MSGC Development for HERA-B
The Inner Tracker System of the HERA-B experiment at DESY consists of 184 Microstrip Gas Chambers (MSGC) with a total number of 147 456 electronic read out channels. The detectors have to cope with particle fluxes up to 25 kHz/mm**2 and to tolerate radiation doses of 1 Mrad per year. During the development of these chambers it was found that conventional MSGC, operated in intenses hadronic fluxes, are rapidly destroyed due to induced discharges. The introduction of a Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) as pre-amplification structure offers the possibility to build robust and reliable detectors allowing for ample gain reserve in the hostile environment of HERA-B.

title: HATSouth: A Global Network of Fully Automated Identical Wide-Field Telescopes*
abstract: HATSouth is the world's first network of automated and homogeneous telescopes that is capable of year-round 24 hr monitoring of positions over an entire hemisphere of the sky. The primary scientific goal of the network is to discover and characterize a large number of transiting extrasolar planets, reaching out to long periods and down to small planetary radii. HATSouth achieves this by monitoring extended areas on the sky, deriving high precision light curves for a large number of stars, searching for the signature of planetary transits, and confirming planetary candidates with larger telescopes. HATSouth employs six telescope units spread over three prime locations with large longitude separation in the southern hemisphere (Las Campanas Observatory, Chile; HESS site, Namibia; Siding Spring Observatory, Australia). Each of the HATSouth units holds four 0.18 m diameter f/2.8 focal ratio telescope tubes on a common mount producing an 8.2° × 8.2° field of view on the sky, imaged using four 4 K × 4 K CCD cameras and Sloan r filters, to give a pixel scale of 3.7'' pixel-1. The HATSouth network is capable of continuously monitoring 128 square arc degrees at celestial positions moderately close to the anti-solar direction. We present the technical details of the network, summarize operations, and present detailed weather statistics for the three sites. Robust operations have meant that on average each of the six HATSouth units has conducted observations on ~500 nights over a 2 years time period, yielding a total of more than 1 million science frames at a 4 minute integration time and observing ~10.65 hr day-1 on average. We describe the scheme of our data transfer and reduction from raw pixel images to trend-filtered light curves and transiting planet candidates. Photometric precision reaches ~6 mmag at 4 minute cadence for the brightest non-saturated stars at r ≈ 10.5. We present detailed transit recovery simulations to determine the expected yield of transiting planets from HATSouth. We highlight the advantages of networked operations, namely, a threefold increase in the expected number of detected planets, as compared to all telescopes operating from the same site.

title: BUNCH COMPRESSION MONITOR
abstract: The longitudinal charge distribution in the electron bunches has a strong impact on the lasing process in a Free-Electron Laser based on the principle of Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission of radiation. For the ultraviolet and soft X ray FEL FLASH at DESY, structures in the range of ten to hundred micrometers play a crucial role. The investigation of the longitudinal charge distribution in the electron bunches on a bunch-by-bunch basis is an important issue for optimizing the bunch compression and improving the performance of the machine. This paper introduces a new tool for longitudinal diagnostics based on THz spectroscopy of coherent radiation. A novel spectrometer has been designed which permits to analyze the radiation of single electron bunches in a broad spectral range and with high resolution. Preliminary measurements with this spectrometer are presented. A strong variation of the CTR intensity in the 40 μm regime is observed when the off-crest phase in the accelerating cavities preceding the first magnetic bunch compressor is changed in small steps. This variation in the CTR intensity is found to be correlated with a similar variation in the pulse energy of the FEL light. Hence the THz spectrometer appears to be a very sensitive device for controlling the parameters of the bunch compression scheme.

title: Luminosity determination at HERA-B
abstract: A detailed description of an original method used to measure the luminosity accumulated by the HERA-B experiment for a data sample taken during the 2002–2003 HERA running period is reported. We show that, with this method, a total luminosity measurement can be achieved with a typical precision, including overall systematic uncertainties, at a level of 5% or better. We also report evidence for the detection of δ -rays generated in the target and comment on the possible use of such delta rays to measure luminosity.

title: Anisotropic low energy electron collision cross sections for methane derived from transport coefficients
abstract: Based on a comprehensive set of transport parameters of electrons in methane derived from single electron spectra in the range of field 0.01-15 Td the authors determined a set of elastic and inelastic scattering cross sections up to 3 eV. The necessity to include anisotropic elastic scattering in a Boltzmann analysis of methane is demonstrated. In addition the drift velocity in a mixture of methane with helium was used to enhance the reliability of the derived cross sections. The low energy part of the cross sections for elastic scattering is subject to a MERT analysis and is compared with total cross section data from single scattering experiments.

title: Ultrabroadband terahertz source and beamline based on coherent transition radiation
abstract: Coherent transition radiation (CTR) in the THz regime is an important diagnostic tool for analyzing the temporal structure of the ultrashort electron bunches needed in ultraviolet and x-ray free-electron lasers. It is also a powerful source of such radiation, covering an exceptionally broad frequency range from about 200 GHz to 100 THz. At the soft x-ray free-electron laser FLASH we have installed a beam transport channel for transition radiation (TR) with the intention to guide a large fraction of the radiation to a laboratory outside the accelerator tunnel. The radiation is produced on a screen inside the ultrahigh vacuum beam pipe of the linac, coupled out through a diamond window and transported to the laboratory through an evacuated tube equipped with five focusing and four plane mirrors. The design of the beamline has been based on a thorough analysis of the generation of TR on metallic screens of limited size. The optical propagation of the radiation has been computed taking into account the effects of near-field (Fresnel) diffraction. The theoretical description of the TR source is presented in the first part of the paper, while the design principles and the technical layout of the beamline are described in the second part. First experimental results demonstrate that the CTR beamline covers the specified frequency range and preserves the narrow time structure of CTR pulses emitted by short electron bunches.

title: Production and quality control of MWPC for the LHCb muon system at CERN
abstract: This work describes the production and quality control of the multi-wire proportional chamber for the LHCb muon detection system. The European Laboratory of Particle Physics (CERN) is in charge of the production of 134 chambers for the inner regions of the five Muon Stations. These chambers have demanding requirements on rate capability (>100 kHz/cm2) and efficiency (>99%) in a short time window (20 ns), on overall response uniformity which has to be better than 30%, and on the aging properties. The technical design of the chambers is briefly presented, and the production line is described together with the quality assurance and quality control programs. This includes fabrication of the panels; wire winding, gluing, and soldering; gap uniformity control; pitch and wire tension measurement; gas leak tests; high-voltage training; and tests under intense radiation. An original method developed for gas gain uniformity measurements is described in detail, and the obtained results are shown

title: GRB 070125: The First Long-Duration Gamma-Ray Burst in a Halo Environment
abstract: We present the discovery and high signal-to-noise ratio spectroscopic observations of the optical afterglow of the long-duration gamma-ray burst GRB 070125. Unlike all previously observed long-duration afterglows in the redshift range -->0.5 z 2.0, we find no strong (rest-frame equivalent width -->Wr 1.0 ?) absorption features in the wavelength range 4000-10000 ?. The sole significant feature is a weak doublet that we identify as Mg II ??2796 ( -->Wr = 0.18 ? 0.02 ?), 2803 ( -->Wr = 0.08 ? 0.01 ?) at -->z = 1.5477 ? 0.0001. The low observed Mg II and inferred H I column densities are typically observed in galactic halos, far away from the bulk of massive star formation. Deep ground-based imaging reveals no host directly underneath the afterglow to a limit of -->R > 25.4 mag. Either of the two nearest blue galaxies could host GRB 070125; the large offset ( -->d ? 27 kpc) would naturally explain the low column densities. To remain consistent with the large local (i.e., parsec scale) circumburst density inferred from broadband afterglow observations, we speculate that GRB 070125 may have occurred far away from the disk of its host in a compact star-forming cluster. Such distant stellar clusters, typically formed by dynamical galaxy interactions, have been observed in the nearby universe and should be more prevalent at -->z > 1, where galaxy mergers occur more frequently.

title: Cosmological Results from High-z Supernovae* **
abstract: The High-z Supernova Search Team has discovered and observed eight new supernovae in the redshift interval z = 0.3-1.2. These independent observations, analyzed by similar but distinct methods, confirm the results of Riess and Perlmutter and coworkers that supernova luminosity distances imply an accelerating universe. More importantly, they extend the redshift range of consistently observed Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) to z ≈ 1, where the signature of cosmological effects has the opposite sign of some plausible systematic effects. Consequently, these measurements not only provide another quantitative confirmation of the importance of dark energy, but also constitute a powerful qualitative test for the cosmological origin of cosmic acceleration. We find a rate for SN Ia of (1.4 ± 0.5) × 10-4 h3 Mpc-3 yr-1 at a mean redshift of 0.5. We present distances and host extinctions for 230 SN Ia. These place the following constraints on cosmological quantities: if the equation of state parameter of the dark energy is w = -1, then H0t0 = 0.96 ± 0.04, and ΩΛ - 1.4ΩM = 0.35 ± 0.14. Including the constraint of a flat universe, we find ΩM = 0.28 ± 0.05, independent of any large-scale structure measurements. Adopting a prior based on the Two Degree Field (2dF) Redshift Survey constraint on ΩM and assuming a flat universe, we find that the equation of state parameter of the dark energy lies in the range -1.48 -1, we obtain w < -0.73 at 95% confidence. These constraints are similar in precision and in value to recent results reported using the WMAP satellite, also in combination with the 2dF Redshift Survey.

title: Opposite-side flavour tagging of B mesons at the LHCb experiment
abstract: The calibration and performance of the opposite-side flavour tagging algorithms used for the measurements of time-dependent asymmetries at the LHCb experiment are described. The algorithms have been developed using simulated events and optimized and calibrated with B+→J/ψK+, B0→J/ψK∗0 and B0→D∗−μ+νμ decay modes with 0.37 fb−1 of data collected in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7\mbox{~TeV}$ during the 2011 physics run. The opposite-side tagging power is determined in the B+→J/ψK+ channel to be (2.10±0.08±0.24) %, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.

title: Gas gain uniformity tests performed on multiwire proportional chambers for the LHCb muon system
abstract: We present the experimental setup and the results of the gas gain uniformity tests performed as part of the quality control of the multiwire proportional chambers produced at CERN for the LHCb muon system. The test provides a relative gas gain measurement over the whole chamber sensitive area. It is based on the analysis of the pulse height spectrum obtained when the chamber is exposed to a 241 Am radioactive source. Since the measurement is normalized to the peak of a precise pulse generator, the gain uniformity can also be evaluated among different gas gaps and different chambers. In order to cope with the specific requirements related to the relatively high number of chambers and to their varying geometry, a standalone and compact data acquisition system has been developed which is programmable at the hardware level and may be applied to many other applications requiring precise time-to-digital and analog-to-digital conversion, in correlated or non-correlated mode.  29.30.Kv; 29.40.Cs