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| 2. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(författare)
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Measurement of the muon flux from 400 GeV/c protons interacting in a thick molybdenum/tungsten target
- 2020
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Ingår i: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 80:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The SHiP experiment is proposed to search for very weakly interacting particles beyond the Standard Model which are produced in a 400 GeV/c proton beam dump at the CERN SPS. About 1011muons per spill will be produced in the dump. To design the experiment such that the muon-induced background is minimized, a precise knowledge of the muon spectrum is required. To validate the muon flux generated by our Pythia and GEANT4 based Monte Carlo simulation (FairShip), we have measured the muon flux emanating from a SHiP-like target at the SPS. This target, consisting of 13 interaction lengths of slabs of molybdenum and tungsten, followed by a 2.4 m iron hadron absorber was placed in the H4 400 GeV/c proton beam line. To identify muons and to measure the momentum spectrum, a spectrometer instrumented with drift tubes and a muon tagger were used. During a 3-week period a dataset for analysis corresponding to (3.27 +/- 0.07)x1011protons on target was recorded. This amounts to approximatively 1% of a SHiP spill.
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| 3. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(författare)
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Sensitivity of the SHiP experiment to dark photons decaying to a pair of charged particles
- 2021
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Ingår i: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer Nature. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 81:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dark photons are hypothetical massive vector particles that could mix with ordinary photons. The simplest theoretical model is fully characterised by only two parameters: the mass of the dark photon m(gamma)D and its mixing parameter with the photon, epsilon. The sensitivity of the SHiP detector is reviewed for dark photons in the mass range between 0.002 and 10 GeV. Different productionmechanisms are simulated, with the dark photons decaying to pairs of visible fermions, including both leptons and quarks. Exclusion contours are presented and compared with those of past experiments. The SHiP detector is expected to have a unique sensitivity for m. D ranging between 0.8 and 3.3(-0.5)(+0.2) GeV, and epsilon(2) ranging between 10(-11) and 10(-17).
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| 4. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(författare)
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Sensitivity of the SHiP experiment to light dark matter
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP). - : Springer Nature. - 1126-6708 .- 1029-8479. ; :4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dark matter is a well-established theoretical addition to the Standard Model supported by many observations in modern astrophysics and cosmology. In this context, the existence of weakly interacting massive particles represents an appealing solution to the observed thermal relic in the Universe. Indeed, a large experimental campaign is ongoing for the detection of such particles in the sub-GeV mass range. Adopting the benchmark scenario for light dark matter particles produced in the decay of a dark photon, with αD = 0.1 and mA′ = 3mχ, we study the potential of the SHiP experiment to detect such elusive particles through its Scattering and Neutrino detector (SND). In its 5-years run, corresponding to 2 · 1020 protons on target from the CERN SPS, we find that SHiP will improve the current limits in the mass range for the dark matter from about 1 MeV to 300 MeV. In particular, we show that SHiP will probe the thermal target for Majorana candidates in most of this mass window and even reach the Pseudo-Dirac thermal relic.
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| 5. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(författare)
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Track reconstruction and matching between emulsion and silicon pixel detectors for the SHiP-charm experiment
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Instrumentation. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-0221 .- 1748-0221. ; 17:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In July 2018 an optimization run for the proposed charm cross section measurement for SHiP was performed at the CERN SPS. A heavy, moving target instrumented with nuclear emulsion films followed by a silicon pixel tracker was installed in front of the Goliath magnet at the H4 proton beam-line. Behind the magnet, scintillating-fibre, drift-tube and RPC detectors were placed. The purpose of this run was to validate the measurement's feasibility, to develop the required analysis tools and fine-tune the detector layout. In this paper, we present the track reconstruction in the pixel tracker and the track matching with the moving emulsion detector. The pixel detector performed as expected and it is shown that, after proper alignment, a vertex matching rate of 87% is achieved.
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| 6. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(författare)
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The magnet of the scattering and neutrino detector for the SHiP experiment at CERN
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Instrumentation. - 1748-0221 .- 1748-0221. ; 15:01
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) experiment proposal at CERN demands a dedicated dipole magnet for its scattering and neutrino detector. This requires a very large volume to be uniformly magnetized at B > 1.2 T, with constraints regarding the inner instrumented volume as well as the external region, where no massive structures are allowed and only an extremely low stray field is admitted. In this paper we report the main technical challenges and the relevant design options providing a comprehensive design for the magnet of the SHiP Scattering and Neutrino Detector.
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| 7. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(författare)
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The SHiP experiment at the proposed CERN SPS Beam Dump Facility
- 2022
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Ingår i: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer Nature. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 82:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) Collaboration has proposed a general-purpose experimental facility operating in beam-dump mode at the CERN SPS accelerator to search for light, feebly interacting particles. In the baseline configuration, the SHiP experiment incorporates two complementary detectors. The upstream detector is designed for recoil signatures of light dark matter (LDM) scattering and for neutrino physics, in particular with tau neutrinos. It consists of a spectrometer magnet housing a layered detector system with high-density LDM/neutrino target plates, emulsion-film technology and electronic high-precision tracking. The total detector target mass amounts to about eight tonnes. The downstream detector system aims at measuring visible decays of feebly interacting particles to both fully reconstructed final states and to partially reconstructed final states with neutrinos, in a nearly background-free environment. The detector consists of a 50m\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathrm { \,m}$$\end{document} long decay volume under vacuum followed by a spectrometer and particle identification system with a rectangular acceptance of 5 m in width and 10 m in height. Using the high-intensity beam of 400GeV\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\,\mathrm {GeV}$$\end{document} protons, the experiment aims at profiting from the 4x1019\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$4\times 10<^>{19}$$\end{document} protons per year that are currently unexploited at the SPS, over a period of 5-10 years. This allows probing dark photons, dark scalars and pseudo-scalars, and heavy neutral leptons with GeV-scale masses in the direct searches at sensitivities that largely exceed those of existing and projected experiments. The sensitivity to light dark matter through scattering reaches well below the dark matter relic density limits in the range from a few MeV/c2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathrm {\,MeV\!/}c<^>2}$$\end{document} up to 100 MeV-scale masses, and it will be possible to study tau neutrino interactions with unprecedented statistics. This paper describes the SHiP experiment baseline setup and the detector systems, together with performance results from prototypes in test beams, as it was prepared for the 2020 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. The expected detector performance from simulation is summarised at the end.
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| 8. |
- Agudo, I., et al.
(författare)
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Panning for gold, but finding helium: Discovery of the ultra-stripped supernova SN 2019wxt from gravitational-wave follow-up observations
- 2023
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 675
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present the results from multi-wavelength observations of a transient discovered during an intensive follow-up campaign of S191213g, a gravitational wave (GW) event reported by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration as a possible binary neutron star merger in a low latency search. This search yielded SN 2019wxt, a young transient in a galaxy whose sky position (in the 80% GW contour) and distance (∼150 Mpc) were plausibly compatible with the localisation uncertainty of the GW event. Initially, the transienta's tightly constrained age, its relatively faint peak magnitude (Mi ∼ -16.7 mag), and the r-band decline rate of ∼1 mag per 5 days appeared suggestive of a compact binary merger. However, SN 2019wxt spectroscopically resembled a type Ib supernova, and analysis of the optical-near-infrared evolution rapidly led to the conclusion that while it could not be associated with S191213g, it nevertheless represented an extreme outcome of stellar evolution. By modelling the light curve, we estimated an ejecta mass of only ∼0.1 M·, with 56Ni comprising ∼20% of this. We were broadly able to reproduce its spectral evolution with a composition dominated by helium and oxygen, with trace amounts of calcium. We considered various progenitor channels that could give rise to the observed properties of SN 2019wxt and concluded that an ultra-stripped origin in a binary system is the most likely explanation. Disentangling genuine electromagnetic counterparts to GW events from transients such as SN 2019wxt soon after discovery is challenging: in a bid to characterise this level of contamination, we estimated the rate of events with a volumetric rate density comparable to that of SN 2019wxt and found that around one such event per week can occur within the typical GW localisation area of O4 alerts out to a luminosity distance of 500 Mpc, beyond which it would become fainter than the typical depth of current electromagnetic follow-up campaigns.
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| 9. |
- Ackley, K., et al.
(författare)
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Observational constraints on the optical and near-infrared emission from the neutron star-black hole binary merger candidate S190814bv
- 2020
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 643
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context. Gravitational wave (GW) astronomy has rapidly reached maturity, becoming a fundamental observing window for modern astrophysics. The coalescences of a few tens of black hole (BH) binaries have been detected, while the number of events possibly including a neutron star (NS) is still limited to a few. On 2019 August 14, the LIGO and Virgo interferometers detected a high-significance event labelled S190814bv. A preliminary analysis of the GW data suggests that the event was likely due to the merger of a compact binary system formed by a BH and a NS.Aims. In this paper, we present our extensive search campaign aimed at uncovering the potential optical and near infrared electromagnetic counterpart of S190814bv. We found no convincing electromagnetic counterpart in our data. We therefore use our non-detection to place limits on the properties of the putative outflows that could have been produced by the binary during and after the merger.Methods. Thanks to the three-detector observation of S190814bv, and given the characteristics of the signal, the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations delivered a relatively narrow localisation in low latency - a 50% (90%) credible area of 5 deg(2) (23 deg(2)) - despite the relatively large distance of 26752 Mpc. ElectromagNetic counterparts of GRAvitational wave sources at the VEry Large Telescope collaboration members carried out an intensive multi-epoch, multi-instrument observational campaign to identify the possible optical and near infrared counterpart of the event. In addition, the ATLAS, GOTO, GRAWITA-VST, Pan-STARRS, and VINROUGE projects also carried out a search on this event. In this paper, we describe the combined observational campaign of these groups.Results. Our observations allow us to place limits on the presence of any counterpart and discuss the implications for the kilonova (KN), which was possibly generated by this NS-BH merger, and for the strategy of future searches. The typical depth of our wide-field observations, which cover most of the projected sky localisation probability (up to 99.8%, depending on the night and filter considered), is r similar to 22 (resp. K similar to 21) in the optical (resp. near infrared). We reach deeper limits in a subset of our galaxy-targeted observations, which cover a total similar to 50% of the galaxy-mass-weighted localisation probability. Altogether, our observations allow us to exclude a KN with large ejecta mass M greater than or similar to 0.1 M-circle dot to a high (> 90%) confidence, and we can exclude much smaller masses in a sub-sample of our observations. This disfavours the tidal disruption of the neutron star during the merger.Conclusions. Despite the sensitive instruments involved in the campaign, given the distance of S190814bv, we could not reach sufficiently deep limits to constrain a KN comparable in luminosity to AT 2017gfo on a large fraction of the localisation probability. This suggests that future (likely common) events at a few hundred megaparsecs will be detected only by large facilities with both a high sensitivity and large field of view. Galaxy-targeted observations can reach the needed depth over a relevant portion of the localisation probability with a smaller investment of resources, but the number of galaxies to be targeted in order to get a fairly complete coverage is large, even in the case of a localisation as good as that of this event.
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