Recent results obtained by the HARP collaboration on the measurements of the double-differential production cross-section of positive and negative pions in proton interactions with nuclear targets from Beryllium to Lead are presented. They cover production at small angles (30-210 mrad) and relatively large momenta up to 8 GeV/c as well as large angles (0.35 - 2.15 rad) and small momenta (0.1 - 0.8 GeV/c). These results are relevant for a detailed understanding of neutrino fluxes in accelerator neutrino experiments, better prediction of atmospheric neutrino fluxes, optimization of a future neutrino factory design and for improvement of hadronic generators widely used by the HEP community in the simulation of hadronic interactions.
The HARP Collaboration recently published calibrations of their TPC and RPC detectors, and differential cross-sections of large-angle pion production in proton-nucleus collisions. We argue that these calibrations are biased and cross-sections based on them should not be trusted.
We report on the comparison of production characteristics of secondary protons and charged pions in the interactions of protons and charged pions with momentum between 3 GeV/c and 15 GeV/c with beryllium, copper, and tantalum nuclei, with simulations by the FLUKA and Geant4 Monte Carlo tool kits. Overall production cross-sections are reasonably well reproduced, within factors of two. In more detail, there are areas with poor agreement that are unsatisfactory and call for modelling improvements. Overall, the current FLUKA simulation fares better than the current Geant4 simulation.
Hadron generation in the Geant4 simulation tool kit is compared with inclusive spectra of secondary protons and pions from the interactions with beryllium nuclei of +8.9 GeV/c protons and pions, and of -8.0 GeV/c pions. The data were taken in 2002 at the CERN Proton Synchrotron with the HARP spectrometer. We report on significant disagreements between data and simulated data especially in the polar-angle distributions of secondary protons and pions.
We compare calculations for the production of charged pions by pion or proton beams off nuclei calculated within our coupled channel transport model (GiBUU) with recent data of the HARP collaboration for beam energies from 3 up to 13 GeV. Predictions for the 30 GeV data for pions and kaons from the NA61/SHINE experiment are included.
Classification of gamma-hadron families, registered by the Pamir collaboration, on four groups of nuclei (P, He, middle and heavy), responsible for their generation, is made, and fractions of families in each of the groups are estimated. Results show, that below the knee of the energy spectrum the chemical composition of primary cosmic rays remains close to the normal one.
Precise measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters and of neutrino-nucleon cross-sections require a good understanding of neutrino beams: flux as a function of energy, transverse beam profile, and flavour composition. For this, hadron production spectra in proton-nucleus collisions are essential. We report on double-differential inclusive large-angle cross-sections of the production of secondary protons and charged pions, in the interactions with a 5% lambda thick stationary beryllium target, of proton and pion beams with momentum from 3 GeV/c to 15 GeV/c. Our results show cross-sections …
It is shown that the Geant4 FTF model, which does not include the simulation of the hard parton-parton scattering and the formation of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), describes well the NA61/SHINE data on $π^-$ meson distributions for the interactions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 5.2, 6.1, 7.6 and 8.8 GeV. At higher energies, $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 11.9 and 16.8 GeV, the model underestimates the data. This is considered as an indication of the formation of QGP at higher energies in central collisions of light and intermediate nuclei than in collisions of heavy nuclei ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}\sim 6$ GeV).
Cross section ratios for deep-inelastic scattering from $^3$He, $^{14}$N and $^{84}$Kr with respect to $^2$H have been measured by the HERMES collaboration at DESY using a 27.5 GeV positron beam. The data cover a range in the Bjorken scaling variable $x$ between 0.010 and 0.65, the negative squared four-momentum transfer $Q^2$ varies from 0.5 to 15 GeV$^2$, while at small values of $x$ and $Q^2$, the virtual photon polarisation parameter $ε$ extends to lower values than previous measurements. From the dependence of the data on $ε$, values for $R_A/R_D$ with $R$ the ratio $σ_L / σ_T$ of longitu…
Using the framework of collinear factorization in perturbative QCD (pQCD), we analyze the recent data of the LHCb and ALICE collaborations on exclusive photoproduction of J/ψ in ultraperipheral pp and AA collisions, respectively. We demonstrate that the simultaneous analysis of the proton and Pb data allows us to reduce the ambiguity of the pQCD description of the $γp \to J/ψp$ and $γA \to J/ψp$ cross sections and, hence, to place additional constraints on the gluon distributions in the nucleon and nuclei at small x. We also make predictions for the cross section of coherent exclusive photopro…
Creations of light anti-nuclei (anti-deuterium, anti-tritium, anti-He3 and anti-He4) are observed by collaborations at the LHC and RHIC accelerators. Some cosmic ray experiments are aimed to find the anti-nuclei in cosmic rays. To support the experimental studies of the anti-nuclei a Monte Carlo simulation of anti-nuclei interactions with matter is implemented in the Geant4 toolkit. The implementation combines practically all known theoretical approaches to the problem of antinucleon-nucleon interactions.
The HARP collaboration has presented measurements of the double-differential pi+/pi- production cross-section in the range of momentum 100 MeV/c <= p 800 MeV/c and angle 0.35 rad <= theta <= 2.15 rad with proton beams hitting thin nuclear targets. In many applications the extrapolation to long targets is necessary. In this paper the analysis of data taken with long (one interaction length) solid cylindrical targets made of carbon, tantalum and lead is presented. The data were taken with the large acceptance HARP detector in the T9 beam line of the CERN PS. The secondary pions were produced by …
Results from the PHENIX Collaboration on the production of deuterons and anti-deuterons in collisions between gold nuclei at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 200 GeV are presented.
The MINERvA collaboration is currently engaged in a broad program of neutrino-nucleus interaction measurements. Several recent measurements of interest to the accelerator-based oscillation community are presented. These include measurements of quasi-elastic scattering, diffractive pion production, kaon production and comparisons of interaction cross sections across nuclei. A new measurement of the NuMI neutrino beam flux that incorporates both external hadro-production data and MINERvA detector data is also presented.
We study the incoherent neutrinoproduction of photons and pions with neutrino energy E_ν $\leqslant$ 0.5 GeV. These processes are relevant to the background analysis in neutrino-oscillation experiments, for example MiniBooNE [A. A. Aquilar-Arevalo \textit{et al.} (MiniBooNE Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 032301(2008)]. The calculations are carried out using a Lorentz-covariant effective field theory (EFT) which contains nucleons, pions, the Delta (1232) ($Δ$ s), isoscalar scalar ($σ$) and vector ($ω$) fields, and isovector vector ($ρ$) fields, and has SU(2)_{L} $\otimes$ SU(2)_{R} chira…
Vector mesons are copiously produced in ultra-peripheral nucleus-nucleus collisions. In these collisions, the nuclei are separated by impact parameters larger than the sum of the nuclear radii, and the interaction is mediated by the electromagnetic field. The interaction effectively corresponds to a photonuclear interaction between a photon, generated from the electromagnetic field of one of the nuclei, and the target nucleus. The ALICE Collaboration has previously published results on exclusive J/psi photoproduction at mid and forward rapidities in Pb-Pb collisions. The cross section for this…
A phenomenological analysis of diffractive dissociation of nuclei in proton-nucleus and meson-nucleus collisions is presented. The theoretical approach employed here is able to take into account at once data of the HELIOS and EHS/NA22 collaborations that exhibit quite different atomic mass dependences. Possible extensions of this approach to hard diffraction in nuclear processes are also discussed.
Neutrino-induced productions (neutrinoproduction) of photons and pions from nucleons and nuclei are important for the interpretation of neutrino-oscillation experiments, as they are potential backgrounds in the MiniBooNE experiment [A. A. Aquilar-Arevalo et al. (MiniBooNE Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 100}, 032301 (2008)]. These processes are studied at intermediate energies, where the Δ(1232) resonance becomes important. The Lorentz-covariant effective field theory, which is the framework used in this series of study, contains nucleons, pions, Δs, isoscalar scalar (σ) and vector (ω) f…
The STAR collaboration reports the first observation of exclusive rho^0 photo-production, AuAu->AuAu rho^0, and rho^0 production accompanied by mutual nuclear Coulomb excitation, AuAu->Au*Au*rho^0, in ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions. The rho^0 have low transverse momenta, consistent with coherent coupling to both nuclei. The cross sections at sqrt(s_NN)=130GeV agree with theoretical predictions treating rho^0 production and Coulomb excitation as independent processes.
The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) Collaboration has shown that the CERN SPS accelerator with its 400 $\mathrm{\small GeV/c}$ proton beam offers a unique opportunity to explore the Hidden Sector. 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…
