Last Thursday, Nobel Laureate Sam Ting presented the latest results (CERN press release) from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) experiment, a particle detector attached to the International Space Station—think “ATLAS/CMS in space.” Instead of beams of protons, the AMS detector examines cosmic rays in search of signatures of new physics such as the products of dark matter annihilation in our galaxy. In …
Continue reading “An update from AMS-02, the particle detector in space”
Title: Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Experiments Author: Alberto Garfagnini Published: arXiv:1408.2455 [hep-ex] Neutrinoless double beta decay is a theorized process that, if observed, would provide evidence that the neutrino is its own antiparticle. The relatively recent discovery of neutrino mass from oscillation experiments makes this search particularly relevant, since the Majorana mechanism that requires particles to be …
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The hydrogen atom is one of main examples studied in a typical introductory quantum mechanics course. Recent measurements indicate that this simple system may still have surprises for us. Could this be a hint of new physics?
Title: “Search for physics beyond the standard model in events with two leptons, jets, and missing transverse energy in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=8 TeV.” Author: CMS Collaboration Published: CMS Public: Physics Results SUS12019 The CMS Collaboration, one of the two main groups working on multipurpose experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, has recently reported an …
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Title: Results on low mass WIMPs using an upgraded CRESST-II detector Author: G. Angloher, A. Bento, C. Bucci, L. Canonica, A. Erb, F. v. Feilitzsch, N. Ferreiro Iachellini, P. Gorla, A. Gütlein, D. Hauff, P. Huff, J. Jochum, M. Kiefer, C. Kister, H. Kluck, H. Kraus, J.-C. Lanfranchi, J. Loebell, A. Münster, F. Petricca, W. Potzel, F. Pröbst, F. Reindl, …
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Title: Effect of Black Holes in Local Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies on Gamma-Ray Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation Author: Alma X. Gonzalez-Morales, Stefano Profumo, Farinaldo S. Queiroz Published: arXiv:1406.2424 [astro-ph.HE] In a previous ParticleBite we showed how dwarf spheroidal galaxies can tell us about dark matter interactions. As a short summary, these are dark matter-rich “satellite [sub-]galaxies” of the Milky Way …
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Title: Dark Matter Constraints from Observations of 25 Milky Way Satellite Galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope Author: FERMI-LAT Collaboration Published: Phys.Rev. D89 (2014) 042001 [arXiv:1310.0828] Dark matter (DM) is `dark’ because it does not directly interact with light. We suspect, however, that dark matter does interact with other Standard Model (SM) particles such as quarks and leptons. Since these SM particles do typically interact …
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Hello Particlebites community! This is my first post as a new contributor to Particlebites. Here’s a little bite about me: I’m an experimental particle physicist working at the University of Mainz in Germany as a postdoctoral researcher. I work on the ATLAS experiment at CERN and have for the past 6 years or so. (I’ll …
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We’re looking to add enthusiastic science writers to our team! If you are a graduate student, postdoc, or upper-level undergraduate with passion for writing and science outreach and wish to contribute particle physics-related content, email us at [email protected] with: Your CV A draft of a proposed ParticleBite post Why write for ParticleBites? ParticeBites is part of …
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The Standard Model includes three types of neutrinos—the nearly-massless, charge-less partners of the leptons. Recent measurements from the Planck satellite, however, find that the ‘effective number of neutrinos’ in the early universe is $latex N_\text{eff} = 3.36 \pm 0.34$. This is consistent with the Standard Model, but one may wonder what it means if this number really were fractional amount larger than three.
