124545258
The Borexino experiment: Test of the purification systems and data analysis in the counting test facility
The work I carried out in the last three years was focused on the development and test of purification systems and data analysis techniques for the Borexino experiment, a detector specifically designed for low energy neutrino spectroscopy. I participated to the study of the adsorption technique based on activated carbons for removing krypton from nitrogen and to the investigation of the purity of nitrogen available on the market. I analyzed the data from the third campaign of the Borexino prototype detector, the Counting Test Facility (CTF), to identify each contamination source in the scintillator and to evaluate the efficiency of the purification system. 11C represents the main background source in the CNO and pep neutrino energy range. I investigated on the possibility to apply the three-fold coincidence technique with the parent muon track and the subsequent neutron capture on protons in Borexino in order to tag and remove 11C nuclides on a one-by-one basis. Furthermore, I implemented and tested such technique on the CTF data.
121999403
Recent results and future development of Borexino
Abstract This paper summarizes the main recent results of the Borexino experiment, a liquid scintillator neutrino detector of unprecedented radiopurity currently running at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. Particularly, the paper is focused on the precision measurement of the 7Be solar neutrino flux, on the search of its day–night modulation, and on the first detection of pep neutrinos. The paper also covers a recent measurement of the CNGS neutrinos speed made in May 2012. A short discussion about the forthcoming scientific program on solar neutrinos, geoneutrinos, and sterile neutrino searches is included at the end.
117791829
Study of Solar and Geo-Neutrinos with the BOREXINO Detector
55822151
Measurement of geo-neutrinos from 1353 days of Borexino
Abstract We present a measurement of the geo-neutrino signal obtained from 1353 days of data with the Borexino detector at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. With a fiducial exposure of ( 3.69 ± 0.16 ) × 10 31 proton × year after all selection cuts and background subtraction, we detected ( 14.3 ± 4.4 ) geo-neutrino events assuming a fixed chondritic mass Th/U ratio of 3.9. This corresponds to a geo-neutrino signal S geo = ( 38.8 ± 12.0 ) TNU with just a 6 × 10 − 6 probability for a null geo-neutrino measurement. With U and Th left as free parameters in the fit, the relative signals are S Th = ( 10.6 ± 12.7 ) TNU and S U = ( 26.5 ± 19.5 ) TNU . Borexino data alone are compatible with a mantle geo-neutrino signal of ( 15.4 ± 12.3 ) TNU , while a combined analysis with the KamLAND data allows to extract a mantle signal of ( 14.1 ± 8.1 ) TNU . Our measurement of 31.2 − 6.1 + 7.0 reactor anti-neutrino events is in agreement with expectations in the presence of neutrino oscillations.
121886974
Measurement of the solar 8B neutrino rate with 3 MeV energy threshold in the Borexino detector
Borexino detector, at Gran Sasso Laboratories, measured ν–e elastic scattering from 8B solar neutrinos with 3 MeV energy threshold. We summarize here the results.
121396997
Measurement of CNGS muon neutrino speed with Borexino
Abstract We have measured the speed of muon neutrinos with the Borexino detector using short-bunch CNGS beams. The final result for the difference in time-of-flight between an 〈 E 〉 = 17 GeV muon neutrino and a particle moving at the speed of light in vacuum is δ t = 0.8 ± 0.7 stat ± 2.9 sys ns , well consistent with zero.
11290778
On the non-renormalization properties of gauge theories with a Chern-Simons term
Considering three-dimensional Chern-Simons theory, either coupled to matter or with a Yang-Mills term, we show the validity of a trace identity, playing the role of a local form of the Callan-Symanzik equation, in all orders of perturbation theory. From this we deduce the vanishing of the β-function associated to the Chern-Simons coupling constant and the full finiteness in the case of the Yang-Mills Chern-Simons theory. The main ingredient in the proof of the latter property is the noninvariance of the Chern-Simons form under the gauge transformations. Our results hold for the three-dimensional Chern-Simons model in a general Riemannian manifold.
18515650
Supersymmetric field theoretic models on a supermanifold
We propose the extension of some structural aspects that have successfully been applied in the development of the theory of quantum fields propagating on a general space–time manifold so as to include superfield models on a supermanifold. We only deal with the limited class of supermanifolds which admit the existence of a smooth body manifold structure. Our considerations are based on the Catenacci–Reina–Teofillatto–Bryant approach to supermanifolds. In particular, we show that the class of supermanifolds constructed by Bonora–Pasti–Tonin satisfies the criteria which guarantee that a supermanifold admits a Hausdorff body manifold. This construction is the closest to the physicist’s intuitive view of superspace as a manifold with some anticommuting coordinates, where the odd sector is topologically trivial. The paper also contains a new construction of superdistributions and useful results on the wavefront set of such objects. Moreover, a generalization of the spectral condition is formulated using the not...
120792860
Simple parametrizations of light meson properties in hot or dense matter
Abstract Sophisticated calculations of the dynamics of relativistic heavy-ion collisions often need as input properties of light mesons in medium. In this context simple analytical expressions for these quantities which respect chiral symmetry and low-energy current algebra results are most desirable. In the present work we provide such simple expressions based on a bosonized version of the microscopic NJL model. We also study the pion lifetime in hot and dense matter showing that the ratio τ(π − →μ − + ν μ ) τ(π − →e − + ν e ) changes by a factor about three and thus carries a clear signature of the chiral phase transition.
122211885
On the Renormalization of the Chiral Fermion Meson Model: An Algebraic Approach
We re-investigate the problem of the renormalizability of the chiral fermion meson model on the light of the regularization-independent algebraic method. The present letter is intended as a useful application of a modern technique in theory of current interest for the description of low energy hadron phenomenology. We show that the model is stable under radiative corrections and anomaly free in a regularization-free way without having to resort to the explicit calculation of Feynman diagrams.
17390975
A Uniqueness Theorem and Its Application to Field-Theoretical Models with a Fundamental Length
It is shown that if a distribution V of exponential growth has support in a proper convex cone and its Fourier transform is carried by a closed cone different from whole space, then V=0. The application of this result to a {\em quasi-local} quantum field theory (where the fields are localizable only in regions greater than a certain scale of nonlocality) is contemplated. In particular, we show that a number of physically important predictions of {\em local} quantum field theory also hold in a quantum field theory with a fundamental length, as indicated from string theory.