293 research outputs found

    Integrated Program on Accelerator Neutrino Experiments in Europe

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    Tioukov, V.. (2009). Integrated Program on Accelerator Neutrino Experiments in Europe. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/52767

    Charge measurement with nuclear emulsions spectrometers for hadron therapy fragmentation cross section measurements with the FOOT experiment

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    Experimental data concerning projectile and target fragmentation is limited, increasing the uncertainty on the dose in the entrance channel in particle therapy treatments. The FOOT experiment measures nuclear fragmentation cross sections with two complementary detectors. The performance of the FOOT nuclear emulsion detectors in identifying the charge of nuclear fragments has recently been studied using 16O beams at 200 and 400 MeV/n, directed at carbon and polyethylene targets. This work extends the previous analysis, comparing experimental data and FLUKA Monte Carlo predictions, focusing on the angular distribution and relative abundances of fragments with Z<=5 originating from the interactions of a 400 MeV/n oxygen beam with a carbon target

    Directionality preservation of nuclear recoils in an emulsion detector for directional dark matter search

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    Nuclear emulsion is a well-known detector type proposed also for the directional detection of dark matter. In this paper, we study one of the most important properties of direction-sensitive detectors: the preservation by nuclear recoils of the direction of impinging dark matter particles. For nuclear emulsion detectors, it is the first detailed study where a realistic nuclear recoil energy distribution with all possible recoil atom types is exploited. Moreover, for the first time we study the granularity effect on the emulsion detector directional performance. As well as we compare nuclear emulsion with other directional detectors: in terms of direction preservation nuclear emulsion outperforms the other detectors for WIMP masses above 100 GeV/c2

    From dark matter searches to proton therapy: Measuring target fragmentation with nanometric nuclear emulsions

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    The DAMON (Direct meAsureMent of target fragmentatiON) project aims to explore the use of Nano Imaging Trackers (NITs) for the first direct measurement of target fragmentation caused by proton beams in cancer treatment. NITs are fine-grained nuclear emulsion films that offer a spatial resolution at the nanometric scale. DAMON’s pilot test exposed a NIT-based detector to 211 MeV protons, paving the way for the first study of target fragmentation in direct kinematics. In this paper the preliminary results regarding the multiplicity of the fragments and their track lengths are reported

    A new generation scanning system for the high-speed analysis of nuclear emulsions

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    The development of automatic scanning systems was a fundamental issue for large scale neutrino detectors exploiting nuclear emulsions as particle trackers. Such systems speed up significantly the event analysis in emulsion, allowing the feasibility of experiments with unprecedented statistics. In the early 1990s, R&D programs were carried out by Japanese and European laboratories leading to automatic scanning systems more and more efficient. The recent progress in the technology of digital signal processing and of image acquisition allows the fulfillment of new systems with higher performances. In this paper we report the description and the performance of a new generation scanning system able to operate at the record speed of 84 cm2/hour and based on the Large Angle Scanning System for OPERA (LASSO) software infrastructure developed by the Naples scanning group. Such improvement, reduces the scanning time by a factor 4 with respect to the available systems, allowing the readout of huge amount of nuclear emulsions in reasonable time. This opens new perspectives for the employment of such detectors in a wider variety of applications

    Environmental sub-MeV neutron measurement at the Gran Sasso surface laboratory with a super-fine-grained nuclear emulsion detector

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    The measurement of environmental neutrons is particularly important in the search for new physics, such as dark matter particles, because neutrons constitute an often-irreducible background source. The measurement of the neutron energy spectra in the sub-MeV scale is technically difficult because it requires a very good energy resolution and a very high γ\gamma-ray rejection power. In this study, we used a super-fine-grained nuclear emulsion, called Nano Imaging Tracker (NIT), as a neutron detector. The main target of neutrons is the hydrogen (proton) content of emulsion films. Through a topological analysis, proton recoils induced by neutron scattering can be detected as tracks with sub-micrometric accuracy. This method shows an extremely high γ\gamma-ray rejection power, at the level of 5×107 γ/cm25 \times 10^7 ~ \gamma/\rm{cm}^2, which is equivalent to 5 years accumulation of environmental γ\gamma-rays, and a very good energy and direction resolution even in the sub-MeV energy region. In order to carry out this measurement with sufficient statistics, we upgraded the automated scanning system to achieve a speed of 250 g/year/machine. We calibrated the detector performance of this system with 880 keV monochromatic neutrons: a very good agreement with the expectation was found for all the relevant kinematic variables. The application of the developed method to a sample exposed at the INFN Gran Sasso surface laboratory provided the first measurement of sub-MeV environmental neutrons with a flux of (7.6±1.7)×103cm2s1(7.6 \pm 1.7) \times 10^{-3} \rm{cm}^{-2} \rm{s}^{-1} in the proton energy range between 0.25 and 1 MeV (corresponds to neutron energy range between 0.25 and 10 MeV), consistent with the prediction. The neutron energy and direction distributions also show a good agreement.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figure
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