The high timing resolution T0 system in IHEP E3 beam line
The designed aim of the multi-gap resistive plate chamber module (MRPC) for the BESIII endcap TOF upgrade project is less than 50 ps, so a Time-zero (T0) system is required to achieve the timing resolution at 30 ps level. After study the scintillator, the PMT, the DAQ subsystem, the assemblage form and the distributing position, the timing resolution of this type of T0 detector composed of scintillator BC420 coupling with PMT H6533 could achieve 30 ps level. Further more, the T0 could also perform the particle identification (proton and pion) just as the beam TOF and EMC detectors during the beam test process for the compelling result. For this type of T0 system, the MRPC beam test was finished and achieved a compelling result.

title: Clarification of the three-body decay of 12C (12.71 MeV).
abstract: Using beta decays of a clean source of 12N produced at the IGISOL facility, we have measured the breakup of the 12C (12.71 MeV) state into three alpha particles with a segmented particle detector setup. The high quality of the data permits solving the question of the breakup mechanism of the 12.71 MeV state, a longstanding problem in few-body nuclear physics. Among existing models, a modified sequential model fits the data best, but systematic deviations indicate that a three-body description is needed.

title: Crystallization in the Thin and Ultrathin Films of Poly(ethylene-vinyl acetate) and Linear Low-Density Polyethylene
abstract: The crystallization of poly(ethylene−vinyl acetate) and linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) films spun-cast from the polymer/toluene solutions with as-cast thickness from 460 to 10 nm was studied. The lamellar thickness was measured using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and found to increase from 14 to 21 nm for films thinner than 100 nm. The morphology of LLDPE measured by scanning probe microscopy (SPM) showed an edge-on lamellae for the films thicker than 30 nm and flat-on lamellae for the films thinner than 15 nm. A pseudo-“shish-kebab” tiny crystal structure was observed in between the larger lamellae. Crystallinity was confirmed using attenuated total reflectance−Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy. The shear modulation force microscopy technique (SMFM) was used to measure the melting point, Tm, which was found to decrease for films thinner than 100 nm. The rate of decrease was a function of the annealing pr...

title: Dipole and spin-dipole resonances in charge-exchange reactions on 12C.
abstract: The [sup 12]C([ital n],[ital p])[sup 12]B reaction was studied using the white neutron source at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility/Weapon Neutron Research Center with a continuous incident neutron energy from 60 to 260 MeV. Double differential cross sections were measured in the angular range 11[degree][le][theta][sub lab][le]37[degree]. Using the neutron time-of-flight facility at the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility, we also studied the [sup 12]C([ital p],[ital n])[sup 12]N reaction at [ital E][sub [ital p]]=186 MeV and the [sup 12]C([ital [rvec p]],[ital [rvec n]])[sup 12]N reaction at [ital E][sub [ital [rvec p]]]=160 and 186 MeV. Double differential cross sections were measured between [theta][sub lab]=0[degree] and [theta][sub lab]=50[degree] in 5[degree] steps. Spin observables [ital D][sub [ital N][ital N]], [ital A][sub [ital Y]], and [ital P] were measured at [theta][sub lab]=5[degree],9[degree],13[degree] with [ital E][sub [ital [rvec p]]]=160 MeV and [theta][sub lab]=15[degree],20[degree] with [ital E][sub [ital [rvec p]]]=186 MeV. Angular distributions of differential cross section and spin observables for low-lying transitions in the residual nuclei are compared with disorted-wave impulse approximation (DWIA) calculations. A multipole decomposition analysis was performed to study the giant dipole and giant spin-dipole resonances. The contributions of the quasifree reaction in the giant resonance region was subtracted. The empirical results ofmore » energy distributions for dipole ([Delta][ital L]=1) transition are compared with DWIA calculations using nuclear structure information obtained with a conventional shell model and also with a random phase approximation.« less

title: Experimental results of the betatron sum resonance
abstract: The experimental observations of motion near the betatron sum resonance, /spl nusub x/+2/spl nusub z/=13, are presented. A fast quadrupole (Panofsky-style ferrite picture-frame magnet with 8 pulsed power supplies) producing a betatron tune shift of the order of 0.03 at rise time of 1 /spl mu/s was used. This quadrupole was used to produce betatron tunes which jumped past and then crossed back through a betatron sum resonance line. The beam response as function of initial betatron amplitudes were recorded turn by turn. The correlated growth of the action variables, J/sub x/ and J/sub z/, was observed. The phase space plots in the resonance frame reveal the features of particle motion near the nonlinear sum resonance region.<<ETX>>

title: Energetic electrons associated with magnetic reconnection in the magnetic cloud boundary layer.
abstract: Here is reported in situ observation of energetic electrons (∼100-500 keV) associated with magnetic reconnection in the solar wind by the ACE and Wind spacecraft. The properties of this magnetic cloud driving reconnection and the associated energetic electron acceleration problem are discussed. Further analyses indicate that the electric field acceleration and Fermi-type mechanism are two fundamental elements in the electron acceleration processes and the trapping effect of the specific magnetic field configuration maintains the acceleration status that increases the totally gained energy.

title: Cosmic-ray energy spectrum around the knee observed with the Tibet air-shower experiment
abstract: The energy spectrum of cosmic rays around the knee measured by Tibet air-shower experiment is summarized and its characteristic features are discussed under two possible scenarios. The result of Tibet experiment measured over wide range of10−10 eV with high statistics provided details of the knee at the energy around 4×10 eV. The study of the chemical composition based on measurements of proton and helium spectra obtained from airshower core detection indicates the dominance of heavy nuclei around the knee. Such feature can be explained either by contribution of nearby sources with source composition dominated by heavy nuclei or by nonlinear effect in diffusive shock acceleration mechanism. 1 Tibet Air-shower array and core detector The Tibet air-shower (AS) experiment is characterized by high altitude of the observation site (4300 m a.s.l., 606 g/cm), which enables us to determine the primary energy less dependent upon the primary mass and models of hadronic interactions in the energy range over PeV because of the observation of the shower size at nearly maximum development irrespective of the primary mass. The second merit of the high altitude is that it is possible to select the shower events of light nuclei origin such as protons and helium through the detection of high-energy secondary particles (electromagnetic component) located at the AS core, because the probability of association of high energy secondaries depends on primary mass by the difference of the interaction cross section in the atmosphere. The study of the primary mass composition is made by simultaneous operation of the AS array and the core detector. The AS array consists of 761 fast timing (FT) counters, surrounded by 28 density (D) counters with 36 900 m coverage as shown schematically  The AS array is used to measure the energy and arrival direction of each AS. The details of the installation are described in ( Amenomori et al. , 2008a). The primary energy of each event is determined by the shower size Ne, which is calculated by fitting the lateral particle density distribution to the modified NKG structure function. The energy resolution is less than 20% for the knee energy range. The arrival direction of an air shower is determined as follows. The direction cosine of the shower axis is determined using a least square method in which the difference is minimized between the arrival time signals of each FT counter and the expected values on the assumed cone with a given direction cosine. This procedure determines the arrival angle with an accuracy smaller than 0.2◦ at energies above 10 eV, which is calibrated by observing the Moon’s shadow ( Amenomori et al., 2000a, 2003). The core detector was designed to detect the high-energy particles at the AS core by converting them into electromagnetic cascade showers (burst) using lead absorber of 160 cm×50 cm in area and 7 cm (in Phase I) or 3.5 cm (in Phase II) in thickness. The burst size under the lead plate was measured by scintillation counters of the same size as the lead plate in area and 2 cm in thickness. Four photodiodes were attached to the each corner of the scintillator whose attenuation length for the scintillation light was calibrated with electron beam. From the 4 photo-diode signals, we can estimate the burst size and the position of the burst center with spatial resolution of 10 cm. One hundred core detectors were used (total area is 80 m ) to detect burst size greater than5×10. The study of the primary mass composition was made through two experimental phases. In the first phase, 6 layers of X-ray films were placed between lead plates with 1 cm depth interval to register the development of shower spots induced by high-energy γ and electrons (hereafter abbreviated as γ-rays) over a few TeV which are incident upon the detector, and detailed analysis on the structure of the high energy core has been made with use of image scanner ( Ozawa et al. , 2004) to obtain proton and helium spectra ( Amenomori et al. , 2006). The energy determination of the individualγ-rays was made by the comparison of the transition curve of the optical density of the shower spots with electromagnetic shower theory. Such procedure of the energy determination using X-ray films was calibrated using 200 GeV electron beam at FNAL ( Hotta et al. , 1980). A bundle of the high energy γ-rays originating from successive nuclear interactions of the primary cosmic rays in the atmosphere is called γ-family, which can be detected by spatial reconstruction of the shower spots registered on X-ray films with angular resolution of 2.5◦. They are reconstructed as groups of parallel tracks with typical lateral spread of at most several cm among uncorrelated single tracks, which are reduced as background. The assignment of a γ f mily to an accompanied AS was made through the positional correlation between the X-ray film and the scintillator, and the correlation between the burst and AS was made by their time stamps. The arrival directions obtained from AS and the reconstruction of the shower spots were also used to uniquely determine the AS candidate. Suchγ-family events are more efficiently generated by light primaries than the case of heavy primaries because of the penetrating nature in the atmosphere. Hence, the AS core detector can select the air showers of light primary origin naturally. The contamination of the events of heavy nuclei origin was estimated using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based on extensive Monte Carlo simulation of air showers (MC) assuming interaction models and primary models using CORSIKA code. Two interaction models of QGSJET and SIBYLL are used in estimating the efficiency of the γ family generation, and also two mass composition models of proton dominant (PD) and heavy dominant (HD) are used to appreciate the contamination rate of heavy primaries. The efficiency of the family generation for various primary nuclei and its energy dependence is calculated by MC and used for obtaining the primary proton and helium fluxes. For exAstrophys. Space Sci. Trans., 7, 15– 20, 2011 www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/15/2011/ M. Amenomori et al.: Cosmic-ray energy spectrum with the Tibet air-shower experiment 17  ample, the efficiencies by protons at the knee energy 4 PeV in phase I experiment are about 7% and 10% by QGSJET model and SIBYLL model, respectively. ANN is also used in procedures to obtain proton and helium spectra. Phase I experiment selected 177 γ family events with core energy ∑ Eγ >20 TeV and AS sizeNe>2×10. In the second phase experiment, X-ray films were not used and proton+helium (P+He) spectrum was studied without separating them but with higher statistics than that of phase I. The core detector was tuned to decrease the detection threshold energy of the AS core to have several times higher efficiency. The details of the analysis are described in (Amenomori et al. , 2007, 2010). 2 Experimental results The energy spectrum of all particles was obtained as shown in Fig. 2 together with other data (Cited data: Grigorov (Grigorov et al. , 1971), JACEE (Asakimori et al. , 1998), KASCADE (Antoni et al., 2005), BASJE (Ogio et al. , 2004), CASA (Fowler et al. , 2001), Akeno (Nagano et al. , 1984), Akeno array1 and Akeno array20 ( Nagano et al. , 1992)). The uncertainty of the absolute intensity due to the interaction models used in the analysis is shown by QGSJET and SIBYLL (10% difference at most). The uncertainty due to the assumed primary mass composition is also shown by HD and PD. Although the composition is fairly different between HD and PD models at energies above 10 eV, the difference of the absolute intensity is 20% at most between the two models and it decreases with increasing primary energy. Note that the shapes of the spectra from different models are almost the same and the position of the knee is clearly found at the energy around 4 PeV. From the second phase experiment of AS core observation, the energy spectrum of P+He was obtained with high statistics and in good agreement with phase I as shown in Fig. 3, in which QGSJET model was used for the analysis. Use of 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 4 10 5 10 6 10 7 10 8 10 9 E 2 .5 d J /d E [ G e V 1 .5 m − 2 s e c − 1 s r − 1 ] Primary Energy [GeV/particle] Grigorov JACEE KASCADE-QGS KASCADE-SIB BASJE2004 CASA/MIA Akeno Akeno array1 Akeno array20 Tibet3-QGSJET+HD Tibet3-QGSJET+PD Tibet3-. The results from three models of QGSJET+HD, QGSJET+PD, and SIBYLL+HD used in the analysis are shown. SIBYLL model results in about 30% lower intensity than that of the QGSJET analysis There is a problem of discrepancy between Tibet and KASCADE data as shown in Fig. 3, e.g., the flux of the light nuclei by KADCADE is higher than Tibet by more than factor 2. However, if SIBYLL model is used in the analysis of KASCADE, the difference between two data is much reduced. This fact does not necessarily mean that SIBYLL model is more preferable to explain the data at this energy range. KASCADE reported that QGSJET model explains high energy data better than SIBYLL, on the other hand, SIBYLL model is better at lower energies. This problem is related to the interaction model dependence of MC calculations and also to the different experimental methods used in two experiments. Tibet experiment observes high energy part of the air showers, namely, the most forward region of the center of momentum system (CMS) of interacting particles, while KASCADE experiment observes Ne−Nμ correlation, in which muon component is sensitive to the central region of the CMS. The model dependence in forward region www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/15/2011/  2011 18 M. Amenomori et al.: Cosmic-ray energy spectrum with the Tibet air-shower experiment 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5 10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5 10 6 10

title: Unbiased Estimate of Dark Energy Density from Type Ia Supernova Data
abstract: Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are currently the best probes of the dark energy in the universe. To constrain the nature of dark energy, we assume a flat universe and that the weak energy condition is satisfied, and we allow the density of dark energy, ρX(z), to be an arbitrary function of redshift. Using simulated data from a space-based SN pencil-beam survey, we find that by optimizing the number of parameters used to parameterize the dimensionless dark energy density, f(z) = ρX(z)/ρX(z = 0), we can obtain an unbiased estimate of both f(z) and the fractional matter density of the universe, Ωm. A plausible SN pencil-beam survey (with a square degree field of view and for an observational duration of 1 yr) can yield about 2000 SNe Ia with 0 ≤ z ≤ 2. Such a survey in space would yield SN peak luminosities with a combined intrinsic and observational dispersion of σ(mint) = 0.16 mag. We find that for such an idealized survey, Ωm can be measured to 10% accuracy, and the dark energy density can be estimated to ~20% to z ~ 1.5, and ~20%-40% to z ~ 2, depending on the time dependence of the true dark energy density. Dark energy densities that vary more slowly can be more accurately measured. For the anticipated Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP) mission, Ωm can be measured to 14% accuracy, and the dark energy density can be estimated to ~20% to z ~ 1.2. Our results suggest that SNAP may gain much sensitivity to the time dependence of the dark energy density and Ωm by devoting more observational time to the central pencil-beam fields to obtain more SNe Ia at z > 1.2. We use both a maximum likelihood analysis and a Monte Carlo analysis (when appropriate) to determine the errors of estimated parameters. We find that the Monte Carlo analysis gives a more accurate estimate of the dark energy density than the maximum likelihood analysis.

title: Black hole energy release to the Gaseous Universe
abstract: We estimate the energy release of black hole formation to the intra-cluster medium of the Coma cluster and find that this is comparable to the present day energy content. Therefore an energetic and maybe hydrostatic influence is possible. Our calculations rely on the assumption of an universal black hole to galaxy mass ratio (more exactly: spheroidal mass component of the stellar population), for which there is growing evidence. On a cosmological scale, there is also an energy release of black hole formation comparable to what is expected to be present within the thermal gas, caused by the process of structure formation. This indicates an important dynamical influence, neglected by present day structure formation simulations. This estimate of cosmological black hole energy release is independent of the black hole to galaxy mass ratio, but consistent with its value.

title: Performance of a new LMRPC prototype for the STAR MTD system
abstract: A new prototype of a Long-Strip Multi-Gap Resistive Plate Chamber (LMRPC) for the STAR Muon Telescope Detector (MTD) at RHIC has been developed. This prototype has an active area of 52 x 90 cm(2) and consists of six 250 mu m wide gaps. Each detector has 12 strips, read-out at both ends, which are each 3.8 cm wide and 90 cm long with 0.6 cm intervals. In cosmic-ray tests, the efficiency was larger than 95% and the time resolution was similar to 75 ps for the 94% Freon, 5% iso-butane, and 1% SF6 gas mixture. There was good uniformity in the performance across the different strips. The module was also tested in a proton beam at IHEP in Beijing. The efficiency was close to 100% and the best timing resolution achieved was 55 ps for the 90% Freon, 5% iso-butane, and 5% SF6 gas mixture. Trigger scans along and across the strip direction were also performed. Crown

title: Progress of R&D and production of timing RPCs in Tsinghua University
abstract: Multi-gap resistive plate chamber (MRPC) is a new kind of gas detector. It has good time resolution and high efficiency and has been adopted to construct the full barrel time-of-flight (TOF) detector for the STAR experiment at RHIC. The high rate TOF of CBM is also proposed to be assembled with MRPCs. Tsinghua University is a collaboration member of the two experiments and has made substantial progress on the R&D and production of MRPC. In this paper, we describe the development of low-resistivity glass and high rate MRPC, and the development of 1 m long counter is also described.