Astronomical instrumentation

Abstract:

Inclusive jet and dijet cross sections have been measured in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The cross sections were measured using jets clustered with the anti-kt algorithm with parameters R=0.4 and R=0.6. These measurements are based on the 2010 data sample, consisting of a total integrated luminosity of 37pb-1. Inclusive jet double-differential cross sections are presented as a function of jet transverse momentum, in bins of jet rapidity. Dijet double-differential cross sections are studied as a function of the dijet invariant mass, in bins of half the rapidity separation of the two leading jets. The measurements are performed in the jet rapidity range |y|<4.4, covering jet transverse momenta from 20 GeV to 1.5 TeV and dijet invariant masses from 70 GeV to 5 TeV. The data are compared to expectations based on next-to-leading-order QCD calculations corrected for nonperturbative effects, as well as to next-to-leading-order Monte Carlo predictions. In addition to a test of the theory in a new kinematic regime, the data also provide sensitivity to parton distribution functions in a region where they are currently not well-constrained. © 2012 CERN. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 3.0/ Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Abstract:

The Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET) is designed to measure polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background, targeting the imprint of inflationary gravitational waves at large angular scales (~ 1 degree). Between 2008 October and 2010 December, two independent receiver arrays were deployed sequentially on a 1.4 m side-fed Dragonian telescope. The polarimeters which form the focal planes use a highly compact design based on High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) that provides simultaneous measurements of the Stokes parameters Q, U, and I in a single module. The 17-element Q-band polarimeter array, with a central frequency of 43.1 GHz, has the best sensitivity (69 uK sqrt(s)) and the lowest instrumental systematic errors ever achieved in this band, contributing to the tensor-to-scalar ratio at r < 0.1. The 84-element W-band polarimeter array has a sensitivity of 87 uK sqrt(s) at a central frequency of 94.5 GHz. It has the lowest systematic errors to date, contributing at r < 0.01. The two arrays together cover multipoles in the range l= 25-975. These are the largest HEMT-based arrays deployed to date. This article describes the design, calibration, performance of, and sources of systematic error for the instrument.