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M. Earl

Publications and source records attributed to M. Earl.

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Catalogue of BRITE-Constellation targets I. Fields 1 to 14 (November 2013 - April 2016)

The BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE) mission collects photometric time series in two passbands aiming to investigate stellar structure and evolution. Since their launches in the years 2013 and 2014, the constellation of five BRITE nano-satellites has observed a total of more than 700 individual bright stars in 64 fields. Some targets have been observed multiple times. Thus, the total time base of the data sets acquired for those stars can be as long as nine years. Our aim is to provide a complete description of ready-to-use BRITE data, to show the scientific potential of the BRITE-Constellation data by identifying the most interesting targets, and to demonstrate and encourage how scientists can use these data in their research. We apply a decorrelation process to the automatically reduced BRITE-Constellation data to correct for instrumental effects. We perform a statistical analysis of the light curves obtained for the 300 stars observed in the first 14 fields during the first ~2.5 years of the mission. We also perform cross-identification with the International Variable Star Index. We present the data obtained by the BRITE-Constellation mission in the first 14 fields it observed from November 2013 to April 2016. We also describe the properties of the data for these fields and the 300 stars observed in them. Using these data, we detected variability in 64% of the presented sample of stars. Sixty-four stars or 21.3% of the sample have not yet been identified as variable in the literature and their data have not been analysed in detail. They can therefore provide valuable scientific material for further research. All data are made publicly available through the BRITE Public Data Archive and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.

astro-ph.SR

Search for Dark Matter WIMPs using Upward Through-going Muons in Super-Kamiokande

We present the results of indirect searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with 1679.6 live days of data from the Super-Kamiokande detector using neutrino-induced upward through-going muons. The search is performed by looking for an excess of high energy muon neutrinos from WIMP annihilations in the Sun, the core of the Earth, and the Galactic Center, as compared to the number expected from the atmospheric neutrino background. No statistically significant excess was seen. We calculate flux limits in various angular cones around each of the above celestial objects. We obtain conservative model-independent upper limits on WIMP-nucleon cross-section as a function of WIMP mass and compare these results with the corresponding results from direct dark matter detection experiments.

hep-ex

Search for proton decay through p->\barν K^+ in a large water Cherenkov detector

We present results of a search for proton decays, $p \to \barν K^+$, using data from a 33 kton$\cdot$year exposure of the Super-Kamiokande detector. Two decay modes of the kaon, $K^+ \to μ^+ ν_μ$ and $K^+ \to π^+ π^0$, were studied. The data were consistent with the background expected from atmospheric neutrinos; therefore a lower limit on the partial lifetime of the proton $τ/ B(p \to \barν K^+)$ was found to be $6.7 \times 10^{32}$ years at 90% confidence level.

hep-ex