arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C. Schmidt.
This document presents the energy-saving metric of the project Innovate for Sustainable Accelerating Systems (iSAS), funded by the EU under its program HORIZON-INFRA-2023-TECH-01 via grant agreement n{\deg}101131435 (milestone 9.5)
For LHC Run 3, the ALICE Time Projection Chamber was upgraded to operate in continuous readout mode. Interaction rates of up to 50 kHz in Pb-Pb collisions require real-time processing of more than 3 TB/s of raw detector data. This requirement is met by a custom FPGA-based processing pipeline that performs the complete front-end data treatment fully in-stream, including common-mode correction, pedestal subtraction, ion-tail filtering, zero suppression, and dense data packing. A central element of the design is a highly parallel common-mode correction algorithm operating directly on the streaming data. It robustly identifies signal-free readout channels on a time-bin basis and applies pad-dependent scaling to compensate for local variations in capacitive coupling in the GEM readout. In combination with pedestal subtraction and ion-tail filtering, this enables accurate baseline restoration under extreme high-occupancy conditions, preventing signal loss while efficiently suppressing noise prior to zero suppression. The pipeline operates continuously at the full detector bandwidth and reduces the raw input rate to about 900 GB/s for Pb-Pb collisions at the target interaction rate. Overall, it represents a large-scale FPGA-based real-time signal-processing implementation for high-energy physics detector readout.
We provide the first lattice-QCD estimate of the crossover line down to $T\simeq108$~MeV. We introduce a new method that combines the Lee-Yang edge in the complex plane of baryon chemical potential $\mu_B$ with universal chiral scaling to determine the $\mu_B$ dependence of the QCD chiral critical and pseudo-critical temperatures. By performing $(2\!+\!1)$-flavor lattice QCD simulations at $T\simeq108$~MeV and purely imaginary $\mu_B$ with a single lattice spacing and two volumes, we compute $\mu_B$-dependent baryon-number susceptibilities and extract the location of the Lee-Yang edge. Together with universal scaling near the QCD chiral transition, it constrains the mapping function between $\{T,\mu_B\}$ and the scaling variable (\textit{i.e.}\ the argument of the universal scaling functions). This mapping function then yields the $\mu_B$ dependence of the critical and pseudo-critical temperatures for $T\gtrsim108$~MeV. While our calculation is performed only at a single value of low temperature without explicit input from small-$\mu_B$ expansion, the resulting $\mu_B$ dependence of the pseudo-critical temperature is consistent with established lattice-QCD determinations at small $\mu_B$ and compatible with chemical freeze-out parameters of heavy-ion collisions down to low temperatures, demonstrating the validity and robustness of the method. Application of this method can be systematically extended to additional temperatures and finer discretizations, opening a pathway to charting the QCD phase diagram in the low-$T$, high-$\mu_B$ regime.
We present some lattice QCD results on first ($\chi_1^i$) and second ($\chi_2^i$) cumulants of and correlations ($\chi_{11}^{ij}$) among net baryon-number ($B$), strangeness ($S$) and electric charge ($Q$) along the pseudo-critical line ($T_{pc}(\mu_B)$) in the temperature ($T$)--baryon chemical potential ($\mu_B$) phase diagram of (2+1)-flavor QCD. We point out that violations of the isospin symmetric limit of vanishing electric charge chemical potential are small along the $T_{pc}(\mu_B)$ for the entire range of $\mu_B$ covered in the RHIC beam energy scan. For the strangeness neutral matter produced in heavy-ion collisions this leads to a close relation between $\chi_{11}^{BS}$ and $\chi_{11}^{QS}$. We compare lattice QCD results for $\chi_{11}^{BS}/\chi_2^S$ along the $T_{pc}(\mu_B)$ line with preliminary experimental measurements of $\chi_{11}^{BS}/\chi_2^S$ for collision energies $7.7~{\rm GeV}\le \sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}\le 62.4~{\rm GeV}$. While we find good agreements for $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}\ge 39$~GeV, differences are sizeable at smaller values of $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$. Moreover, we compare lattice QCD results for the ratio of the strangeness ($\mu_S$) to baryon ($\mu_B$) chemical potentials, which define a strangeness neutral system with fixed electric charge to baryon number density, with experimental results obtained by the STAR collaboration for $\mu_S/\mu_B$ using strange baryon yields on the freeze-out line. Finally, we determine the baryon chemical potential at the freeze-out ($\mu_B^f$) by comparing $\chi_1^B/\chi_2^B$ along the $T_{pc}(\mu_B)$ with the experimentally measured net-proton cumulants $\chi_1^p/\chi_2^p$. We find that $\{\mu_B^f, T_{pc}(\mu_B^f) \}$ are consistent with the freeze-out parameters of the statistical-model fits to experimentally measured hadron yields for $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}} \geq 11.5$ GeV.
Since the Voyager mission flybys in 1979, we have known the moon Io to be both volcanically active and the main source of plasma in the vast magnetosphere of Jupiter. Material lost from Io forms neutral clouds, the Io plasma torus and ultimately the extended plasma sheet. This material is supplied from Io's upper atmosphere and atmospheric loss is likely driven by plasma-interaction effects with possible contributions from thermal escape and photochemistry-driven escape. Direct volcanic escape is negligible. The supply of material to maintain the plasma torus has been estimated from various methods at roughly one ton per second. Most of the time the magnetospheric plasma environment of Io is stable on timescales from days to months. Similarly, Io's atmosphere was found to have a stable average density on the dayside, although it exhibits lateral and temporal variations. There is potential positive feedback in the Io torus supply: collisions of torus plasma with atmospheric neutrals are probably a significant loss process, which increases with torus density. The stability of the torus environment may be maintained by limiting mechanisms of either torus supply from Io or the loss from the torus by centrifugal interchange in the middle magnetosphere. Various observations suggest that occasionally the plasma torus undergoes major transient changes over a period of several weeks, apparently overcoming possible stabilizing mechanisms. Such events are commonly explained by some kind of change in volcanic activity that triggers a chain of reactions which modify the plasma torus state via a net change in supply of new mass. However, it remains unknown what kind of volcanic event (if any) can trigger events in torus and magnetosphere, whether Io's atmosphere undergoes a general change before or during such events, and what processes could enable such a change in the otherwise stable torus.
We analyze the dependence of the chiral phase transition temperature on baryon number and strangeness chemical potentials by calculating the leading order curvature coefficients in the light and strange quark flavor basis as well as in the conserved charge ($B, S$) basis. Making use of scaling properties of the magnetic equation of state (MEoS) and including diagonal as well as off-diagonal contributions in the expansion of the energy-like scaling variable that enters the parametrization of the MEoS, allows to explore the variation of $T_c(\mu_B,\mu_S) = T_c ( 1 - (\kappa_2^B \hat{\mu}_B^2 + \kappa_2^S \hat{\mu}_S^2 + 2\kappa_{11}^{BS} \hat{\mu}_B \hat{\mu}_S))$ along different lines in the $(\mu_B,\mu_S)$ plane. On lattices with fixed cut-off in units of temperature, $aT=1/8$, we find $\kappa_2^B=0.015(1)$, $\kappa_2^S=0.0124(5)$ and $\kappa_{11}^{BS}=-0.0050(7)$. We show that the chemical potential dependence along the line of vanishing strangeness chemical potential is about 10\% larger than along the strangeness neutral line. The latter differs only by about $3\%$ from the curvature on a line of vanishing strange quark chemical potential, $\mu_s=0$. We also show that close to the chiral limit the strange quark mass contributes like an energy-like variable in scaling relations for pseudo-critical temperatures. The chiral phase transition temperature decreases with decreasing strange quark mass, $T_c(m_s)= T_c(m_s^{\rm phy}) (1 - 0.097(2) (m_s-m_s^{\rm phys})/m_s^{\rm phy}+{\cal O}((\Delta m_s)^2)$.
The Bielefeld Parma Collaboration has in recent years put forward a method to probe finite density QCD by the detection of Lee-Yang singularities. The location of the latter is obtained by multi-point Pad\`e approximants, which are in turn calculated matching Taylor series results obtained from Monte Carlo computations at (a variety of values of) imaginary baryonic chemical potential. The method has been successfully applied to probe the Roberge Weiss phase transition and preliminary, interesting results are showing up in the vicinity of a possible QCD critical endpoint candidate. In this talk we will be concerned with a couple of significant aspects in view of a more powerful application of the method. First, we will discuss the possibility of detecting finite size scaling of Lee-Yang/Fisher singularities in finite density (lattice) QCD. Second, we will briefly mention our attempts at detecting both singularities in the complex chemical potential plane and singularities in the complex temperature plane. The former are obtained from rational approximations which are functions of the chemical potential at given values of the temperature; the latter are obtained from rational approximations which are functions of the temperature at given values of the chemical potential.
Using $N_f=2+1$ QCD calculations at physical quark mass and purely imaginary baryon chemical potential, we locate Lee-Yang edge singularities in the complex chemical potential plane. These singularities have been obtained by the multi-point Pad\'e approach applied to the net baryon number density. We recently showed that singularities extracted with this approach are consistent with universal scaling near the Roberge-Weiss transition. Here we study the universal scaling of these singularities in the vicinity of the QCD critical endpoint. Making use of an appropriate scaling ansatz, we extrapolate these singularities on $N_\tau=6$ and $N_\tau=8$ lattices towards the real axis to estimate the position of a possible QCD critical point. We find an approach toward the real axis with decreasing temperature. We compare this estimate with a HotQCD estimate obtained from poles of a [4,4]-Pad\'e resummation of the eighth-order Taylor expansion of the QCD pressure.
Using simulations at multiple imaginary chemical potentials for $(2+1)$-flavor QCD, we construct multi-point Pad\'e approximants. We determine the singularties of the Pad\'e approximants and demonstrate that they are consistent with the expected universal scaling behaviour of the Lee-Yang edge singularities. We also use a machine learning model, Masked Autoregressive Density Estimator (MADE), to estimate the density of the Lee-Yang edge singularities at each temperature. This ML model allows us to interpolate between the temperatures. Finally, we extrapolate to the QCD critical point using an appropriate scaling ansatz.
We study the nature of charm degrees of freedom in hot strong interaction matter by performing lattice QCD calculations of the second and fourth-order cumulants of charm fluctuations, and their correlations with net baryon number, electric charge and strangeness fluctuations. We show that below the chiral crossover temperature thermodynamics of charm can be very well understood in terms of charmed hadrons. Above the chiral transition charm quarks show up as new degrees of freedom contributing to the partial charm pressure. However, up to temperatures as high as 175 MeV charmed hadron-like excitations provide a significant contribution to the partial charm pressure.
On the basis of revisions of some of the systematic errors, we reanalyzed the electron-antineutrino angular correlation ($a$ coefficient) in free neutron decay inferred from the recoil energy spectrum of the protons which are detected in 4$\pi$ by the aSPECT spectrometer. With $a = -0.10402(82)$ the new value differs only marginally from the one published in 2020. The experiment also has sensitivity to $b$, the Fierz interference term. From a correlated $(b,a)$ fit to the proton recoil spectrum, we derive a limit of $b = -0.0098(193)$ which translates into a somewhat improved 90 \% CL region of $-0.041 \leq b \leq 0.022$ on this hypothetical term. Tighter constraints on $b$ can be set from a combined$^{(c)}$ analysis of the PERKEO~III ($\beta$ asymmetry) and aSPECT measurement which suggests a finite value of $b$ with $b^{(c)}$ = -0.0181 $\pm$ 0.0065 deviating by 2.82$\sigma$ from the standard model.
The Crystal Barrel is an electromagnetic calorimeter consisting of 1380 CsI(Tl) scintillators, and is currently installed at the CBELSA/TAPS experiment where it is used to detect decay products from photoproduction of mesons. The readout of the Crystal Barrel has been upgraded in order to integrate the detector into the first level of the trigger and to increase its sensitivity for neutral final states. The new readout uses avalanche photodiodes in the front-end and a dual back-end with branches optimized for energy and time measurement, respectively. An FPGA-based cluster finder processes the whole hit pattern within less than 100 ns. The important downside of APDs -- the temperature dependence of their gain -- is handled with a temperature stabilization and a compensating bias voltage supply. Additionally, a light pulser system allows the APDs' gains to be measured during beamtimes.
We update results on the QCD equation of state in (2+1)-flavor QCD with non-zero conserved charge chemical potentials obtained from an eighth-order Taylor series. We present results for basic bulk thermodynamic observables of strangeness-neutral strong-interaction matter, i.e. pressure, number densities, energy and entropy density, and resum Taylor series results using Pad\'e approximants. Furthermore, we calculate the speed of sound as well as the adiabatic compression factor of strangeness-neutral matter on lines of constant entropy per net baryon number. We show that the equation of state ($P(n_B), \epsilon (n_B)$) is already well described by the $4^{\rm th}$-order Taylor series in almost the entire range of temperatures accessible with the beam energy scan in collider mode at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
The European XFEL (EuXFEL) is a free-electron laser in the X-ray range for users. Its high availability is one of the key aspects of the machine. In 2022, it entered in the sixth year of operation. The EuXFEL linac is based on the TESLA superconducting RF technology, operating at 1.3 GHz with an RF pulse length of 650 $\mu$s and a repetition rate of 10 Hz. The LLRF system is based on the MicroTCA standard and relies on a high level of automation. In this contribution, we review the LLRF operation at the EuXFEL and the development of new tools and features to improve the monitoring and extend the usability of the LLRF system.
Using high statistics datasets generated in (2+1)-flavor QCD calculations at finite temperature we present results for low order cumulants of net baryon-number fluctuations at non-zero values of the baryon chemical potential. We calculate Taylor expansions for the pressure (zeroth order cumulant), net baryon-number density (first order cumulant) and the variance of the distribution on net-baryon number fluctuations (second order cumulant). We obtain series expansions from an eighth order expansion of the pressure and compare these to diagonal Pad\'e approximants. This allows us to estimate the range of values for the baryon chemical potential in which these expansions are reliable. We find $\mu_B/T\le 2.5$, $2.0$ and $1.5$ for the zeroth, first and second order cumulants, respectively. We furthermore, construct estimators for the radius of convergence of the Taylor series of the pressure. In the vicinity of the pseudo-critical temperature, $T_{pc}\simeq 156.5$ MeV, we find $\mu_B/T \gtrsim\ 2.9$ at vanishing strangeness chemical potential and somewhat larger values for strangeness neutral matter. These estimates are temperature dependent and range from $\mu_B/T \gtrsim\ 2.2$ at $T=135$ MeV to $\mu_B/T\ \gtrsim\ 3.2$ at $T=165$ MeV. The estimated radius of convergences is the same for any higher order cumulant.
We report on an ongoing study on the interplay between Roberge-Weiss (RW) and chiral transitions in simulations of (2+1)-flavor QCD with an imaginary chemical potential. We established that the RW endpoint belongs to the 3-$d$, $Z_2$ universality class when calculations are done with the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action in the RW plane with physical quark masses. We also have explored a range of quark masses corresponding to pion mass values, $m_\pi\geq40$~MeV and found that the transition is consistent with $Z_2$ universality class. We argue that observables that were usually used to determine the chiral phase transition temperature, e.g. the chiral condensate and chiral susceptibility, are sensitive to the RW transition and are energy-like observables for the $Z_2$ transition, contrary to the magnetic-like (order parameter) behavior at vanishing chemical potential. Moreover the calculations performed at $m_\pi\sim40$~MeV also put a stringent constraint for a critical pion mass at zero chemical potential for a possible first-order chiral phase transition.
We present a calculation of the net baryon number density as a function of imaginary baryon number chemical potential, obtained with highly improved staggered quarks (HISQ) at temporal lattice extent of $N_\tau=4,6$. We construct various rational function approximations of the lattice data and discuss how poles in the complex plane can be determined from them. We compare our results of the singularities in the chemical potential plane to the theoretically expected positions of the Lee-Yang edge singularity in the vicinity of the Roberge-Weiss and chiral phase transitions. We find a temperature scaling that is in accordance with the expected power law behavior.
We update lattice QCD results for second order cumulants of conserved charge fluctuations and correlations at non-zero temperature and vanishing values of the conserved charge chemical potentials. We compare these results to hadron resonance gas calculations with and without excluded volume terms as well as S-matrix results in the hadronic phase of QCD, and comment on their current limitations. We, furthermore, use these results to characterize thermal conditions in the vicinity of the pseudo-critical line of the chiral transition in QCD. We argue that the ratio of strange to baryon chemical potentials is a robust observable that, on the one hand, deviates only little from hadron resonance gas results, but, on the other hand, is very sensitive to the spectrum of strange baryon resonances.