C. Sirignano

Hardware performance of a scanning system for high speed analysis of nuclear emulsions

The use of nuclear emulsions in very large physics experiments is now possible thanks to the recent improvements in the industrial production of emulsions and to the development of fast automated microscopes. In this paper the hardware performances of the European Scanning System (ESS) are described. The ESS is a very fast automatic system developed for the mass scanning of the emulsions of the OPERA experiment, which requires microscopes with scanning speeds of � 20 cm 2 =h in an emulsion volume of 44mm thickness.

Measurement of charm production in neutrino charged-current interactions

The nuclear emulsion target of the CHORUS detector was exposed to the wide-band neutrino beam of the CERN SPS of 27 GeV average neutrino energy from 1994 to 1997. In total, about 100 000 charged-current (CC) neutrino interactions with at least one identified muon were located in the emulsion target and fully reconstructed, using newly developed automated scanning systems. Charmed particles were searched for by a program recognizing particle decays. The observation of the decay in nuclear emulsion makes it possible to select a sample with very low background and minimal kinematical bias. In all, 2013 CC interactions with a charmed hadron candidate in the final state were selected and confirmed through visual inspection. The charm production rate induced by neutrinos relative to the CC cross-section is measured to be σ(νμN→μ−CX)/σ(CC)=(5.75 ± 0.32(stat)±0.30(syst))%. The charm production cross-section as a function of neutrino energy is also obtained. The results are in good agreement with previous measurements. The charm-quark hadronization produces the following charmed hadrons with relative fractions (in %): fD0=43.7±4.5, fΛc+=19.2±4.2, fD+=25.3±4.2 and fDs+=11.8±4.7.

Momentum measurement by the angular method in the Emulsion Cloud Chamber

We present the first automated momentum measurement in an Emulsion Cloud Chamber, consisting of multiple sandwiches of lead plates and nuclear emulsion sheets. The measurement is based on the detection of the multiple Coulombscattering analysed by the so-called angular method. A 3 X0 chamber was exposed to 2, 3 and 4 GeV=c p � : A pion momentum resolution of 36% at 4 GeV=c; 35% at 3 GeV=c and 28% for 2 GeV=c was achieved.

Track reconstruction in the emulsion-lead target of the OPERA experiment using the ESS microscope

The OPERA experiment, designed to conclusively prove the existence of ????? oscillations in the atmospheric sector, makes use of a massive lead-nuclear emulsion target to observe the appearance of ??s in the CNGS ?? beam. The location and analysis of the neutrino interactions in quasi real-time required the development of fast computer-controlled microscopes able to reconstruct particle tracks with sub-micron precision and high efficiency at a speed of ~20 cm2/h. This paper describes the performance in particle track reconstruction of the European Scanning System, a novel automatic microscope for the measurement of emulsion films developed for OPERA.

Electron/pion separation with an emulsion cloud chamber by using a neural network.

We have studied the performance of a new algorithm for electron/pion separation in an Emulsion Cloud Chamber (ECC) made of lead and nuclear emulsion films. The software for separation consists of two parts: a shower reconstruction algorithm and a Neural Network that assigns to each reconstructed shower the probability to be an electron or a pion. The performance has been studied for the ECC of the OPERA experiment [1]. The e/π separation algorithm has been optimized by using a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the ECC and tested on real data taken at CERN (pion beams) and at DESY (electron beams). The algorithm allows to achieve a 90% electron identification efficiency with a pion misidentification smaller than 1% for energies higher than 2 GeV.

NEWS: Nuclear Emulsions for WIMP Search

Nowadays there is compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter in the Universe. A general consensus has been expressed on the need for a directional sensitive detector to confirm, with a complementary approach, the candidates found in conventional searches and to finally extend their sensitivity beyond the limit of neutrino-induced background. We propose here the use of a detector based on nuclear emulsions to measure the direction of WIMP-induced nuclear recoils. The production of nuclear emulsion films with nanometric grains is established. Several measurement campaigns have demonstrated the capability of detecting sub-micrometric tracks left by low energy ions in such emulsion films. Innovative analysis technologies with fully automated optical microscopes have made it possible to achieve the track reconstruction for path lengths down to one hundred nanometers and there are good prospects to further exceed this limit. The detector concept we propose foresees the use of a bulk of nuclear emulsion films surrounded by a shield from environmental radioactivity, to be placed on an equatorial telescope in order to cancel out the effect of the Earth rotation, thus keeping the detector at a fixed orientation toward the expected direction of galactic WIMPs. We report the schedule and cost estimate for a one-kilogram mass pilot experiment, aiming at delivering the first results on the time scale of six years.

A novel approach to dark matter search based on nanometric emulsions

The most convincing candidate as main constituent of the dark matter in the Universe consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP). WIMPs must be electrically neutral and interact with a very low cross-section (σ < 10−40 cm2) which makes them detectable in direct searches only through the observation of nuclear recoils induced by the WIMP rare scatterings. In the experiments carried out so far, recoiled nuclei are searched for as a signal over a background produced by Compton electrons and neutron scatterings. Signal found by some experiments have not been confirmed by other techniques. None of these experiments is able to detect the track, typically less than one micron long, of the recoiled nucleus and therefore none is able to directly detect the incoming direction of WIMPs. We propose an R&D program for a new experimental method able to observe the track of the scattered nucleus based on new developments in the nuclear emulsion technique: films with nanometric silver grains, expansion of emulsions and very fast completely automated scanning systems. Nuclear emulsions would act both as the WIMP target and as the tracking detector able to reconstruct the direction of the recoiled nucleus. This unique characteristic would provide a new and unambiguous signature of the presence of the dark matter in our galaxy.

Charged-particle multiplicities in charged-current neutrino– and anti-neutrino–nucleus interactions

The CHORUS experiment, designed to search for νμ→ντ oscillations, consists of a nuclear emulsion target and electronic detectors. In this paper, results on the production of charged particles in a small sample of charged-current neutrino– and anti-neutrino–nucleus interactions at high energy are presented. For each event, the emission angle and the ionization features of the charged particles produced in the interaction are recorded, while the standard kinematic variables are reconstructed using the electronic detectors. The average multiplicities for charged tracks, the pseudo-rapidity distributions, the dispersion in the multiplicity of charged particles and the KNO scaling are studied in different kinematical regions. A study of quasi-elastic topologies performed for the first time in nuclear emulsions is also reported. The results are presented in a form suitable for use in the validation of Monte Carlo generators of neutrino–nucleus interactions.

Search for sterile neutrinos in muon neutrino disappearance mode at FNAL

The NESSiE Collaboration has been setup to undertake a conclusive experiment to clarify the muon-neutrino disappearance measurements at short baselines in order to put severe constraints to models with more than the three-standard neutrinos. To this aim the current FNAL-Booster neutrino beam for a Short-Baseline experiment was carefully evaluated by considering the use of magnetic spectrometers at two sites, near and far ones. The detector locations were studied, together with the achievable performances of two OPERA-like spectrometers. The study was constrained by the availability of existing hardware and a time-schedule compatible with the undergoing project of multi-site Liquid–Argon detectors at FNAL. The settled physics case and the kind of proposed experiment on the Booster neutrino beam would definitively clarify the existing tension between the