Session B14: Undergraduate Research and Outreach - SPS I

Life as a Mather Intern at the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

The AIP Mather Public Policy Internship, sponsored by Nobel Laureate Dr. John Mather and facilitated by the American Institute of Physics Society of Physics Students Summer Internship Program, was designed to help undergraduate physics students explore the interface between science and policy. As a Mather Public Policy Intern in 2013, I worked for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology where I conducted written research and analyses for staff members, prepared background materials and reports, and assisted at hearings and markups. In addition to my internship duties I also had the opportunity to meet several different representatives, go to various receptions and luncheons held on the Hill, and meet some influential people in society. During this talk I will discuss my experience and how it helped further my interest in doing analytical work and gave me exposure to public policy issues at the national level.   

Properties of Quantum-Dot-Doped Liquid Scintillators

Novel scintillators based on semiconducting nanocrystals called quantum dots have unique optical and chemical properties that make them interesting for future neutrino experiments especially those searching for neutrino-less double beta decay. In this talk, we report the results of laboratory-scale measurements for three candidate quantum-dot-doped scintillators. We focus on the key properties required for large-scale neutrino experiments, which are the emission spectrum, the attenuation length and the stability.   

Liquid Scintillators for Neutrino Detection in Large Scale Detectors

Neutrinoless double-beta decay is a rare nuclear process that could be used to determine if the neutrino is a Majorana or Dirac particle. The next generation of experiments will need to instrument more than 1 ton of isotope. Liquid scintillator detectors are a good choice for obtaining this large mass. In this presentation, we compare liquid scintillators for use in these detectors and concentrate on their light yield. This is part of a larger project developing novel scintillators based on quantum dots.   

UV Enhancement of CR-39 Nuclear Track Detector Etch Parameters

CR-39 plastic is an effective and commonly used solid state nuclear track detector. High-energy charged particles leave tracks of chemical damage. When CR-39 is chemically etched with NaOH at elevated temperatures, pits are produced at the track sites that are measurable by an optical microscope. We have shown that by exposing the CR-39 to high intensity UV light between nuclear irradiation and chemical etching, the rate at which the pits grow during etching is increased. The effect has been observed for wavelengths shorter than 350~nm, to at least 250~nm. Heating of samples during UV exposure dramatically increases the etch rates, although heating alone does not produce the effect. The pit enhancement is the result of an increase in both the bulk and track etch rates, while the ratio of these rates (which determines sensitivity to particles) remains roughly constant. By determining the best processing parameters, this effect promises to significantly reduce the time required to process CR-39 track detectors.   

An OPERA-3D Model of Muon Injection in the Muon $g-2$ Storage Ring

The muon $g-2$ experiment at Fermilab will measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon to 140 parts-per-billion. The modern experimental technique utilizes a superconducting storage ring to produce an extremely uniform magnetic field. Since the experimental systematic uncertainties scales with the non-uniformity of the magnetic field, care must be taken to minimize distortions to the field. The injection point of the muon beam into the storage ring requires special attention. In this talk, the experimental concept and the use of a superconducting inflector magnet at the injection point will be outlined. Our efforts to model this critical region in the electromagnetic simulation software, OPERA, will be described.   

Identification of Upward-going Muons for Dark Matter Searches at the NOvA Experiment

We search for energetic neutrinos that could originate from dark matter particles annihilating in the core of the Sun using the newly built NOvA Far Detector at Fermilab. Only upward-going muons produced via charged-current interactions are selected as signal in order to eliminate backgrounds from cosmic ray muons, which dominate the downward-going flux. We investigate several algorithms so as to develop an effective way of reconstructing the directionality of cosmic tracks at the trigger level. These studies are a crucial part of understanding how NOvA may compete with other experiments that are performing similar searches. In order to be competitive NOvA must be capable of rejecting backgrounds from downward-going cosmic rays with very high efficiency while accepting most upward-going muons.   

Expected Performance of the Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT) for the Upgrade of the ALICE Detector

CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) is a global laboratory that studies proton and heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is one of four large experiments of the LHC. ALICE is dedicated to the study of the transition of matter to Quark Gluon Plasma in heavy ion collisions. In the present ALICE detector there are two sub-detectors, (the T0 and V0), that provide minimum bias trigger, multiplicity trigger, beam-gas event rejection, collision time for the Time of Flight detector (TOF), on line multiplicity and event plane determination. In order to adapt these functionalities to the collision rates expected for the LHC upgrade of 2018, it is planned to replace these systems by a single detector system, called the Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT). Two sensor technologies are proposed for FIT, they represent improvements of the current T0 and V0 detectors (T0-Plus and V0-Plus). In this presentation we describe the performance parameters of the FIT upgrade; show the proposed characteristics of the T0-Plus and the simulations that support the conceptual design of this detector.