Double Differential Cross Sections Research Articles

Neural network predictions of inclusive electron-nucleus cross sections

We investigate whether a neural network approach can reproduce and predict the electron-nucleus cross sections in the kinematical domain of present and future accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments. For this purpose, we consider the large amount of data available to the community via the University of Virginia's Quasielastic Electron Nucleus Scattering Archive and use a residual, fully connected feedforward neural network. We illustrate the training performances of the neural network by comparing its results with experimental data for the electron double-differential cross section on carbon. The agreement between predictions and data is remarkable from quasielastic to deep-inelastic scattering. To test the predicting power of the neural network we consider the numerous kinematical conditions for which experimental cross sections on calcium are available. Furthermore, we show the predictions of the electron-scattering cross sections on oxygen, argon, and titanium: Nuclei of particular interest in the context of present and future accelerator-based neutrino oscillation programs. The agreement between these predictions and the data is comparable to the one of other theoretical models commonly used to calculate electron and neutrino cross sections, such as SuSAv2 and GiBUU. Results obtained with genie, a Monte Carlo event generator, are also discussed for comparison. The good performances obtained with our neural network suggest that neural networks could be exploited for theoretical and experimental investigations of electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering.

Dynamic effective charge in the continuum of the CDW-EIS model for ionization in ion–atom collisions: angular and energy dependence

In this work, a dynamic charge is employed in the continuum distorted wave–eikonal initial state theoretical model to describe the non-Coulomb potential of the residual target for single ionization in bare ion–multielectron atom collisions. A comparison between the well-known Belkić prescription and the effective charge depending on emission angle and energy in the final residual-target continuum state is shown. The obtained results show that this effective charge improves the description of double-differential cross sections for backward emission angles over the whole emission energy range allowing the calculation of simple differential and total cross sections.

STEP: A tool to perform tests of smoothness on differential distributions based on expansion of polynomials

We motivate and describe a method based on fits with polynomials to test the smoothness of differential distributions. As a demonstration, we apply the method to several measurements of inclusive jet double-differential cross section in the jet transverse momentum and rapidity at the Tevatron and LHC. This method opens new possibilities to test the quality of differential distributions used for the extraction of physics quantities such as the strong coupling.

DDFRG2: Double-Differential FRaGmentation model for pion production in high energy nuclear collisions

A set of Double-Differential FRaGmentation (DDFRG) models for production of fragments from nucleon–nucleus and nucleus–nucleus collisions, relevant to space radiation, is currently being developed. DDFRG1 was a previous model developed for production of protons and light ions. A new model for pion production is developed in the present work and is called DDFRG2, which is based upon thermal production of pions from a central fireball source. The Lorentz-invariant double-differential cross section is calculated in the central fireball frame, and is Lorentz transformed to the laboratory frame, which results in a closed-form analytic formula involving no numerical integration, and which can be run very efficiently in radiation transport codes. The Lorentz-invariant double-differential cross section is then integrated over angle to give the single-differential energy spectral distribution. The calculated Lorentz-invariant double-differential cross sections are compared to an extensive data set containing over 1000 data points. Agreement between model calculations and data is found to be excellent.

Double Differential Cross-sections for Ionization of Metastable 2P-state Hydrogen Atoms by Electrons at Intermediate Energies with Exchange Effects

Double differential cross sections were obtained from the triple differential cross sections. The present calculations are compared with the hydrogenic ground-state experimental data, theoretical results, and DDCS first Born results. Discrepancies have been found between the present results and those measurements and theoretical results and also qualitative agreement with those of compared theories. The exchange effect results give an enormous prospect for experimental outcomes in the field of ionization problems. We are expecting that the present study makes more significant contribution to the study of atomic scattering problems using the multiple scattering theories. In the future calculations, other kinematic conditions or other atomic species will also be interesting and significant.

Measurement of the double-differential muon-neutrino charged-current inclusive cross section in the NOvA near detector

We report cross-section measurements of the final-state muon kinematics for νμ charged-current interactions in the NOvA near detector using an accumulated 8.09×1020 protons on target in the NuMI beam. We present the results as a double-differential cross section in the observed outgoing muon energy and angle, as well as single-differential cross sections in the derived neutrino energy, Eν, and square of the four-momentum transfer, Q2. We compare the results to inclusive cross-section predictions from various neutrino event generators via χ2 calculations using a covariance matrix that accounts for bin-to-bin correlations of systematic uncertainties. These comparisons show a clear discrepancy between the data and each of the tested predictions at forward muon angle and low Q2, indicating a missing suppression of the cross section in current neutrino-nucleus scattering models.3 MoreReceived 24 September 2021Accepted 14 February 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.052011Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasNeutrino interactionsNucleus-neutrino interactionsParticles & Fields

A systematic analysis of deuteron breakup

Inclusive breakup cross sections for deuterons incident on a wide range of nuclei at different incident energies are studied. In our analysis, we use the post-form distorted-wave-Born approximation (DWBA) to calculate the elastic and nonelastic breakup cross sections. We also calculate exciton and statistical compound-nucleus model cross sections to account for pre-equilibrium and equilibrium emissions. The calculations are performed using the code EMPIRE and are compared to the available experimental data. The comparisons of the integrated cross sections reveal a generally good agreement between the calculations and the data. However, systematic discrepancies are observed between the calculated double differential neutron and proton cross sections and the data, especially for heavier targets. Possible reasons for the disagreements between the theoretical predictions and the experimental data are discussed.

Electron Emission Cross Section from Methane under 250 keV Proton Impact

We measure double differential cross sections (DDCS) of electrons emitted from CH4 molecules in collisions with 250 keV protons. The projectile ions are obtained from a 400 kV electron cyclotron resonance-based ion accelerator (ECRIA). We study the energy and angular distributions of the electron DDCS. The observed double and single differential and the total cross section are compared with the state-of-the-art continuum distorted wave eikonal initial state (CDW-EIS) model predictions. Two different approaches are used considering the different target descriptions: complete neglect of differential overlap (CNDO) and molecular orbital (MO) approximations. The MO model uses two different scaling parameters (d = 0.7 and 1.0). In the energy distribution of the DDCS, the carbon KLL Auger line is also observed at 240 eV. The single differential cross section (SDCS) and total cross section (TCS) are derived. Both the MO-based CDW-EIS models are in good agreement with the experimental results; however, the CNDO approach overestimates the data.

Measurements of electron bremsstrahlung double-differential cross sections for solid targets down to low photon energies: No polarization contribution

The authors measured the bremsstrahlung double-differential cross sections for some solid thin-film elemental targets by kilovolt electron impact down to low photon energies. The results definitely show that there is no polarization bremsstrahlung contribution in solid-target experiments.

Quasielastic charged-current neutrino-nucleus scattering with relativistic nuclear models

Charged-current neutrino-nucleus scattering is studied in the quasielastic region with various relativistic nuclear models that include the relativistic Hartree, the nonlinear $\ensuremath{\sigma}$, the quark-meson coupling, and the chiral quark-meson coupling models. Theoretical results at several kinematics are compared with experimental data measured from MiniBooNE, T2K, MicroBooNE, and SciBooNE. While the theoretical double-differential cross sections in terms of the kinetic energy and polar angle of outgoing muon describe the T2K data well, the single-differential cross sections in terms of energy loss and the total cross sections of incident neutrino energy do not properly describe MiniBooNE, MicroBooNE, and SciBooNE data. Additionally, differences from the relativistic nuclear models are examined in detail by comparing with the experimental data. In particular, the MiniBooNE data are not consistent with MicroBooNE and SciBooNE data, where the incident neutrino energies are below 1 GeV.

Measurement of the ν_{e}-Nucleus Charged-Current Double-Differential Cross Section at ⟨E_{ν}⟩=2.4 GeV Using NOvA.

The inclusive electron neutrino charged-current cross section is measured in the NOvA near detector using 8.02×10^{20} protons-on-target in the NuMI beam. The sample of GeV electron neutrino interactions is the largest analyzed to date and is limited by ≃17% systematic rather than the ≃7.4% statistical uncertainties. The double-differential cross section in final-state electron energy and angle is presented for the first time, together with the single-differential dependence on Q^{2} (squared four-momentum transfer) and energy, in the range 1 GeV≤E_{ν}<6 GeV. Detailed comparisons are made to the predictions of the GENIE, GiBUU, NEUT, and NuWro neutrino event generators. The data do not strongly favor a model over the others consistently across all three cross sections measured, though some models have especially good or poor agreement in the single differential cross section vs Q^{2}.

Binary Encounter Electrons in Fast Dressed-Ion–H2 Collisions: Distorted Wave Theories and Experiment

We report measurements of double differential cross section for zero-degree binary encounter electrons emitted in collisions of 4.9 MeV and 13 MeV B(2−5)+ ions with H2 targets. The corresponding calculations based on continuum distorted-wave (CDW) theories are critically compared to the measurements. CDW in its post form exhibits a very good agreement with the measurements in all cases. The CDW theories utilized along with the well-known eikonal-initial-state (CDW-EIS) approximation are also examined and their results are compared to both the measurements and the CDW calculations. In particular, CDW-EIS using a recently proposed dynamic effective charge for the final channel projectile distortion exhibits a substantial improvement in comparison with an effective net-charge approximation.

Estimation of double-differential cross-sections of 9Be(p,xn) reaction for new nuclear data library JENDL-5

Double-differential cross-sections of the 9Be(p,xn) reaction are newly evaluated based on the Wakabayashi’s function and neutronics analysis up to 12 MeV for a new nuclear data library, JENDL-5. We devoted our efforts especially to the re-optimization of the absolute cross-sections and the interpolation of the neutron energy spectra. Through the comparisons between the thick target yield measurements and Monte-Carlo simulations at different proton energies and neutron emission angles, we conclude that JENDL-5 gives the best evaluation in the world.

Methods for processing and use of thermal neutron scattering data in OpenMC

OpenMC, an open source Monte Carlo particle transport code, relies on its own nuclear data format that is based on the HDF5 file format. The Python API within OpenMC includes an openmc.data module, which handles generation of thermal scattering HDF5 libraries starting from either ACE or ENDF files. When starting from ENDF files, NJOY is automatically executed to produce intermediate ACE files. In most cases, the resulting HDF5 data is equivalent to that stored in an ACE file. For incoherent elastic scattering, however, a novel sampling method is derived from the double-differential cross section and can be used to preserve the true continuous angular distribution. In this case, the characteristic bound cross section and Debye–Waller integral are taken directly from an ENDF file. Testing on the H in ZrH evaluation from ENDF/B-VIII.0 has demonstrated how the new sampling method matches the true distribution whereas the traditional treatment based on discrete cosines can leaves significant gaps in the angular distribution.

Neutron production in the interaction of 200-MeV deuterons with Li, Be, C, Al, Cu, Nb, In, Ta, and Au

Double-differential neutron production cross sections (DDXs) for 200-MeV deuteron induced reactions on Li, Be, C, Al, Cu, Nb, In, Ta, and Au were measured at forward emission angles ranging from 0° to 25° by means of a time of flight (TOF) method with EJ301 liquid organic scintillators. The measured DDXs were compared with JENDL-5 and TENDL-2021 nuclear data, and theoretical model calculations using DEURACS and PHITS codes. It was found that the JENDL-5 and DEURACS calculation are in better agreement with the measured DDXs than the PHITS calculation, while TENDL-2021 fails to reproduce both the spectral shape and magnitude of the measured DDXs for all the targets.

Nuclear fragmentation cross section measurements with the FOOT experiment

Different fields can profit by nuclear fragmentation cross section measurements: among them hadrontherapy and space radioprotection are of particular interest. Hadrontherapy employs high-energy beams of charged particles (protons and heavier ions) to treat deep-seated tumours. In these treatments nuclear interactions have to be considered: beam particles can fragment in the human body releasing a non-zero dose beyond the tumour while fragments of human body nuclei can modify the dose released in healthy tissues. On the radioprotection side, the interest in long-term manned space missions beyond Low Earth Orbit is growing in these years but it has to cope with significant health concerns from radiation in space, necessitating an accurate cross section data description. The FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) experiment was proposed to cover these gaps in data. It was designed to detect, track and identify nuclear fragments and aims to measure double differential cross sections both in angle and kinetic energy which is the most complete information to address existing questions. The FOOT experimental setups, the experimental program and a first cross section analysis of 400 MeV/u 16O beam on Carbon target data acquired in July 2021 at GSI (Darmstadt, Germany) will be presented.

Nuclear fragmentation cross section measurements with the FOOT experiment

FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) is an applied nuclear physics experiment that aims at a full characterization of the nuclear fragmentation processes of interest for Particle Therapy and Radiation Protection in Space. The physics program foresees a set of measurements in direct and inverse kinematics using particle beams and targets with composition similar to human tissues and spacecraft shielding materials. The final goal of the experiment is the measurement of double differential cross sections with respect to angle and fragment energy in the 100-800 MeV/u range with a precision better than 5%. The FOOT Collaboration is currently completing the development of the apparatus and data acquisition campaigns with partial setups have already started. In this paper, an overview of the current status of the experiment is given, together with a summary of the preliminary results obtained from the first measurements with 16O beams.

Detector Development for a Double-Differential Cross Section Experiment with the Emission of Light Charged Particles from High Energy Neutrons

Detector Development for a Double-Differential Cross Section Experiment with the Emission of Light Charged Particles from High Energy Neutrons

Comparison of double-differential cross-section between nuclear data library and experimental data for photoneutron production

In this study, we compared double differential cross-sections (DDXs) between the experimental data obtained by 16.6 MeV of polarized photons and the DDXs from JENDL2004 and JENDL/PD-2016.1 for 197Au, natPb, natCu, and natTi targets. Using Python-based software, we extracted the DDXs from the nuclear data libraries (NDLs), which were subsequently deduced considering the abundances of each target’s isotopes, the width of the photon beam, and the energy resolution of the neutron detectors. For the Ti target, the experimental DDX data were consistent with that of the NDLs. For Pb, Au, and Cu targets, the experimental DDX data at neutron energies higher than 4 MeV were larger than the DDX values obtained from the NDLs. The inconsistency between the DDXs of the experimental data and those of the NDLs indicates the need to improve the physical models to generate the spectrum of photoneutrons.

Double Differential Cross-Section for the Ionization of Hydrogenic 2S Metastable State

Double Differential Cross-Section for the Ionization of Hydrogenic 2S Metastable State