The Oxford SWIFT spectrograph: First commissioning and on-sky results

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering 7735:PART 1 (2010)

Authors:

N Thatte, M Tecza, F Clarke, T Goodsall, L Fogarty, R Houghton, G Salter, N Scott, RL Davies, A Bouchez, R Dekany

Abstract:

The Oxford SWIFT spectrograph, an I & z band (6500-10500 A) integral field spectrograph, is designed to operate as a facility instrument at the 200 inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain, in conjunction with the Palomar laser guide star adaptive optics system PALAO (and its upgrade to PALM3000). SWIFT provides spectra at R(≡λ/Δλ)∼4000 of a contiguous two-dimensional field, 44 x 89 spatial pixels (spaxels) in size, at spatial scales of 0.235″;, 0.16″, and 0.08″ per spaxel. It employs two 250μm thick, fully depleted, extremely red sensitive 4k X 2k CCD detector arrays (manufactured by LBNL) that provide excellent quantum efficiency out to 1000 nm. We describe the commissioning observations and present the measured values of a number of instrument parameters. We also present some first science results that give a taste of the range of science programs where SWIFT can have a substantial impact. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.

Updated search for the flavor-changing neutral-current decay D0→μ⊃+μ⊃- in pp̄ collisions at √s=1.96 TeV

Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology 82:9 (2010)

Authors:

T Aaltonen, B Álvarez González, S Amerio, D Amidei, A Anastassov, A Annovi, J Antos, G Apollinari, JA Appel, A Apresyan, T Arisawa, A Artikov, J Asaadi, W Ashmanskas, B Auerbach, A Aurisano, F Azfar, W Badgett, A Barbaro-Galtieri, VE Barnes, BA Barnett, P Barria, P Bartos, M Bauce, G Bauer, F Bedeschi, D Beecher, S Behari, G Bellettini, J Bellinger, D Benjamin, A Beretvas, A Bhatti, M Binkley, D Bisello, I Bizjak, KR Bland, C Blocker, B Blumenfeld, A Bocci, A Bodek, D Bortoletto, J Boudreau, A Boveia, B Brau, L Brigliadori, A Brisuda, C Bromberg, E Brucken, M Bucciantonio, J Budagov, HS Budd, S Budd, K Burkett, G Busetto, P Bussey, A Buzatu, S Cabrera, C Calancha, S Camarda, M Campanelli, M Campbell, F Canelli, A Canepa, B Carls, D Carlsmith, R Carosi, S Carrillo, S Carron, B Casal, M Casarsa, A Castro, P Catastini, D Cauz, V Cavaliere, M Cavalli-Sforza, A Cerri, L Cerrito, YC Chen, M Chertok, G Chiarelli, G Chlachidze, F Chlebana, K Cho, D Chokheli, JP Chou, WH Chung, YS Chung, CI Ciobanu, MA Ciocci, A Clark, D Clark, G Compostella, ME Convery, J Conway, M Corbo, M Cordelli, CA Cox, DJ Cox, F Crescioli

Abstract:

We report on a search for the flavor-changing neutral-current decay D0→μ⊃+μ⊃- in pp̄ collisions at √s=1.96TeV using 360pb⊃-1 of integrated luminosity collected by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. A displaced vertex trigger selects long-lived D0 candidates in the μ⊃+μ⊃-, π⊃+π⊃-, and K⊃-π⊃+ decay modes. We use the Cabibbo-favored D0→K⊃- π⊃+ channel to optimize the selection criteria in an unbiased manner, and the kinematically similar D0→π⊃+π⊃- channel for normalization. We set an upper limit on the branching fraction B(D0→μ⊃+μ⊃-)<2.1×10⊃-7(3.0×10⊃-7) at the 90% (95%) confidence level. © 2010 The American Physical Society.

Galaxy Zoo Supernovae

ArXiv 1011.2199 (2010)

Authors:

AM Smith, S Lynn, M Sullivan, CJ Lintott, PE Nugent, J Botyanszki, M Kasliwal, R Quimby, SP Bamford, LF Fortson, K Schawinski, I Hook, S Blake, P Podsiadlowski, J Joensson, A Gal-Yam, I Arcavi, DA Howell, JS Bloom, J Jacobsen, SR Kulkarni, NM Law, EO Ofek, R Walters

Abstract:

This paper presents the first results from a new citizen science project: Galaxy Zoo Supernovae. This proof of concept project uses members of the public to identify supernova candidates from the latest generation of wide-field imaging transient surveys. We describe the Galaxy Zoo Supernovae operations and scoring model, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel method using imaging data and transients from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). We examine the results collected over the period April-July 2010, during which nearly 14,000 supernova candidates from PTF were classified by more than 2,500 individuals within a few hours of data collection. We compare the transients selected by the citizen scientists to those identified by experienced PTF scanners, and find the agreement to be remarkable - Galaxy Zoo Supernovae performs comparably to the PTF scanners, and identified as transients 93% of the ~130 spectroscopically confirmed SNe that PTF located during the trial period (with no false positive identifications). Further analysis shows that only a small fraction of the lowest signal-to-noise SN detections (r > 19.5) are given low scores: Galaxy Zoo Supernovae correctly identifies all SNe with > 8{\sigma} detections in the PTF imaging data. The Galaxy Zoo Supernovae project has direct applicability to future transient searches such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, by both rapidly identifying candidate transient events, and via the training and improvement of existing machine classifier algorithms.

Search for R-parity violating decays of sneutrinos to eμ, μτ, and eτ pairs in pp collisions at square root s = 1.96 TeV.

Phys Rev Lett 105:19 (2010) 191801

Authors:

T Aaltonen, J Adelman, B Alvarez González, S Amerio, D Amidei, A Anastassov, A Annovi, J Antos, G Apollinari, J Appel, A Apresyan, T Arisawa, A Artikov, J Asaadi, W Ashmanskas, A Attal, A Aurisano, F Azfar, W Badgett, A Barbaro-Galtieri, VE Barnes, BA Barnett, P Barria, P Bartos, G Bauer, P-H Beauchemin, F Bedeschi, D Beecher, S Behari, G Bellettini, J Bellinger, D Benjamin, A Beretvas, A Bhatti, M Binkley, D Bisello, I Bizjak, RE Blair, C Blocker, B Blumenfeld, A Bocci, A Bodek, V Boisvert, D Bortoletto, J Boudreau, A Boveia, B Brau, A Bridgeman, L Brigliadori, C Bromberg, E Brubaker, J Budagov, HS Budd, S Budd, K Burkett, G Busetto, P Bussey, A Buzatu, KL Byrum, S Cabrera, C Calancha, S Camarda, M Campanelli, M Campbell, F Canelli, A Canepa, B Carls, D Carlsmith, R Carosi, S Carrillo, S Carron, B Casal, M Casarsa, A Castro, P Catastini, D Cauz, V Cavaliere, M Cavalli-Sforza, A Cerri, L Cerrito, SH Chang, YC Chen, M Chertok, G Chiarelli, G Chlachidze, F Chlebana, K Cho, D Chokheli, JP Chou, K Chung, WH Chung, YS Chung, T Chwalek, CI Ciobanu, MA Ciocci, A Clark, D Clark, G Compostella, ME Convery, J Conway, M Corbo, M Cordelli, CA Cox, DJ Cox, F Crescioli, C Cuenca Almenar, J Cuevas, R Culbertson, JC Cully, D Dagenhart, N d'Ascenzo, M Datta, T Davies, P de Barbaro, S De Cecco, A Deisher, G De Lorenzo, M Dell'Orso, C Deluca, L Demortier, J Deng, M Deninno, M d'Errico, A Di Canto, B Di Ruzza, JR Dittmann, M D'Onofrio, S Donati, P Dong, T Dorigo, S Dube, K Ebina, A Elagin, R Erbacher, D Errede, S Errede, N Ershaidat, R Eusebi, HC Fang, S Farrington, WT Fedorko, RG Feild, M Feindt, JP Fernandez, C Ferrazza, R Field, G Flanagan, R Forrest, MJ Frank, M Franklin, JC Freeman, I Furic, M Gallinaro, J Galyardt, F Garberson, JE Garcia, AF Garfinkel, P Garosi, H Gerberich, D Gerdes, A Gessler, S Giagu, V Giakoumopoulou, P Giannetti, K Gibson, JL Gimmell, CM Ginsburg, N Giokaris, M Giordani, P Giromini, M Giunta, G Giurgiu, V Glagolev, D Glenzinski, M Gold, N Goldschmidt, A Golossanov, G Gomez, G Gomez-Ceballos, M Goncharov, O González, I Gorelov, AT Goshaw, K Goulianos, A Gresele, S Grinstein, C Grosso-Pilcher, RC Group, U Grundler, J Guimaraes da Costa, Z Gunay-Unalan, C Haber, SR Hahn, E Halkiadakis, B-Y Han, JY Han, F Happacher, K Hara, D Hare, M Hare, RF Harr, M Hartz, K Hatakeyama, C Hays, M Heck, J Heinrich, M Herndon, J Heuser, S Hewamanage, D Hidas, CS Hill, D Hirschbuehl, A Hocker, S Hou, M Houlden, S-C Hsu, RE Hughes, M Hurwitz, U Husemann, M Hussein, J Huston, J Incandela, G Introzzi, M Iori, A Ivanov, E James, D Jang, B Jayatilaka, EJ Jeon, MK Jha, S Jindariani, W Johnson, M Jones, KK Joo, SY Jun, JE Jung, TR Junk, T Kamon, D Kar, PE Karchin, Y Kato, R Kephart, W Ketchum, J Keung, V Khotilovich, B Kilminster, DH Kim, HS Kim, HW Kim, JE Kim, MJ Kim, SB Kim, SH Kim, YK Kim, N Kimura, L Kirsch, S Klimenko, BR Ko, K Kondo, DJ Kong, J Konigsberg, A Korytov, AV Kotwal, M Kreps, J Kroll, D Krop, N Krumnack, M Kruse, V Krutelyov, T Kuhr, NP Kulkarni, M Kurata, S Kwang, AT Laasanen, S Lami, S Lammel, M Lancaster, RL Lander, K Lannon, A Lath, G Latino, I Lazzizzera, T LeCompte, E Lee, HS Lee, JS Lee, SW Lee, S Leone, JD Lewis, C-J Lin, J Linacre, M Lindgren, E Lipeles, A Lister, DO Litvintsev, C Liu, T Liu, NS Lockyer, A Loginov, L Lovas, D Lucchesi, J Lueck, P Lujan, P Lukens, G Lungu, J Lys, R Lysak, D MacQueen, R Madrak, K Maeshima, K Makhoul, P Maksimovic, S Malde, S Malik, G Manca, A Manousakis-Katsikakis, F Margaroli, C Marino, CP Marino, A Martin, V Martin, M Martínez, R Martínez-Ballarín, P Mastrandrea, M Mathis, ME Mattson, P Mazzanti, KS McFarland, P McIntyre, R McNulty, A Mehta, P Mehtala, A Menzione, C Mesropian, T Miao, D Mietlicki, N Miladinovic, R Miller, C Mills, M Milnik, A Mitra, G Mitselmakher, H Miyake, S Moed, N Moggi, MN Mondragon, CS Moon, R Moore, MJ Morello, J Morlock, P Movilla Fernandez, J Mülmenstädt, A Mukherjee, Th Muller, P Murat, M Mussini, J Nachtman, Y Nagai, J Naganoma, K Nakamura, I Nakano, A Napier, J Nett, C Neu, MS Neubauer, S Neubauer, J Nielsen, L Nodulman, M Norman, O Norniella, E Nurse, L Oakes, SH Oh, YD Oh, I Oksuzian, T Okusawa, R Orava, K Osterberg, S Pagan Griso, C Pagliarone, E Palencia, V Papadimitriou, A Papaikonomou, AA Paramanov, B Parks, S Pashapour, J Patrick, G Pauletta, M Paulini, C Paus, T Peiffer, DE Pellett, A Penzo, TJ Phillips, G Piacentino, E Pianori, L Pinera, K Pitts, C Plager, L Pondrom, K Potamianos, O Poukhov, F Prokoshin, A Pronko, F Ptohos, E Pueschel, G Punzi, J Pursley, J Rademacker, A Rahaman, V Ramakrishnan, N Ranjan, I Redondo, P Renton, M Renz, M Rescigno, S Richter, F Rimondi, L Ristori, A Robson, T Rodrigo, T Rodriguez, E Rogers, S Rolli, R Roser, M Rossi, R Rossin, P Roy, A Ruiz, J Russ, V Rusu, B Rutherford, H Saarikko, A Safonov, WK Sakumoto, L Santi, L Sartori, K Sato, V Saveliev, A Savoy-Navarro, P Schlabach, A Schmidt, EE Schmidt, MA Schmidt, MP Schmidt, M Schmitt, T Schwarz, L Scodellaro, A Scribano, F Scuri, A Sedov, S Seidel, Y Seiya, A Semenov, L Sexton-Kennedy, F Sforza, A Sfyrla, SZ Shalhout, T Shears, PF Shepard, M Shimojima, S Shiraishi, M Shochet, Y Shon, I Shreyber, A Simonenko, P Sinervo, A Sisakyan, AJ Slaughter, J Slaunwhite, K Sliwa, JR Smith, FD Snider, R Snihur, A Soha, S Somalwar, V Sorin, P Squillacioti, M Stanitzki, R St Denis, B Stelzer, O Stelzer-Chilton, D Stentz, J Strologas, GL Strycker, JS Suh, A Sukhanov, I Suslov, A Taffard, R Takashima, Y Takeuchi, R Tanaka, J Tang, M Tecchio, PK Teng, J Thom, J Thome, GA Thompson, E Thomson, P Tipton, P Ttito-Guzmán, S Tkaczyk, D Toback, S Tokar, K Tollefson, T Tomura, D Tonelli, S Torre, D Torretta, P Totaro, M Trovato, S-Y Tsai, Y Tu, N Turini, F Ukegawa, S Uozumi, N van Remortel, A Varganov, E Vataga, F Vázquez, G Velev, C Vellidis, M Vidal, I Vila, R Vilar, M Vogel, I Volobouev, G Volpi, P Wagner, RG Wagner, RL Wagner, W Wagner, J Wagner-Kuhr, T Wakisaka, R Wallny, SM Wang, A Warburton, D Waters, M Weinberger, J Weinelt, WC Wester, B Whitehouse, D Whiteson, AB Wicklund, E Wicklund, S Wilbur, G Williams, HH Williams, P Wilson, BL Winer, P Wittich, S Wolbers, C Wolfe, H Wolfe, T Wright, X Wu, F Würthwein, A Yagil, K Yamamoto, J Yamaoka, UK Yang, YC Yang, WM Yao, GP Yeh, K Yi, J Yoh, K Yorita, T Yoshida, GB Yu, I Yu, SS Yu, JC Yun, A Zanetti, Y Zeng, X Zhang, Y Zheng, S Zucchelli, CDF Collaboration

Abstract:

We present a search for supersymmetric neutrino ν production using the Tevatron pp collision data collected with the CDF II detector and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1 fb-1. We focus on the scenarios predicted by the R-parity violating (RPV) supersymmetric models in which sneutrinos decay to two charged leptons of different flavor. With the data consistent with the standard model expectations, we set upper limits on σ(pp→ν)×BR(ν→eμ,μτ,eτ) and use these results to constrain the RPV couplings as a function of the sneutrino mass.

Study of ψ(2S) decays to γpp̄, π0pp̄, and ηpp̄, and search for pp̄ threshold enhancements

Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology 82:9 (2010)

Authors:

JP Alexander, DG Cassel, S Das, R Ehrlich, L Fields, L Gibbons, SW Gray, DL Hartill, BK Heltsley, DL Kreinick, VE Kuznetsov, JR Patterson, D Peterson, D Riley, A Ryd, AJ Sadoff, X Shi, WM Sun, J Yelton, P Rubin, N Lowrey, S Mehrabyan, M Selen, J Wiss, J Libby, M Kornicer, RE Mitchell, MR Shepherd, CM Tarbert, D Besson, TK Pedlar, J Xavier, D Cronin-Hennessy, J Hietala, P Zweber, S Dobbs, Z Metreveli, KK Seth, A Tomaradze, T Xiao, S Brisbane, L Martin, A Powell, P Spradlin, G Wilkinson, H Mendez, JY Ge, DH Miller, IPJ Shipsey, B Xin, GS Adams, D Hu, B Moziak, J Napolitano, KM Ecklund, J Insler, H Muramatsu, CS Park, LJ Pearson, EH Thorndike, F Yang, S Ricciardi, C Thomas, M Artuso, S Blusk, R Mountain, T Skwarnicki, S Stone, JC Wang, LM Zhang, G Bonvicini, D Cinabro, A Lincoln, MJ Smith, P Zhou, J Zhu, P Naik, J Rademacker, DM Asner, KW Edwards, K Randrianarivony, G Tatishvili, RA Briere, H Vogel, PUE Onyisi, JL Rosner

Abstract:

The decays of ψ(2S) into γpp̄, π0pp̄, and ηpp̄ have been studied with the CLEO-c detector using a sample of 24.5×106 ψ(2S) events obtained from e⊃+e⊃- annihilations at √s=3686MeV. The data show evidence for the excitation of several N⊃* resonances in pπ0 and pη channels in π0pp̄ and ηpp̄ decays, and f2 states in γpp̄ decay. Branching fractions for decays of ψ(2S) to γpp̄, π0pp̄, and ηpp̄ have been determined. No evidence for pp̄ threshold enhancements was found in the reactions ψ(2S)→Xpp̄, where X=γ, π0, η. We do, however, find confirming evidence for a pp̄ threshold enhancement in J/ψ→γpp̄ as previously reported by BES. © 2010 The American Physical Society.