bragg reflection within the sensor layer of the detector. Experimental images are presented over a photon energy range from 3.4 to 10 keV, together with a theoretical analysis. The intensity of the detected signal is decreased by up to 20% on this pattern, which can affect the evaluation of scattering and diffraction experiments. The patterns can be exploited to check the alignment of the detector surface with the direct beam, and the alignment of individual detector modules with each other in the case of modular detectors, as well as for energy calibration of the radiation.

Observation of slant column NO₂ using the super-zoom mode of AURA-OMI

We retrieve slant column NO2 from the super-zoom mode of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) to explore its utility for understanding NOx emissions and variability. Slant column NO2 is operationally retrieved from OMI (Boersma et al., 2007; Bucsela et al., 2006) with a nadir footprint of 13 × 24 km2, the result of averaging eight detector elements on board the instrument. For 85 orbits in late 2004, OMI reported observations from individual "super-zoom" detector elements (spaced at 13 × 3 km2 at nadir). We assess the spatial response of these individual detector elements in-flight and determine an upper-bound on spatial resolution of 9 km, in good agreement with on-ground calibration (7 km FWHM). We determine the precision of the super-zoom mode to be 2.1 × 1015 molecules cm−2, approximately a factor of √8 lower than an identical retrieval at operational scale as expected if random noise dominates the uncertainty. We retrieve slant column NO2 over the Satpura power plant in India; Seoul, South Korea; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and a set of large point sources on the Rihand Reservoir in India using differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS). Over these sources, the super-zoom mode of OMI observes variation in slant column NO2 of up to 30 × the instrumental precision within one operational footprint.

COHERENT VERSUS COINCIDENCE DETECTION OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE SIGNALS FROM COMPACT INSPIRALING BINARIES

We compare two multi-detector detection strategies, namely, the coincidence and the coherent, for the detection of spinless inspiraling compact binary gravitational wave (GW) signals. The coincident strategy treats the detectors as if they are isolated, compares individual detector statistics with their respective thresholds, while the coherent strategy combines the detector network data phase coherently to obtain a single detection statistic which is then compared with a single threshold. In the case of geographically separated detectors, we also consider an enhanced coincidence strategy because the usual (naive) coincidence strategy yields poor results for misaligned detectors. For simplicity, we consider detector pairs having the same power spectral density of noise, as that of initial LIGO, and also assume the noise to be stationary and Gaussian. We compare the performances of the methods by plotting the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) for the two strategies. A single astrophysical source as well as a distribution of sources is considered. We find that the coherent strategy performs better than the two coincident strategies under the assumptions of stationary Gaussian detector noise.

Observation of slant column NO₂ using the super-zoom mode of AURA-OMI

We retrieve slant column NO2 from the super-zoom mode of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) to explore its utility for understanding NOx emissions and removal. Slant column NO2 is operationally retrieved from OMI at 13 × 24 km2, a nadir footprint resulting from the on-board average of eight detector elements. For 85 orbits in late 2004, OMI reported observations from individual "super-zoom" detector elements (spaced at 13 × 3 km2 at nadir). We assess the spatial response of these individual detector elements in-flight and determine an upper-bound on spatial resolution of 9 km, in good agreement with on-ground calibration (7 km FWHM). We retrieve slant column NO2 from these super-zoom observations over Sarni, India (19 November), Seoul, South Korea (21 November), Dubai, United Arab Emirates (21 November) and the Rihand Reservoir in India (23 November) using differential optical absorption spectroscopy. Comparison of super-zoom and operational-scale retrievals highlights the capacity of the super-zoom mode to distinguish NOx sources in close proximity. The 1-σ signal to noise ratio (SNR) for these retrievals is as high as 25 and is greater than 5 over the observed enhancements indicating that instrumental noise is not the limitation to obtaining high spatial resolution NO2 maps. We show that these high resolution observations provide constraints on NO2 gradients providing a direct measure of the NOx lifetime in the near field of large plumes.

EMC STUDIES USING THE SIMULATION FRAMEWORK OF PANDA

The Anti-Proton ANnihilation at DArmstadt (PANDA) experiment proposed at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt (Germany) will perform a high-precision spectroscopy of charmonium and exotic hadrons, such as hybrids, glueballs and hypernuclei. A highly intense beam of anti-protons provided by High Energy Storage Ring (HESR) with an unprecedented resolution will scan a mass range of 2 to 5.5 GeV/c2. In preparation for experiments with PANDA, careful and large-scale simulation studies need to be performed in the coming years to determine analysis strategies, to provide feedback for the design, construction and performance optimisation of individual detector components and to design methods for the calibration and interpretation of the experimental results. Results of a simulation for the ElectroMagnetic Calorimeter (EMC), built from lead tungstate (PWO) crystals and placed inside the Target Spectrometer (TS), are presented. The simulations were carried out using the PandaRoot framework, which is based on ROOT and being developed by the PANDA collaboration.

4-Channel Digital Positron Lifetime Spectrometer for Studying Biological Samples

In this work a novel detector setup for PALS-studies on biomolecular materials is presented. When pursuing optimal detecting efficiency and lifetime component resolution one must make compromises when using only one detector pair. With smaller scintillation heads the resolution is higher, but the detecting efficiency decreases and vice versa. When measuring biological materials that do not withstand long measurement periods, sacrifices are made for gaining efficiency. The price of this optimization is low resolution of the lifetime components, namely separating the always present water’s lifetime component of ~1.8 ns from the actual material’s lifetime component, typically >2 ns. A solution to this problem is measuring the annihilation spectra with two individual detector pairs simultaneously. Using analog setup, it would require duplicate ADC-hardware that are both expensive and degrade by time. With a fully digital setup, the need for hardware is smaller and the precision of the setup is constant during its service life.