1. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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Track reconstruction and matching between emulsion and silicon pixel detectors for the SHiP-charm experiment
- 2022
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In: Journal of Instrumentation. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-0221. ; 17:3
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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2. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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Sensitivity of the SHiP experiment to light dark matter
- 2021
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In: Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP). - : Springer Nature. - 1126-6708 .- 1029-8479. ; :4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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3. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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Fast simulation of muons produced at the SHiP experiment using Generative Adversarial Networks
- 2019
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In: Journal of Instrumentation. - : IOP PUBLISHING LTD. - 1748-0221. ; 14
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper presents a fast approach to simulating muons produced in interactions of the SPS proton beams with the target of the SHiP experiment. The SHIP experiment will be able to search for new long-lived particles produced in a 400 GeV/c SPS proton beam dump and which travel distances between fifty metres and tens of kilometers. The SHiP detector needs to operate under ultra-low background conditions and requires large simulated samples of muon induced background processes. Through the use of Generative Adversarial Networks it is possible to emulate the simulation of the interaction of 400 GeV/c proton beams with the SHiP target, an otherwise computationally intensive process. For the simulation requirements of the SHiP experiment, generative networks are capable of approximating the full simulation of the dense fixed target, offering a speed increase by a factor of O(10(6)). To evaluate the performance of such an approach, comparisons of the distributions of reconstructed muon momenta in SHiP's spectrometer between samples using the full simulation and samples produced through generative models are presented. The methods discussed in this paper can be generalised and applied to modelling any non-discrete multi-dimensional distribution.
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4. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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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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In: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 80:3
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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5. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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Sensitivity of the SHiP experiment to dark photons decaying to a pair of charged particles
- 2021
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In: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer Nature. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 81:5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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6. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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Sensitivity of the SHiP experiment to Heavy Neutral Leptons
- 2019
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In: Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP). - 1126-6708 .- 1029-8479. ; :4
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs) are hypothetical particles predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model. These particles can, among other things, explain the origin of neutrino masses, generate the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe and provide a dark matter candidate. The SHiP experiment will be able to search for HNLs produced in decays of heavy mesons and travelling distances ranging between O(50 m) and tens of kilometers before decaying. We present the sensitivity of the SHiP experiment to a number of HNL's benchmark models and provide a way to calculate the SHiP's sensitivity to HNLs for arbitrary patterns of flavour mixings. The corresponding tools and data files are also made publicly available.
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7. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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The experimental facility for the Search for Hidden Particles at the CERN SPS
- 2019
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In: Journal of Instrumentation. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 1748-0221. ; 14
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) Collaboration has shown that the CERN SPS accelerator with its 400 GeV/c proton beam offers a unique opportunity to explore the Hidden Sector [1-3]. The proposed experiment is an intensity frontier experiment which is capable of searching for hidden particles through both visible decays and through scattering signatures from recoil of electrons or nuclei. The high-intensity experimental facility developed by the SHiP Collaboration is based on a number of key features and developments which provide the possibility of probing a large part of the parameter space for a wide range of models with light long-lived super-weakly interacting particles with masses up to O(10) GeV/c(2) in an environment of extremely clean background conditions. This paper describes the proposal for the experimental facility together with the most important feasibility studies. The paper focuses on the challenging new ideas behind the beam extraction and beam delivery, the proton beam dump, and the suppression of beam-induced background.
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8. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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The magnet of the scattering and neutrino detector for the SHiP experiment at CERN
- 2020
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In: Journal of Instrumentation. - 1748-0221. ; 15:01
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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9. |
- Ahdida, C., et al.
(author)
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The SHiP experiment at the proposed CERN SPS Beam Dump Facility
- 2022
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In: European Physical Journal C. - : Springer Nature. - 1434-6044 .- 1434-6052. ; 82:5
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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10. |
- Abdalla, H., et al.
(author)
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Sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array for probing cosmology and fundamental physics with gamma-ray propagation
- 2021
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In: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 1475-7516. ; :2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), the new-generation ground-based observatory for gamma-ray astronomy, provides unique capabilities to address significant open questions in astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. We study some of the salient areas of gamma-ray cosmology that can be explored as part of the Key Science Projects of CTA, through simulated observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and of their relativistic jets. Observations of AGN with CTA will enable a measurement of gamma-ray absorption on the extragalactic background light with a statistical uncertainty below 15% up to a redshift z = 2 and to constrain or detect gamma-ray halos up to intergalactic-magnetic-field strengths of at least 0.3 pG. Extragalactic observations with CTA also show promising potential to probe physics beyond the Standard Model. The best limits on Lorentz invariance violation from gamma-ray astronomy will be improved by a factor of at least two to three. CTA will also probe the parameter space in which axion-like particles could constitute a significant fraction, if not all, of dark matter. We conclude on the synergies between CTA and other upcoming facilities that will foster the growth of gamma-ray cosmology.
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11. |
- Milstead, David A., et al.
(author)
-
The active muon shield in the SHiP experiment
- 2017
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In: Journal of Instrumentation. - 1748-0221. ; 12
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The SHiP experiment is designed 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. An essential task for the experiment is to keep the Standard Model background level to less than 0.1 event after 2 x 10(20) protons on target. In the beam dump, around 10(11) muons will be produced per second. The muon rate in the spectrometer has to be reduced by at least four orders of magnitude to avoid muon-induced combinatorial background. A novel active muon shield is used to magnetically deflect the muons out of the acceptance of the spectrometer. This paper describes the basic principle of such a shield, its optimization and its performance.
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12. |
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13. |
- Dareng, EO, et al.
(author)
-
Polygenic risk modeling for prediction of epithelial ovarian cancer risk
- 2022
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In: European journal of human genetics : EJHG. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-5438 .- 1018-4813. ; 30:3, s. 349-362
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have the potential to improve risk stratification. Joint estimation of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) effects in models could improve predictive performance over standard approaches of PRS construction. Here, we implemented computationally efficient, penalized, logistic regression models (lasso, elastic net, stepwise) to individual level genotype data and a Bayesian framework with continuous shrinkage, “select and shrink for summary statistics” (S4), to summary level data for epithelial non-mucinous ovarian cancer risk prediction. We developed the models in a dataset consisting of 23,564 non-mucinous EOC cases and 40,138 controls participating in the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC) and validated the best models in three populations of different ancestries: prospective data from 198,101 women of European ancestries; 7,669 women of East Asian ancestries; 1,072 women of African ancestries, and in 18,915 BRCA1 and 12,337 BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers of European ancestries. In the external validation data, the model with the strongest association for non-mucinous EOC risk derived from the OCAC model development data was the S4 model (27,240 SNPs) with odds ratios (OR) of 1.38 (95% CI: 1.28–1.48, AUC: 0.588) per unit standard deviation, in women of European ancestries; 1.14 (95% CI: 1.08–1.19, AUC: 0.538) in women of East Asian ancestries; 1.38 (95% CI: 1.21–1.58, AUC: 0.593) in women of African ancestries; hazard ratios of 1.36 (95% CI: 1.29–1.43, AUC: 0.592) in BRCA1 pathogenic variant carriers and 1.49 (95% CI: 1.35–1.64, AUC: 0.624) in BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers. Incorporation of the S4 PRS in risk prediction models for ovarian cancer may have clinical utility in ovarian cancer prevention programs.
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14. |
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15. |
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