A new general purpose fixed target facility is proposed at the CERN SPS accelerator which is aimed at exploring the domain of hidden particles and make measurements with tau neutrinos. Hidden particles are predicted by a large number of models beyond
the Standard Model. The high intensity of the SPS 400~GeV beam allows probing a wide variety of models containing light long-lived exotic particles with masses below ${cal O}$(10)~GeV/c$^2$, including very weakly interacting low-energy SUSY states. The experimental programme of the proposed facility is capable of being extended in the future, e.g. to include direct searches for Dark Matter and Lepton Flavour Violation.
The Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) neutrino experiment measures neutrino oscillations by using an almost pure muon neutrino beam produced at the J-PARC accelerator facility. The T2K muon monitor was installed to measure the direction and stability of the muo
n beam which is produced together with the muon neutrino beam. The systematic error in the muon beam direction measurement was estimated, using data and MC simulation, to be 0.28 mrad. During beam operation, the proton beam has been controlled using measurements from the muon monitor and the direction of the neutrino beam has been tuned to within 0.3 mrad with respect to the designed beam-axis. In order to understand the muon beam properties,measurement of the absolute muon yield at the muon monitor was conducted with an emulsion detector. The number of muon tracks was measured to be $(4.06pm0.05)times10^4$ cm$^{-2}$ normalized with $4times10^{11}$ protons on target with 250 kA horn operation. The result is in agreement with the prediction which is corrected based on hadron production data.
The OPERA experiment, designed to perform the first observation of $ u_mu rightarrow u_tau$ oscillations in appearance mode through the detection of the $tau$ leptons produced in $ u_tau$ charged current interactions, has collected data from 2008 to
2012. In the present paper, the procedure developed to detect $tau$ particle decays, occurring over distances of the order of 1 mm from the neutrino interaction point, is described in detail. The results of its application to the search for charmed hadrons are then presented as a validation of the methods for $ u_tau$ appearance detection.
The OPERA detector, designed to search for $ u_{mu} to u_{tau}$ oscillations in the CNGS beam, is located in the underground Gran Sasso laboratory, a privileged location to study TeV-scale cosmic rays. For the analysis here presented, the detector w
as used to measure the atmospheric muon charge ratio in the TeV region. OPERA collected charge-separated cosmic ray data between 2008 and 2012. More than 3 million atmospheric muon events were detected and reconstructed, among which about 110000 multiple muon bundles. The charge ratio $R_{mu} equiv N_{mu^+}/N_{mu^-}$ was measured separately for single and for multiple muon events. The analysis exploited the inversion of the magnet polarity which was performed on purpose during the 2012 Run. The combination of the two data sets with opposite magnet polarities allowed minimizing systematic uncertainties and reaching an accurate determination of the muon charge ratio. Data were fitted to obtain relevant parameters on the composition of primary cosmic rays and the associated kaon production in the forward fragmentation region. In the surface energy range 1-20 TeV investigated by OPERA, $R_{mu}$ is well described by a parametric model including only pion and kaon contributions to the muon flux, showing no significant contribution of the prompt component. The energy independence supports the validity of Feynman scaling in the fragmentation region up to $200$ TeV/nucleon primary energy.
We study the phase structure of lattice QCD with heavy quarks at finite temperature and density by a histogram method. We determine the location of the critical point at which the first-order deconfining transition in the heavy-quark limit turns into
a crossover at intermediate quark masses through a change of the shape of the histogram under variation of coupling parameters. We estimate the effect of the complex phase factor which causes the sign problem at finite density, and show that, in heavy-quark QCD, the effect is small around the critical point. We determine the critical surface in 2+1 flavor QCD in the heavy-quark region at all values of the chemical potential mu including mu=infty.
We present a first attempt to determine nucleon-nucleon potentials in the parity-odd sector, which appear in 1P1, 3P0, 3P1, 3P2-3F2 channels, in Nf=2 lattice QCD simulations. These potentials are constructed from the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter wave functio
ns for J^P=0^-, 1^- and 2^-, which correspond to A1^-, T1^- and T2^- + E^- representation of the cubic group, respectively. We have found a large and attractive spin-orbit potential VLS(r) in the isospin-triplet channel, which is qualitatively consistent with the phenomenological determination from the experimental scattering phase shifts. The potentials obtained from lattice QCD are used to calculate the scattering phase shifts in 1P1, 3P0, 3P1 and 3P2-3F2 channels. The strong attractive spin-orbit force and a weak repulsive central force in spin-triplet P-wave channels lead to an attraction in the 3P2 channel, which is related to the P-wave neutron paring in neutron stars.
We review recent investigations on the short distance behaviors of potentials among baryons, which are formulated through the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter (NBS) wave function. After explaining the method to define the potentials, we analyze the short distanc
e behavior of the NBS wave functions and the corresponding potentials by combining the operator product expansion and a renormalization group analysis in the perturbation theory of QCD. These analytic results are compared with numerical results obtained in lattice QCD simulations.
We investigate the charmed baryon mass spectrum using the relativistic heavy quark action on 2+1 flavor PACS-CS configurations previously generated on $32^3 times 64$ lattice. The dynamical up-down and strange quark masses are tuned to their physical
values, reweighted from those employed in the configuration generation. At the physical point, the inverse lattice spacing determined from the $Omega$ baryon mass gives $a^{-1}=2.194(10)$ GeV, and thus the spatial extent becomes $L = 32 a = 2.88(1)$ fm. Our results for the charmed baryon masses are consistent with experimental values, except for the mass of $Xi_{cc}$, which has been measured by only one experimental group so far and has not been confirmed yet by others. In addition, we report values of other doubly and triply charmed baryon masses, which have never been measured experimentally.
We study thermodynamic properties of 2+1 flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks coupled with the RG improved Iwasaki glue, using the fixed scale approach. We present the results for the equation of state, renormalized Polyakov loop, and chiral condensate.
We calculate the kaon semileptonic form factors in lattice QCD with three flavors of dynamical overlap quarks. Gauge ensembles are generated at pion masses as low as 290 MeV and at a strange quark mass near its physical value. We precisely calculate
relevant meson correlators using the all-to-all quark propagator. Twisted boundary conditions and the reweighting technique are employed to vary the momentum transfer and the strange quark mass. We discuss the chiral behavior of the form factors by comparing with chiral perturbation theory and experiments.
