Low-energy Events Research Articles

Aluminum relaxation as the source of excess low energy events in low threshold calorimeters

Aluminum relaxation as the source of excess low energy events in low threshold calorimeters

Jovian signal at BOREXINO

The BOREXINO experiment has been collecting solar neutrino data since 2007, providing the opportunity to study the variation of the event rate over a decade. We find that at 96% C.L., the rate of low energy events shows a time modulation favoring a correlation with a flux from Jupiter. We present a new physics model, the Jovian whisper model, based on dark matter of mass ∼0.1–4 GeV captured by Jupiter that can account for such modulation. We discuss how the Jovian whisper model (JWM) can be tested. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

A stress-induced source of phonon bursts and quasiparticle poisoning

The performance of superconducting qubits is degraded by a poorly characterized set of energy sources breaking the Cooper pairs responsible for superconductivity, creating a condition often called “quasiparticle poisoning”. Both superconducting qubits and low threshold dark matter calorimeters have observed excess bursts of quasiparticles or phonons that decrease in rate with time. Here, we show that a silicon crystal glued to its holder exhibits a rate of low-energy phonon events that is more than two orders of magnitude larger than in a functionally identical crystal suspended from its holder in a low-stress state. The excess phonon event rate in the glued crystal decreases with time since cooldown, consistent with a source of phonon bursts which contributes to quasiparticle poisoning in quantum circuits and the low-energy events observed in cryogenic calorimeters. We argue that relaxation of thermally induced stress between the glue and crystal is the source of these events.

Measurements of low-energy nuclear recoil quenching factors for Na and I recoils in the NaI(Tl) scintillator

Elastic scattering off nuclei in target detectors, involving interactions with dark matter and coherent elastic neutrino nuclear recoil (CEνNS), results in the deposition of low energy within the nuclei, dissipating rapidly through a combination of heat and ionization. The primary energy loss mechanism for nuclear recoil is heat, leading to consistently smaller measurable scintillation signals compared to electron recoils of the same energy. The nuclear recoil quenching factor (QF), representing the ratio of scintillation light yield produced by nuclear recoil to that of electron recoil at the same energy, is a critical parameter for understanding dark matter and neutrino interactions with nuclei. The low energy QF of NaI(Tl) crystals, commonly employed in dark matter searches and CEνNS measurements, is of substantial importance. Previous low energy QF measurements were constrained by contamination from photomultiplier tube (PMT)-induced noise, resulting in an observed light yield of approximately 15 photoelectrons per keVee (kilo-electron-volt electron-equivalent energy) and nuclear recoil energy above 5 keVnr (kilo-electron-volt nuclear recoil energy). Through enhanced crystal encapsulation, an increased light yield of around 26 photoelectrons per keVee is achieved. This improvement enables the measurement of the nuclear recoil QF for sodium nuclei at an energy of 3.8±0.6keVnr with a QF of 11.2±1.7%. Furthermore, a re-evaluation of previously reported QF results is conducted, incorporating enhancements in low energy events based on waveform simulation. The outcomes are generally consistent with various recent QF measurements for sodium and iodine. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Search for light WIMP recoils on methane with NEWS-G

The NEWS-G collaboration is searching for light dark matter using single-electron-threshold Spherical Proportional Counters (SPCs) filled with light gaseous targets (H, He, Ne). NEWS-G has built a new 140 cm diameter SPC equipped with a multi-anode ACHINOS sensor. Robust calibrations with a UV laser and an \mathrm{^{37}}37Ar source were performed to characterize the detector response to low energy events and achieve statistical background rejection. This work presents preliminary results from physics data taken with methane, leading to world-leading spin-dependent sensitivity under 2 \mathrm{GeV/c^{2}}GeV/c2 WIMP masses.

Demonstration of event position reconstruction based on diffusion in the NEXT-white detector

Noble element time projection chambers are a leading technology for rare event detection in physics, such as for dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay searches. Time projection chambers typically assign event position in the drift direction using the relative timing of prompt scintillation and delayed charge collection signals, allowing for reconstruction of an absolute position in the drift direction. In this paper, alternate methods for assigning event drift distance via quantification of electron diffusion in a pure high pressure xenon gas time projection chamber are explored. Data from the NEXT-White detector demonstrate the ability to achieve good position assignment accuracy for both high- and low-energy events. Using point-like energy deposits from 83m\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$^{83\ extrm{m}}$$\\end{document}Kr calibration electron captures (E∼45\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$E\\sim 45$$\\end{document} keV), the position of origin of low-energy events is determined to 2 cm precision with bias <1\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$< 1~$$\\end{document}mm. A convolutional neural network approach is then used to quantify diffusion for longer tracks (E≥1.5\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$E\\ge ~1.5$$\\end{document} MeV), from radiogenic electrons, yielding a precision of 3 cm on the event barycenter. The precision achieved with these methods indicates the feasibility energy calibrations of better than 1% FWHM at Qββ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$_{\\beta \\beta }$$\\end{document} in pure xenon, as well as the potential for event fiducialization in large future detectors using an alternate method that does not rely on primary scintillation.

First detailed calculation of atmospheric neutrino foregrounds to the diffuse supernova neutrino background in Super-Kamiokande

The diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB)—a probe of the core-collapse mechanism and the cosmic star-formation history—has not been detected, but its discovery may be imminent. A significant obstacle for DSNB detection in Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) is detector backgrounds, especially due to atmospheric neutrinos (more precisely, these are foregrounds), which are not sufficiently understood. We perform the first detailed theoretical calculations of these foregrounds in the range 16–90 MeV in detected electron energy, taking into account several physical and detector effects, quantifying uncertainties, and comparing our predictions to the 15.9 live time years of pre-gadolinium data from Super-K stages I–IV. We show that our modeling reasonably reproduces this low-energy data as well as the usual high-energy atmospheric-neutrino data. To accelerate progress on detecting the DSNB, we outline key actions to be taken in future theoretical and experimental work. In a forthcoming paper, we use our modeling to detail how low-energy atmospheric-neutrino events register in Super-K and suggest new cuts to reduce their impact. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Shedding light on the MiniBooNE excess with searches at the LHC

The origin of the excess of low-energy events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment remains a mystery, despite exhaustive investigations of backgrounds and a series of null measurements from complementary experiments. One intriguing explanation is the production of beyond-the-Standard-Model particles that could mimic the experimental signature of additional νe appearance seen in MiniBooNE. In one proposed mechanism, muon neutrinos up-scatter to produce a new “dark neutrino” state that decays by emitting highly collimated electron-positron pairs. We propose high-energy neutrinos produced from W boson decays at the Large Hadron Collider as an ideal laboratory to study such models. Simple searches for a low-mass, boosted dilepton resonance produced in association with a high-pT muon from the W decay with run 2 data would already provide unique sensitivity to a range of dark neutrino scenarios, with prompt and displaced searches providing complementarity. Looking farther ahead, we show how the unprecedented sample of W boson decays anticipated at the HL-LHC, together with improved lepton acceptance would explore much of the parameter space most compatible with the MiniBooNE excess. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

JLab spectral functions of argon in nuwro and their implications for MicroBooNE

The Short-Baseline Neutrino program in Fermilab aims to resolve the nature of the low-energy excess events observed in LSND and MiniBooNE, and analyze with unprecedented precision neutrino interactions with argon. These studies require a reliable estimate of neutrino cross sections, in particular for charged current quasielastic scattering (CCQE). Here, we report updates of the uro Monte Carlo generator that, most notably, bring the state-of-the-art spectral functions to model the ground state properties of the argon nucleus, and improve the accuracy of the cross sections at low energies by accounting for the effects of the nuclear Coulomb potential. We discuss these developments in the context of electron and neutrino interactions, by comparing updated uro predictions to experimental data from Jefferson Laboratory Hall A and MicroBooNE. The MicroBooNE CCQE-dominated data are described with the χ2 per degree of freedom of 0.7, compared with 1.0 in the local Fermi gas model. The largest improvement is observed for the angular distributions of the produced protons, where the χ2 reduces nearly by half. Being obtained using the axial form factor parametrization from MINERvA, our results indicate a consistency between the CCQE measurements in MINERvA and MicroBooNE. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Low-energy radiative backgrounds in CCD-based dark-matter detectors

The reach of sub-GeV dark-matter detectors is at present severely affected by low-energy events from various origins. We present the theoretical methods to compute the single- and few-electron events that arise from secondary radiation emitted by high-energy particles as they pass through detector materials and perform a detailed simulation to quantify them at (Skipper) CCD-based experiments, focusing on the SENSEI data collected at Fermilab near the MINOS cavern. The simulations account for the generation of secondaries from Cherenkov and luminescent recombination radiation; photo-absorption in the bulk, backside layer, pitch adapter, and epoxy; the photon reflection and refraction at interfaces; thin-film interference; the roughness of the interfaces; the dynamics of charges produced in the highly doped CCD-backside-layers; and the partial charge collection on the CCD backside. We consider several systematic uncertainties, notably those stemming from the backside modeling, which we estimate with a “fiducial” and an “extreme” charge-diffusion model, with the former model being preferred due to better agreement with partial-charge collection data. We find that Cherenkov photons constitute about 30% of the observed single-electron events for both diffusion models; radiative recombination contributes negligibly to the event rate for the fiducial model, although it can dominate over Cherenkov for the extreme model. We also estimate the fraction of 2-electron events that arise from 1-electron event coincidences in the same pixel, finding that the entire 2-electron rate can be explained by coincidences of radiative events and spurious charge. Accounting for both radiative and non-radiative backgrounds, we project the sensitivity of future Skipper-CCD-based experiments to different dark-matter models. For light-mediator models with dark-matter masses of 1, 5, and 10 MeV, we find that future experiments with 10-kg-year exposures and successful background mitigation could have a sensitivity that is larger by 9, 3, and 2 orders of magnitude, respectively, when compared to an experiment without background improvements.

A combined AIMD and DFT study of the low-energy radiation responses of GaN.

Although GaN is a promising candidate for semiconductor devices, degradation of GaN-based device performance may occur when the device is bombarded by high-energy charged particles during its application in aerospace, astronomy, and nuclear-related areas. It is thus of great significance to explore the influence of irradiation on the microstructure and electronic properties of GaN and to reveal the internal relationship between the damage mechanisms and physical characteristics. Using a combined density functional theory (DFT) and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) study, we explored the low-energy recoil events in GaN and the effects of point defects on GaN. The threshold displacement energies (Eds) significantly depend on the recoil directions and the primary knock-on atoms. Moreover, the Ed values for nitrogen atoms are smaller than those for gallium atoms, indicating that the displacement of nitrogen dominates under electron irradiation and the created defects are mainly nitrogen vacancies and interstitials. The formation energy of nitrogen vacancies and interstitials is smaller than that for gallium vacancies and interstitials, which is consistent with the AIMD results. Although the created defects improve the elastic compliance of GaN, these radiation damage states deteriorate its ability to resist external compression. Meanwhile, these point defects lead the Debye temperature to decrease and thus increase the thermal expansion coefficients of GaN. As for the electronic properties of defective GaN, the point defects have various effects, i.e., VN (N vacancy), Gaint (Ga interstitial), Nint (N interstitial), and GaN (Ga occupying the N lattice site) defects induce the metallicity, and NGa (N occupying the Ga lattice site) defects decrease the band gap. The presented results provide underlying mechanisms for defect generation in GaN, and advance the fundamental understanding of the radiation resistances of semiconductor materials.

Electrical Characterization and Modeling of High Frequency Arcs for Higher Voltage Aerospace Systems

Arcing in future high-voltage aerospace systems could occur more frequently and cause irreversible damage to electrical components, system structure and increase the risk of fire. While arcs seen in low-voltage aerospace systems tend to be long-duration and low-energy events, higher power but short-duration arcs may occur in high-voltage aerospace systems if they are readily detectable by system protection. This paper investigates the characteristics of high current arc faults generated at the AC frequencies expected in future rotating machines used for higher voltage aerospace systems. As such, arcs with a peak current up to 4.6 kA are generated at frequencies in the range of 0.5-2 kHz using an underdamped RLC circuit, under pressures of 0.2-1 bar absolute. High frequency arcs exhibit a similar characteristic to lower frequency arcs. A reduction in pressure results in lower arc voltage and arc power. Arcing tests at atmospheric pressure may therefore represent a worst-case scenario and the development of a low-pressure test environment may not be necessary. A black box model is developed to provide good agreement with experimental arc voltage waveforms for different parameters investigated in this study. This is a generalized modeling approach to estimate high-frequency high-voltage arcing characteristics without recourse to experiment.

Dispersive Suprathermal Ion Events Observed by the Parker Solar Probe Mission

During Encounter 11, Parker Solar Probe observed a low-energy dispersive ions event of solar origin. The event was observed in the SPAN-I and IS⊙IS EPI-Lo sensors. The event started at a few MeV energy in the EPI-Lo sensor and progressed down in energy to ≈1 keV and merged with the bulk of the solar wind. This event is substantially different from typical solar energetic particles because the energetic population shows a distinct peak in the energy spectrum that descends in energy (not a power-law tail). In this Letter, we explore this event’s nature, origin, and characteristics.

Neoichnology of vertebrate traces along the western barrier coast of Ukraine: preservation potential and subsurface visualization

A diverse quite of vertebrate traces covers beach, aeolian, and bay-side (deflation flats) surfaces along the NW Black Sea coast of Ukraine. These include avian, ungulate, and canid footprints, as well as mammal burrows (length &gt;5 cm; depth ~2 cm). The preservation of biogenic structures is enhanced by rapid burial (low-energy sedimentation or event deposition), algal mat formation, and salt encrustation. Continuous high-frequency (800 MHz) ground-penetrating radar (GPR) imaging aided in visualizing subsurface sections of an active burrow complex within a beach-dune ridge. Images near an active fox burrow captured distinct subsurface anomalies (point-source hyperbolic diffractions) in the upper aeolian section above the water table. Unfilled tunnel sections are easily distinguished from buried roots and other targets based on signal velocity and polarity reversals relative to air-to-sediment response at the ground surface. The diffraction geometry (angle) is related to signal velocity, providing valuable information about relative saturation of the overlying substrate. Decimeter-scale deformation of shallow reflections may be attributed to tracking surfaces, with similar examples found immediately below modern surfaces affected by anthropogenic trampling. It is likely that muddy lagoonal tracking surfaces may be preserved under layers of sand (overwash or aeolian deposition) and, following saltwater expulsion, may be recognized in geophysical images as clear deformed paleo-surfaces. Heavy-mineral concentrations (e.g. magnetite-rich sand) are common for beach and dune horizons that have undergone reworking and such anomalies often accentuate physical and biogenic deformation structures. Due to moderate-to-high fraction of ferri- and paramagnetic minerals, these anomalies are also well-expressed in GPR images due to its electromagnetic signal response. A conceptual framework of trace preservation potential (taphonomy) and geophysical recognition (GPR) suitability is proposed for this coastal region, with implications to paleo-environmental reconstruction.

Search for Light Dark Matter with Ionization Signals in the PandaX-4T Experiment.

We report the search results of light dark matter through its interactions with shell electrons and nuclei, using the commissioning data from the PandaX-4T liquid xenon detector. Low energy events are selected to have an ionization-only signal between 60 to 200 photoelectrons, corresponding to a mean nuclear recoil energy from 0.77 to 2.54keV and electronic recoil energy from 0.07 to 0.23keV. With an effective exposure of 0.55 tonne·year, we set the most stringent limits within a mass range from 40 MeV/c^{2} to 10 GeV/c^{2} for pointlike dark matter-electron interaction, 100 MeV/c^{2} to 10 GeV/c^{2} for dark matter-electron interaction via a light mediator, and 3.2 to 4 GeV/c^{2} for dark matter-nucleon spin-independent interaction. For DM interaction with electrons, our limits are closing in on the parameter space predicted by the freeze-in and freeze-out mechanisms in the early Universe.

Domain-adversarial graph neural networks for Λ hyperon identification with CLAS12

Machine learning methods and in particular Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have revolutionized many tasks within the high energy physics community. Particularly in the realm of jet tagging, GNNs and domain adaptation have been especially successful. However, applications with lower energy events have not received as much attention. We report on the novel use of GNNs and a domain-adversarial training method to identify Λ hyperon events with the CLAS12 experiment at Jefferson Lab. The GNN method we have developed increases the purity of the Λ yield by a factor of 1.95 and by 1.82 using the domain-adversarial training. This work also provides a good benchmark for developing event tagging machine learning methods for the Λ and other channels at CLAS12 and other experiments, such as the planned Electron Ion Collider.

EventMix: An efficient data augmentation strategy for event-based learning

High-quality and challenging event stream datasets play an important role in the design of an efficient event-driven mechanism that mimics the brain. Although event cameras can provide high dynamic range and low-energy event stream data, the scale is smaller and more difficult to obtain than traditional frame-based data, which restricts the development of neuromorphic computing. Data augmentation can improve the quantity and quality of the original data by processing more representations from the original data. This paper proposes an efficient data augmentation strategy for event stream data: EventMix. We carefully design the mixing of different event streams by Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to generate random 3D masks and achieve arbitrary shape mixing of event streams in the spatio-temporal dimension. By computing the relative distances of event streams, we propose a more reasonable way to assign labels to the mixed samples. The experimental results on multiple neuromorphic datasets have shown that our strategy can improve performance on neuromorphic classification tasks as well as neuromorphic human action recognition tasks both for ANNs and SNNs, and we have achieved state-of-the-art performance on DVS-CIFAR10, N-Caltech101, and DVS-Gesture datasets.

Mandible fracture patterns in an urban level 1 trauma center: Older, more female, lower kinetic energy

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to complete a comprehensive retrospective chart review of the mandible fracture patterns amongst trauma patients in an urban level 1 trauma hospital. The authors propose that an urban environment influences these patterns. MethodsWe reviewed 1914 patient charts treated for 3946 facial fractures between 2008 and 2017. Those with mandibular fractures were studied in detail by collecting demographics, injury mechanism, location of injury, and treatment information. Wilcoxon-rank sum tests were used for comparing groups with continuous outcomes while Chi-square/Fisher’s exact test was used for comparing groups with categorical outcomes of interest. Results19.9% (382) of the 1914 patients who suffered facial trauma in this study suffered a mandible fracture. 382 (20%) of these patients suffered at least one mandible fracture, and of these 163 suffered fratures at multiple sites, totaling 577 fractures overall. 69% of the mandible fractures occurred in men and 31% in women. The median age of patients who sustained a mandible fracture was 33. The median age among males was 29, and females, 54. The most common site of mandible fracture was the ramus/angle of the mandible (30.3%). The most common mechanism of injury was a result of activities of daily living, such as falls. 73.9% (176) of all mandible fractures were treated with a combination of open reduction internal fixation and closed reduction maxillomandibular fixation. ConclusionIn an urban population, significant mandibular fractures may occur more frequently after non-classic low kinetic energy events, such as falls. Compared to other studies, our study more frequently included older, female patients, which may be reflective of urban demographics. It is important to maintain a high degree of suspicion for mandibular injuries in all urban facial trauma patients, regardless of mechanism.

Preface

The tenth international symposium on “Large TPCs for low-energy rare event detection” was held in Paris from 15th to 17th of December 2021 at the Institute of Astroparticle physics of the University of Paris. The 2020 issue of this conference series was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. The symposium was organized in a hybrid mode, which allowed about 40 people to attend in-person among a total of 131 registered participants. Very strict sanitary measures were taken to keep the meeting safe.As in previous events the program included neutrino physics, dark matter and axion searches, related detector R&D and theoretical aspects.To celebrate the tenth edition of the symposium the conference was held on three full days. Special speakers were invited to give a historical overview related to our field. David Nygren shared his memories of the invention and development of the Time Projection Chamber. François Vannucci revealed to us the invisible world of neutrinos. Ioannis Giomataris pointed out various innovative ideas that emerged during presentations and discussions in the last two decades. Jean Iliopoulos retraced the concept and development of the Standard Model and shared his personal vision on the future of particle physics.We wish to thank the many people who contributed to the success of the conference and especially the conveners of the sessions, who allowed for a smooth running of the meeting. We particularly acknowledge the APC management for providing the nice Buffon auditorium and infrastructure. We also thank DSM-Irfu, the University of Zaragoza, the European Research Council and ACAV Ile de France for their valuable support.The organizersList of Organizing Committee is available in this Pdf.

Neutrinos: The messengers of the invisible world

A short story on a few aspects of neutrinos (neutrino oscillations and the possibility of a sterile neutrino) for the Anniversary Session of the 10th international symposium on “Large TPCs for low-energy rare event detection”.