Search for anomalous and exotic cosmic rays phenomena in the CMS experiment on the CASTOR calorimeter at the large hadron collider

The creation of the CASTOR forward calorimeter in the compact muon spectrometer (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN enabled us to perform experiments at energies corresponding to those of cosmic rays but at much greater intensities, the most important factor in studying rare and anomalous phenomena.     

Autoresonant excitation of antiproton plasmas

We demonstrate controllable excitation of the center-of-mass longitudinal motion of a thermal antiproton plasma using a swept-frequency autoresonant drive. When the plasma is cold, dense, and highly collective in nature, we observe that the entire system behaves as a single-particle nonlinear oscillator, as predicted by a recent theory. In contrast, only a fraction of the antiprotons in a warm plasma can be similarly excited. Antihydrogen was produced and trapped by using this technique to drive antiprotons into a positron plasma, thereby initiating atomic recombination.     

Adiabatic cooling of antiprotons

Adiabatic cooling is shown to be a simple and effective method to cool many charged particles in a trap to very low temperatures. Up to 3×10(6) p are cooled to 3.5 K-10(3) times more cold p and a 3 times lower p temperature than previously reported. A second cooling method cools p plasmas via the synchrotron radiation of embedded e(-) (with many fewer e(-) than p in preparation for adiabatic cooling. No p are lost during either process-a significant advantage for rare particles.     

Dark matter results from 100 live days of XENON100 data

We present results from the direct search for dark matter with the XENON100 detector, installed underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of INFN, Italy. XENON100 is a two-phase time-projection chamber with a 62 kg liquid xenon target. Interaction vertex reconstruction in three dimensions with millimeter precision allows the selection of only the innermost 48 kg as the ultralow background fiducial target. In 100.9 live days of data, acquired between January and June 2010, no evidence for dark matter is found. Three candidate events were observed in the signal region with an expected background of (1.8 ± 0.6) events. This leads to the most stringent limit on dark matter interactions today, excluding spin-independent elastic weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) nucleon scattering cross sections above 7.0 × 10(-45) cm(2) for a WIMP mass of 50 GeV/c(2) at 90% confidence level.     

Investigation of double-beta decay with the NEMO-3 detector

The double-beta-decay experiment NEMO-3 has been taking data since February 2003. The aim of this experiment is to search for neutrinoless (0 νββ) decay and investigate two neutrino doublebeta decay in seven different isotopically enriched samples (¹⁰⁰Mo, ⁸²Se, ⁴⁸Ca, ⁹⁶Zr, ¹¹⁶Cd, ¹³⁰Te, and ¹⁵⁰Nd). After analysis of the data corresponding to 3.75 yr, no evidence for 0 νββ decay in the 100Mo and 82Se samples was found. The half-life limits at the 90% C.L. are 1.1 × 10²⁴ and 3.6 × 10²³ yr, respectively. Additionally for 0 νββ decay the following limits at the 90% C.L. were obtained, >1.3 × 10²² yr for ⁴⁸Ca, >9.2 × 10²¹ yr for ⁹⁶Zr, and >1.8 × 10²² yr for 150Nd. The 2 νββ decay half-life values were precisely measured for all investigated isotopes.     

Recent results on the spin structure of the nucleon

The process of polarised deep inelastic scattering and the information it has given on the spin structure of the nucleon are introduced. The experimental programmes in this field are described and the latest inclusive and semi-inclusive data and analyses are reviewed. Proposed future measurements are summarised.     

Microscopical studies at cadmium impurities in compound semiconductors

Molecule-like defect complexes have been studied at Cd acceptors in the III–V semiconductors GaAs, GaP, InP, InAs, and InSb by PAC spectroscopy. After hydrogen plasma treatment, the formation of Cd-H complexes was observed in all these compounds. Additionally, the formation and stability of Cd-S and Cd-Se pairs in GaAs have been analyzed.     

Search for D+→φl+ν and measurement of the branching fraction for D+→φπ+

Using a data sample of integrated luminosity of about 33 pb^-1 collected around 3.773 GeV with the BESII detector at the BEPC collider, the semileptonic decays D⁺→φe⁺ν_e, D⁺→φμ⁺ν_μ and the hadronic decay D⁺→φπ⁺ are studied. The upper limits of the branching fractions are set to be BF(D⁺→φe⁺ν_e)<2.01% and BF(D⁺→φμ⁺ν_μ)<2.04% at the 90% confidence level. The ratio of the branching fractions for D⁺→φπ⁺ relative to D⁺→K^-π⁺π⁺ is measured to be 0.057±0.011±0.003. In addition, the branching fraction for D⁺→φπ⁺ is obtained to be (5.2±1.0±0.4)×10^-3.