Identification of the cosmogenic $$^{11}$$C background in large volumes of liquid scintillators with Borexino

Cosmogenic radio-nuclei are an important source of background for low-energy neutrino experiments. In Borexino, cosmogenic $$^{11}$$ 11 C decays outnumber solar pep and CNO neutrino events by about ten to one. In order to extract the flux of these two neutrino species, a highly efficient identification of this background is mandatory. We present here the details of the most consolidated strategy, used throughout Borexino solar neutrino measurements. It hinges upon finding the space-time correlations between $$^{11}$$ 11 C decays, the preceding parent muons and the accompanying neutrons. This article describes the working principles and evaluates the performance of this Three-Fold Coincidence (TFC) technique in its two current implementations: a hard-cut and a likelihood-based approach. Both show stable performances throughout Borexino Phases II (2012–2016) and III (2016–2020) data sets, with a $$^{11}$$ 11 C tagging efficiency of $$\sim 90$$ ∼ 90 % and $$\sim $$ ∼ 63–66 % of the exposure surviving the tagging. We present also a novel technique that targets specifically $$^{11}$$ 11 C produced in high-multiplicity during major spallation events. Such $$^{11}$$ 11 C appear as a burst of events, whose space-time correlation can be exploited. Burst identification can be combined with the TFC to obtain about the same tagging efficiency of $$\sim 90\%$$ ∼ 90 % but with a higher fraction of the exposure surviving, in the range of $$\sim $$ ∼ 66–68 %.

The three point asymmetric cumulants in high multiplicity pp collisions

We study the influence of quantum interference and colour flow on three point correlations described by asymmetric cumulants in high multiplicity events in pp collisions. We use the model previously developed for the study of the collectivity in symmetric cumulants. We show that the resulting three point asymmetric cumulant is in qualitative agreement with the experimental data for the same parameters of the model as it was with the symmetric cumulants. Our results show that the initial state correlations must play a major role and may be even dominant in the explanation of the correlations in high multiplicity pp events.

Azimuthal correlations in photoproduction and deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA

Collective behaviour of final-state hadrons, and multiparton interactions are studied in high-multiplicity ep scattering at a centre-of-mass energy $$ \sqrt{s} $$ s = 318 GeV with the ZEUS detector at HERA. Two- and four-particle azimuthal correlations, as well as multiplicity, transverse momentum, and pseudorapidity distributions for charged-particle multiplicities Nch ≥ 20 are measured. The dependence of two-particle correlations on the virtuality of the exchanged photon shows a clear transition from photoproduction to neutral current deep inelastic scattering. For the multiplicities studied, neither the measurements in photoproduction processes nor those in neutral current deep inelastic scattering indicate significant collective behaviour of the kind observed in high-multiplicity hadronic collisions at RHIC and the LHC. Comparisons of PYTHIA predictions with the measurements in photoproduction strongly indicate the presence of multiparton interactions from hadronic fluctuations of the exchanged photon.

Collective Behavior of Secondary Particles in the Region of high Multiplicity in pp Interactions at 50 GeV/c

The latest results on the search for collective phenomena in proton interactions at the U-70 accelerator at IHEP (Protvino) are presented. This long-term experiment has been carried at the SVD-2 setup. Our study was aimed at a high multiplicity region where the series of collective phenomena is predicted. We have received an evidence of the formation of a pion (Bose-Einstein) condensate. We have observed two noticeable peaks in the angular distribution of charged pions interpreted as Cherenkov radiation of gluons by quarks and others phenomena.

Bivariate systems of polynomial equations with roots of high multiplicity

Given a bivariate system of polynomial equations with fixed support sets [Formula: see text] it is natural to ask which multiplicities its solutions can have. We prove that there exists a system with a solution of multiplicity [Formula: see text] for all [Formula: see text] in the range [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the set of all integral vectors that shift B to a subset of [Formula: see text]. As an application, we classify all pairs [Formula: see text] such that the system supported at [Formula: see text] does not have a solution of multiplicity higher than [Formula: see text].

Investigating high energy proton proton collisions with a multi-phase transport model approach based on PYTHIA8 initial conditions

The striking resemblance of high multiplicity proton-proton (pp) collisions at the LHC to heavy ion collisions challenges our conventional wisdom on the formation of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). A consistent explanation of the collectivity phenomena in pp will help us to understand the mechanism that leads to the QGP-like signals in small systems. In this study, we introduce a transport model approach connecting the initial conditions provided by PYTHIA8 with subsequent AMPT rescatterings to study the collective behavior in high energy pp collisions. The multiplicity dependence of light hadron productions from this model is in reasonable agreement with the pp $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ s = 13 TeV experimental data. It is found in the comparisons that both the partonic and hadronic final state interactions are important for the generation of the radial flow feature of the pp transverse momentum spectra. The study also shows that the long range two particle azimuthal correlation in high multiplicity pp events is sensitive to the proton sub-nucleon spatial fluctuations.