Z boson production in Pb+Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV measured by the ATLAS experiment

Physics Letters B Elsevier 802 (2020)

Authors:

G Aad, B Abbott, DC Abbott, A Abed Abud, K Abeling, DK Abhayasinghe, SH Abidi, OS AbouZeid, NL Abraham, H Abramowicz, H Abreu, Y Abulaiti, BS Acharya, B Achkar, S Adachi, L Adam, C Adam Bourdarios, L Adamczyk, L Adamek, J Adelman, M Adersberger, A Adiguzel, S Adorni, T Adye, AA Affolder, Y Afik, C Agapopoulou, MN Agaras, A Aggarwal, C Agheorghiesei, JA Aguilar-Saavedra, F Ahmadov, WS Ahmed, X Ai, G Aielli, S Akatsuka, TPA Åkesson, E Akilli, AV Akimov, K Al Khoury, GL Alberghi, J Albert, MJ Alconada Verzini, S Alderweireldt, M Aleksa, IN Aleksandrov, C Alexa, D Alexandre, Richard Nickerson, Et al.

Abstract:

The production yield of Z bosons is measured in the electron and muon decay channels in Pb+Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Data from the 2015 LHC run corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.49 nb−1 are used for the analysis. The Z boson yield, normalised by the total number of minimum-bias events and the mean nuclear thickness function, is measured as a function of dilepton rapidity and event centrality. The measurements in Pb+Pb collisions are compared with similar measurements made in proton–proton collisions at the same centre-of-mass energy. The nuclear modification factor is found to be consistent with unity for all centrality intervals. The results are compared with theoretical predictions obtained at next-to-leading order using nucleon and nuclear parton distribution functions. The normalised Z boson yields in Pb+Pb collisions lie 1–3σ above the predictions. The nuclear modification factor measured as a function of rapidity agrees with unity and is consistent with a next-to-leading-order QCD calculation including the isospin effect

The lowest of the low: discovery of SN 2019gsc and the nature of faint Iax supernovae

(2020)

Authors:

Shubham Srivastav, Stephen J Smartt, Giorgos Leloudas, Mark E Huber, Ken Chambers, Daniele B Malesani, Jens Hjorth, James H Gillanders, A Schultz, Stuart A Sim, Katie Auchettl, Johan PU Fynbo, Christa Gall, Owen R McBrien, Armin Rest, Ken W Smith, Radoslaw Wojtak, David R Young

Updated Design of the CMB Polarization Experiment Satellite LiteBIRD

JOURNAL OF LOW TEMPERATURE PHYSICS Springer Science and Business Media LLC 199:3-4 (2020) 1107-1117

Authors:

H Sugai, Par Ade, Y Akiba, D Alonso, K Arnold, J Aumont, J Austermann, C Baccigalupi, Aj Banday, R Banerji, Rb Barreiro, S Basak, J Beall, S Beckman, M Bersanelli, J Borrill, F Boulanger, Ml Brown, M Bucher, A Buzzelli, E Calabrese, Fj Casas, A Challinor, J-F Cliche, F Columbro

Abstract:

© 2020, The Author(s). Recent developments of transition-edge sensors (TESs), based on extensive experience in ground-based experiments, have been making the sensor techniques mature enough for their application on future satellite cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments. LiteBIRD is in the most advanced phase among such future satellites, targeting its launch in Japanese Fiscal Year 2027 (2027FY) with JAXA’s H3 rocket. It will accommodate more than 4000 TESs in focal planes of reflective low-frequency and refractive medium-and-high-frequency telescopes in order to detect a signature imprinted on the CMB by the primordial gravitational waves predicted in cosmic inflation. The total wide frequency coverage between 34 and 448 GHz enables us to extract such weak spiral polarization patterns through the precise subtraction of our Galaxy’s foreground emission by using spectral differences among CMB and foreground signals. Telescopes are cooled down to 5 K for suppressing thermal noise and contain polarization modulators with transmissive half-wave plates at individual apertures for separating sky polarization signals from artificial polarization and for mitigating from instrumental 1/f noise. Passive cooling by using V-grooves supports active cooling with mechanical coolers as well as adiabatic demagnetization refrigerators. Sky observations from the second Sun–Earth Lagrangian point, L2, are planned for 3 years. An international collaboration between Japan, the USA, Canada, and Europe is sharing various roles. In May 2019, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA, selected LiteBIRD as the strategic large mission No. 2.

A spectroscopic, photometric, polarimetric and radio study of the eclipsing polar UZ Fornacis: the first simultaneous SALT and MeerKAT observations

(2020)

Authors:

Zwidofhelangani N Khangale, Stephen B Potter, Patrick A Woudt, David AH Buckley, Andrey N Semena, Enrico J Kotze, Danièl N Groenewald, Dante M Hewitt, Margaretha L Pretorius, Rob P Fender, Paul Groot, Steven Bloemen, Marc Klein-Wolt, Elmar Körding, Rudolf Le Poole, Vanessa A McBride, Lee Townsend, Kerry Paterson, Danielle LA Pieterse, Paul M Vreeswijk

The optically-selected 1.4-GHz quasar luminosity function below 1 mJy

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 492:4 (2020) 5297-5312

Authors:

Eliab Malefahlo, Mario G Santos, Matthew Jarvis, Sarah V White, Jonathan TL Zwart

Abstract:

We present the radio luminosity function (RLF) of optically selected quasars below 1 mJy, constructed by applying a Bayesian-fitting stacking technique to objects well below the nominal radio flux density limit. We test the technique using simulated data, confirming that we can reconstruct the RLF over three orders of magnitude below the typical 5σ detection threshold. We apply our method to 1.4-GHz flux densities from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters (FIRST) survey, extracted at the positions of optical quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey over seven redshift bins up to z = 2.15, and measure the RLF down to two orders of magnitude below the FIRST detection threshold. In the lowest redshift bin (0.2 < z < 0.45), we find that our measured RLF agrees well with deeper data from the literature. The RLF for the radio-loud quasars flattens below log10[L1.4/WHz−1]≈25.5 and becomes steeper again below log10[L1.4/WHz−1]≈24.8⁠, where radio-quiet quasars start to emerge. The radio luminosity where radio-quiet quasars emerge coincides with the luminosity where star-forming galaxies are expected to start dominating the radio source counts. This implies that there could be a significant contribution from star formation in the host galaxies, but additional data are required to investigate this further. The higher redshift bins show a similar behaviour to the lowest z bin, implying that the same physical process may be responsible.