arXiv subjects

Y. G. Ma

Publications and source records attributed to Y. G. Ma.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay of $^{130}$Te with CUORE

Neutrinoless double-beta ($0νββ$) decay is a hypothesized lepton-number-violating process that offers the only known means of asserting the possible Majorana nature of neutrino mass. The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is an upcoming experiment designed to search for $0νββ$ decay of $^{130}$Te using an array of 988 TeO$_2$ crystal bolometers operated at 10 mK. The detector will contain 206 kg of $^{130}$Te and have an average energy resolution of 5 keV; the projected $0νββ$ decay half-life sensitivity after five years of live time is $1.6\times 10^{26}$ y at $1σ$ ($9.5\times10^{25}$ y at the 90% confidence level), which corresponds to an upper limit on the effective Majorana mass in the range 40--100 meV (50--130 meV). In this paper we review the experimental techniques used in CUORE as well as its current status and anticipated physics reach.

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arXiv2015

Status of the CUORE and results from the CUORE-0 neutrinoless double beta decay experiments

CUORE is a 741 kg array of TeO2 bolometers for the search of neutrinoless double beta decay of 130Te. The detector is being constructed at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, where it will start taking data in 2015. If the target background of 0.01 counts/keV/kg/y will be reached, in five years of data taking CUORE will have a 1 sigma half life sensitivity of 10E26 y. CUORE-0 is a smaller experiment constructed to test and demonstrate the performances expected for CUORE. The detector is a single tower of 52 CUORE-like bolometers that started taking data in spring 2013. The status and perspectives of CUORE will be discussed, and the first CUORE-0 data will be presented.

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arXiv2015

CUORE-0 results and prospects for the CUORE experiment

With 741 kg of TeO2 crystals and an excellent energy resolution of 5 keV (0.2%) at the region of interest, the CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) experiment aims at searching for neutrinoless double beta decay of 130Te with unprecedented sensitivity. Expected to start data taking in 2015, CUORE is currently in an advanced construction phase at LNGS. CUORE projected neutrinoless double beta decay half-life sensitivity is 1.6E26 y at 1 sigma (9.5E25 y at the 90% confidence level), in five years of live time, corresponding to an upper limit on the effective Majorana mass in the range 40-100 meV (50-130 meV). Further background rejection with auxiliary bolometric detectors could improve CUORE sensitivity and competitiveness of bolometric detectors towards a full analysis of the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy. CUORE-0 was built to test and demonstrate the performance of the upcoming CUORE experiment. It consists of a single CUORE tower (52 TeO2 bolometers of 750 g each, arranged in a 13 floor structure) constructed strictly following CUORE recipes both for materials and assembly procedures. An experiment its own, CUORE-0 is expected to reach a sensitivity to the neutrinoless double beta decay half-life of 130Te around 3E24 y in one year of live time. We present an update of the data, corresponding to an exposure of 18.1 kg y. An analysis of the background indicates that the CUORE performance goal is satisfied while the sensitivity goal is within reach.

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arXiv2014

Correlation between elliptic flow and shear viscosity in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions

The correlation between the elliptic flow $v_2$ scaled by the impact parameter $b$ and the shear viscosity $η$ as well as the specific viscosity $η/s$, defined as the ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density $s$, is investigated for the first time in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions based on an isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamic model. The elliptic flow is calculated at balance energies to exclude the geometric influence such as the blocking effect from the spectators. Our study shows that $v_{2}/b$ decreases almost linearly with increasing $η$, consistent with that observed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. On the other hand, $v_{2}/b$ is found to increase with increasing $η/s$.

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arXiv2014

Initial performance of the CUORE-0 experiment

CUORE-0 is a cryogenic detector that uses an array of tellurium dioxide bolometers to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of ^{130}Te. We present the first data analysis with 7.1 kg y of total TeO_2 exposure focusing on background measurements and energy resolution. The background rates in the neutrinoless double-beta decay region of interest (2.47 to 2.57 MeV) and in the α background-dominated region (2.70 to 3.90 MeV) have been measured to be 0.071 \pm 0.011 and 0.019 \pm 0.002 counts/keV/kg/y, respectively. The latter result represents a factor of 6 improvement from a predecessor experiment, Cuoricino. The results verify our understanding of the background sources in CUORE-0, which is the basis of extrapolations to the full CUORE detector. The obtained energy resolution (full width at half maximum) in the region of interest is 5.7 keV. Based on the measured background rate and energy resolution in the region of interest, CUORE-0 half-life sensitivity is expected to surpass the observed lower bound of Cuoricino with one year of live time.

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arXiv2014

Giant Dipole Resonance as a Fingerprint of $α$ Clustering Configurations in $^{12}$C and $^{16}$O

It is studied how the $α$ cluster degrees of freedom, such as $α$ clustering configurations close to the $α$ decay threshold in $^{12}$C and $^{16}$O, including the linear chain, triangle, square, kite, and tetrahedron, affect nuclear collective vibrations with a microscopic dynamical approach, which can describe properties of nuclear ground states well across the nuclide chart and reproduce the standard giant dipole resonance (GDR) of $^{16}$O quite nicely. It is found that the GDR spectrum is highly fragmented into several apparent peaks due to the $α$ structure. The different $α$ cluster configurations in $^{12}$C and $^{16}$O have corresponding characteristic spectra of GDR. The number and centroid energies of peaks in the GDR spectra can be reasonably explained by the geometrical and dynamical symmetries of $α$ clustering configurations. Therefore, the GDR can be regarded as a very effective probe to diagnose the different $α$ cluster configurations in light nuclei.

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arXiv2014

CUORE and beyond: bolometric techniques to explore inverted neutrino mass hierarchy

The CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) experiment will search for neutrinoless double beta decay of $^{130}$Te. With 741 kg of TeO$_2$ crystals and an excellent energy resolution of 5 keV (0.2%) at the region of interest, CUORE will be one of the most competitive neutrinoless double beta decay experiments on the horizon. With five years of live time, CUORE projected neutrinoless double beta decay half-life sensitivity is $1.6\times 10^{26}$ y at $1σ$ ($9.5\times10^{25}$ y at the 90% confidence level), which corresponds to an upper limit on the effective Majorana mass in the range 40--100 meV (50--130 meV). Further background rejection with auxiliary light detector can significantly improve the search sensitivity and competitiveness of bolometric detectors to fully explore the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy with $^{130}$Te and possibly other double beta decay candidate nuclei.

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arXiv2014

PandaX: A Liquid Xenon Dark Matter Experiment at CJPL

PandaX is a large upgradable liquid-xenon detector system that can be used for both direct dark-matter detection and $^{136}$Xe double-beta decay search. It is located in the Jinping Deep-Underground Laboratory in Sichuan, China. The detector operates in dual-phase mode, allowing detection of both prompt scintillation, and ionization charge through proportional scintillation. The central time projection chamber will be staged, with the first stage accommodating a target mass of about 120\,kg. In stage II, the target mass will be increased to about 0.5\,ton. In the final stage, the detector can be upgraded to a multi-ton target mass. In this paper a detailed description of the stage-I detector design and performance results established during the commissioning phase is presented.

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arXiv2014

Anisotropic flow and flow fluctuations for Au + Au at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV in a multiphase transport model

Anisotropic flow coefficients and their fluctuations are investigated for Au+Au collisions at center of mass energy $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV by using a multi-phase transport model with string melting scenario. Experimental results of azimuthal anisotropies by means of the two- and four-particle cumulants are generally well reproduced by the model including both parton cascade and hadronic rescatterings. Event-by-event treatments of the harmonic flow coefficients $v_n$ (for n = 2, 3 and 4) are performed, in which event distributions of $v_n$ for different orders are consistent with Gaussian shapes over all centrality bins. Systematic studies on centrality, transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) and pseudo-rapidity ($η$) dependencies of anisotropic flows and quantitative estimations of the flow fluctuations are presented. The $p_{T}$ and $η$ dependencies of absolute fluctuations for both $v_2$ and $v_3$ follow similar trends as their flow coefficients. Relative fluctuation of triangular flow $v_3$ is slightly centrality-dependent, which is quite different from that of elliptic flow $v_2$. It is observed that parton cascade has a large effect on the flow fluctuations, but hadronic scatterings make little contribution to the flow fluctuations, which indicates flow fluctuations are mainly modified during partonic evolution stage.

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arXiv2014

Exploring the Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay in the Inverted Neutrino Hierarchy with Bolometric Detectors

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0nubb) is one of the most sensitive probes for physics beyond the Standard Model, providing unique information on the nature of neutrinos. In this paper we review the status and outlook for bolometric 0nubb decay searches. We summarize recent advances in background suppression demonstrated using bolometers with simultaneous readout of heat and light signals. We simulate several configurations of a future CUORE-like bolometer array which would utilize these improvements and present the sensitivity reach of a hypothetical next-generation bolometric 0nubb experiment. We demonstrate that a bolometric experiment with the isotope mass of about 1 ton is capable of reaching the sensitivity to the effective Majorana neutrino mass (|mee|) of order 10-20 meV, thus completely exploring the so-called inverted neutrino mass hierarchy region. We highlight the main challenges and identify priorities for an R&D program addressing them.

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arXiv2014

Shear viscosity of hot nuclear matter by the mean free path method

The shear viscosity of hot nuclear matter is investigated by using the mean free path method within the framework of IQMD model. Finite size nuclear sources at different density and temperature are initialized based on the Fermi-Dirac distribution. The results show that shear viscosity to entropy density ratio decreases with the increase of temperature and tends toward a constant value for $ρ\simρ_0$, which is consistent with the previous studies on nuclear matter formed during heavy-ion collisions. At $ρ\sim\frac{1}{2}ρ_0$, a minimum of $η/s$ is seen at around $T=10$ MeV and a maximum of the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragment ($M_{\text{IMF}}$) is also observed at the same temperature which is an indication of the liquid-gas phase transition.

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arXiv2014

Nuclear modification factor in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions

The transverse momentum dependent nuclear modification factors (NMF), namely $R_{CP}$, is investigated for protons produced in Au + Au at 1$A$ GeV within the framework of the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) model. It is found that the radial collective motion during the expansion stage affects the NMF at low transverse momentum a lot. By fitting the transverse mass spectra of protons with the distribution function from the Blast-Wave model, the magnitude of radial flow can be extracted. After removing the contribution from radial flow, the $R_{CP}$ can be regarded as a thermal one and is found to keep unitary at transverse momentum lower than 0.6 GeV/c and enhance at higher transverse momentum, which can be attributed to Cronin effect.

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arXiv2014

Triton/$^{3}$He ratio as an observable for neutron skin thickness

Based on the framework of the Isospin-Dependent Quantum Molecular Dynamics (IQMD) model in which the initial neutron and proton densities are sampled according to the droplet model, the correlation between triton-to-$^{3}$He yield ratio (R(t/$^{3}$He)$=$Yield(t)/Yield($^{3}$He)) and neutron skin thickness ($δ_{np}$) in neutron-rich projectile induced reactions is investigated. By changing the diffuseness parameter of neutron density distribution in the droplet model for the projectile to obtain different $δ_{np}$, the relationship between $δ_{np}$ and the corresponding R(t/$^{3}$He) in semi-peripheral collisions is obtained. The calculated results show that R(t/$^{3}$He) has a strong linear correlation with $δ_{np}$ for neutron-rich $^{50}$Ca and $^{68}$Ni nuclei. It is suggested that R(t/$^{3}$He) could be regarded as a good experimental observable to extract $δ_{np}$ for neutron-rich nuclei because the yields of charged particles triton and $^{3}$He can be measured quite precisely.

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arXiv2014

Production and ratio of $π$, K, p and $Λ$ in Pb + Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV

The particle production and their ratios for $π$, $K$, $p$, and $Λ$ are studied in Pb + Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV based on a blast-wave model with thermal equilibrium mechanism. The transverse momentum spectra of the above mentioned particles at the kinetic freeze-out stage are discussed. The modification of the inverse slope of pion transverse momentum spectrum due to resonance decay has also been investigated. In addition, we found that the anti-particles to particles ratio as well as kaons to pions ratio agree with the data by the LHC-ALICE Collaboration reasonably well, while the $p/π$ ratio is overestimated by a factor of 1.5, similar to those from other thermal model calculations. It is found that the ratios of $p/π$ and $K/π$ are dominated by the radial flow but slightly affected by the baryon chemical potential. Our study thus constrains the parameters at the chemical and kinetic freeze-out stages within the framework of thermal model in Pb + Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV, and will help better understand the properties of the dense and hot matter created in high-energy heavy-ion collisions at freeze-out stage.

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arXiv2013

Isoscalar giant monopole resonance in Sn isotopes using a quantum molecular dynamics model

The isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR) in Sn isotopes and other nuclei is investigated in the framework of the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) model. The spectrum of GMR is calculated by taking the root-mean-square (RMS) radius of a nucleus as its monopole moment. The peak energy, the full width at half maximum (FWHM), and the strength of GMR extracted by a Gaussian fit to the spectrum have been studied. The GMR peak energies for Sn isotopes from the calculations using a mass-number dependent Gaussian wave-packet width $σ_r$ for nucleons are found to be overestimated and show a weak dependence on the mass number compared with the experimental data. However, it is found that experimental data of the GMR peak energies for $^{56}$Ni, $^{90}$Zr, and $^{208}$Pb as well as Sn isotopes can be nicely reproduced after taking into account the isospin dependence in isotope chains in addition to the mass number dependence of $σ_r$ for nucleons in the IQMD model calculation.

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arXiv2013

Symmetry-energy dependence of the dynamical dipole mode in the Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck model

Using an isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (IBUU) transport model, we have studied the connection between the symmetry energy and features of the dynamical dipole mode in fusion reactions with charge-asymmetric entrance channel. The yield and angular distribution of the prompt photon emission are extracted by a bremsstrahlung approach. The experimental data of $^{36}$Ar+$^{96}$Zr at 16 MeV/nucleon and $^{32}$S + $^{100}$Mo at 9.3 MeV/nucleon are compared with IBUU model calculations, and the soft symmetry energy is found to describe the data reasonably well.

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arXiv2013

Extraction of dihadron-jet correlations with rigorous flow-background subtraction in a multiphase transport model

Dihadron azimuthal correlations in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{S_{NN}}$=200 GeV have been explored by using a multi-phase transport (AMPT) model. In order to obtain the contributions from jet-medium interactions, the combined harmonic flow background is subtracted from the raw dihadron correlation functions. The signals are compared in three associated transverse momentum ($p_{T}^{assoc}$) bins: 0.2-0.8 GeV/c, 0.8-1.4 GeV/c and 1.4-2.0 GeV/c from central to semi-peripheral geometries. The medium modifications are observed from changes in the signal shape and the relative jet contribution has been obtained within the change in the centrality from peripheral to central one. A strong $p_{T}^{assoc}$ dependence of the RMS width of jet correlation function is observed within the central geometry bin, i.e. 0-10$%$.

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arXiv2013

Thermodynamic properties and shear viscosity over entropy density ratio of nuclear fireball in a quantum-molecular dynamics model

Thermodynamic and transport properties of nuclear fireball created in the central region of heavy-ion collisions below 400 MeV/nucleon are investigated within the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamic (IQMD) model. These properties including the density, temperature, chemical potential, entropy density ($s$) and shear viscosity ($η$), are calculated by a generalized hot Thomas Fermi formulism and a parameterized function, which was developed by Danielewicz. As the collision goes on, a transient minimal $η/s=5/4π-10/4π$ occurs in the largest compression stage. Besides, the relationship of $η/s$ to temperature ($T$) in the freeze-out stage displays a local minimum which is about 9-20 times $1/4π$ around $T$ = 8-12 MeV, which can be argued as indicative of a liquid gas phase transition. In addition, the influences of nucleon-nucleon (NN) cross section ($σ_{NN}$) and symmetry energy coefficient ($C_{s}$) are also discussed, and it is found that the results are sensitive to $σ_{NN}$ but not to $C_{s}$.

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