| 1. |
- Betti, M. G., et al.
(författare)
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A design for an electromagnetic filter for precision energy measurements at the tritium endpoint
- 2019
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Ingår i: Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0146-6410 .- 1873-2224. ; 106, s. 120-131
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a detailed description of the electromagnetic filter for the PTOLEMY project to directly detect the Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB). Starting with an initial estimate for the orbital magnetic moment, the higher-order drift process of E x B is configured to balance the gradient-B drift motion of the electron in such a way as to guide the trajectory into the standing voltage potential along the mid-plane of the filter. As a function of drift distance along the length of the filter, the filter zooms in with exponentially increasing precision on the transverse velocity component of the electron kinetic energy. This yields a linear dimension for the total filter length that is exceptionally compact compared to previous techniques for electromagnetic filtering. The parallel velocity component of the electron kinetic energy oscillates in an electrostatic harmonic trap as the electron drifts along the length of the filter. An analysis of the phase-space volume conservation validates the expected behavior of the filter from the adiabatic invariance of the orbital magnetic moment and energy conservation following Liouville's theorem for Hamiltonian systems.
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| 2. |
- Betti, M. G., et al.
(författare)
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Neutrino physics with the PTOLEMY project : active neutrino properties and the light sterile case
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. - : IOP PUBLISHING LTD. - 1475-7516. ; :7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The PTOLEMY project aims to develop a scalable design for a Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB) detector, the first of its kind and the only one conceived that can look directly at the image of the Universe encoded in neutrino background produced in the first second after the Big Bang. The scope of the work for the next three years is to complete the conceptual design of this detector and to validate with direct measurements that the non-neutrino backgrounds are below the expected cosmological signal. In this paper we discuss in details the theoretical aspects of the experiment and its physics goals. In particular, we mainly address three issues. First we discuss the sensitivity of PTOLEMY to the standard neutrino mass scale. We then study the perspectives of the experiment to detect the CNB via neutrino capture on tritium as a function of the neutrino mass scale and the energy resolution of the apparatus. Finally, we consider an extra sterile neutrino with mass in the eV range, coupled to the active states via oscillations, which has been advocated in view of neutrino oscillation anomalies. This extra state would contribute to the tritium decay spectrum, and its properties, mass and mixing angle, could be studied by analyzing the features in the beta decay electron spectrum.
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| 3. |
- Carrasco-Lopez, Cristian, et al.
(författare)
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Environment-dependent regulation of spliceosome activity by the LSM2-8 complex in Arabidopsis
- 2017
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Ingår i: Nucleic Acids Research. - : Oxford University Press. - 0305-1048 .- 1362-4962. ; 45:12, s. 7416-7431
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Spliceosome activity is tightly regulated to ensure adequate splicing in response to internal and external cues. It has been suggested that core components of the spliceosome, such as the snRNPs, would participate in the control of its activity. The experimental indications supporting this proposition, however, remain scarce, and the operating mechanisms poorly understood. Here, we present genetic and molecular evidence demonstrating that the LSM2-8 complex, the protein moiety of the U6 snRNP, regulates the spliceosome activity in Arabidopsis, and that this regulation is controlled by the environmental conditions. Our results show that the complex ensures the efficiency and accuracy of constitutive and alternative splicing of selected pre-mRNAs, depending on the conditions. Moreover, miss-splicing of most targeted pre-mRNAs leads to the generation of nonsense mediated decay signatures, indicating that the LSM2-8 complex also guarantees adequate levels of the corresponding functional transcripts. Interestingly, the selective role of the complex has relevant physiological implications since it is required for adequate plant adaptation to abiotic stresses. These findings unveil an unanticipated function for the LSM2-8 complex that represents a new layer of posttranscriptional regulation in response to external stimuli in eukaryotes.
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| 4. |
- Guerco, Rafael, et al.
(författare)
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Fluorine Abundances in the Galactic Disk
- 2019
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 885:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The chemical evolution of fluorine is investigated in a sample of Milky Way red giant stars that span a significant range in metallicity from [Fe/H] ? ?1.3 to 0.0 dex. Fluorine abundances are derived from vibration-rotation lines of HF in high-resolution infrared spectra near 2.335 ?m. The red giants are members of the thin and thick disk/halo, with two stars being likely members of the outer disk Monoceros overdensity. At lower metallicities, with [Fe/H] < ?0.4 to ?0.5, the abundance of F varies as a primary element with respect to the Fe abundance, with a constant subsolar value of [F/Fe] ? ?0.3 to ?0.4 dex. At larger metallicities, however, [F/Fe] increases rapidly with [Fe/H] and displays a near-secondary behavior with respect to Fe. Comparisons with various models of chemical evolution suggest that in the low-metallicity regime (dominated here by thick-disk stars), a primary evolution of F-19 with Fe, with a subsolar [F/Fe] value that roughly matches the observed plateau, can be reproduced by a model incorporating neutrino nucleosynthesis in the aftermath of the core collapse in Type II supernovae. A primary behavior for [F/Fe] at low metallicity is also observed for a model including rapidly rotating low-metallicity massive stars, but this overproduces [F/Fe] at low metallicity. The thick-disk red giants in our sample span a large range of galactocentric distance (R-g ? 6?13.7 kpc) yet display a roughly constant value of [F/Fe], indicating a very flat gradient (with a slope of 0.02 0.03 dex kpc(?1)) of this elemental ratio over a significant portion of the Galaxy having ?Z? 300 pc away from the Galaxy midplane.
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| 5. |
- Guerco, Rafael, et al.
(författare)
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Fluorine Abundances in the Globular Cluster M4
- 2019
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - : IOP PUBLISHING LTD. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 876:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present chemical abundances for the elements carbon, sodium, and fluorine in 15 red giants of the globular cluster M4, as well as six red giants of the globular cluster w Centauri. The chemical abundances were calculated in LTE via spectral synthesis. The spectra analyzed are high-resolution spectra obtained in the near-infrared region around 2.3 mu m with the Phoenix spectrograph on the 8.1 m Gemini South Telescope, the IGRINS spectrograph on the McDonald Observatory 2.7 m Telescope, and the CRIRES spectrograph on the ESO 8.2 m Very Large Telescope. The results indicate a significant reduction in the fluorine abundances when compared to previous values from the literature for M4 and w Centauri, due to a downward revision in the excitation potentials of the HF (1-0) R9 line used in the analysis. The fluorine abundances obtained for the M4 red giants are found to be anticorrelated with those of Na, following the typical pattern of abundance variations seen in globular clusters between distinct stellar populations. In M4, as the Na abundance increases by similar to+0.4 dex, the F abundance decreases by similar to-0.2 dex. A comparison with abundance predictions from two sets of stellar evolution models finds that the models predict somewhat less F depletion (similar to-0.1 dex) for the same increase of +0.4 dex in Na.
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