Pulsars - spinning neutron stars that are magnetized – are possible candidates that could explain the large excess in the observed positron fraction - ratio of positrons to electrons plus positrons present in data measurements from the AMS-01, HEAT, and PAMELA collaborations. While these results are in great tension with predictions of secondary productions of cosmic rays in the interstellar...
In this work, we use variational autoencoders to build a surrogate for the model spectra of optical counterparts to neutron star containing gravitational wave events. Optical counterparts to gravitational wave events reveal information that is not necessarily included in the gravitational wave signal. Modeling of these radioactively-powered time-domain transients, kilonovae, is computationally...
Leveraging large samples of galaxy mergers from future large-scale surveys will be crucial for furthering our understanding of galaxy evolution and the formation of matter in the universe. Using machine learning models trained on simulated images of merging galaxies and then applying them to newly observed data will help tremendously with these efforts. Unfortunately, training a neural network...
In this talk I will give a brief overview of the Scientific Computing Division (SCD), with the emphasis on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Projects and work done in this area. Finally, I will briefly talk about my position and work as part of the SCD. My background is in astrophysics and I currently work on several projects leveraging AI as a tool for scientific discovery. I am interested in...
The $\Lambda$CDM model provides an excellent fit to the CMB data. However, a statistically significant tension emerges when its determination of the Hubble constant $H_0$ is compared to the local distance-redshift measurements. The axi-Higgs model, which couples ultralight axions to the Higgs field, offers a specific variation of the $\Lambda$CDM model. It relaxes the $H_0$ tension as well as...
CMB-S4 and other next generation observatories for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) require high performance optical elements. Ideally, these optical elements need to provide a large aperture, have low losses, a high index of refraction, and operate at cryogenic temperatures. Alumina is a material that satisfies these requirements while also providing advantageous properties for filtering...
We present first results from our work on automated telescope scheduling with reinforcement learning techniques. With the increasing size of optical astronomical surveys, automated observation scheduling tools are becoming necessary for the operation of large space and ground based telescopes in an efficient manner. These scheduling methods need to have the capacity for rapid adjustment to...
It is well understood that the dark matter profile of clusters exhibits notable differences in linear and non-linear regimes. The halo model describes these dark matter profiles at both linear and nonlinear scales by incorporating the one-halo and two-halo terms in the model. However, recent measurements of the galaxy-splashback effect have indicated that the underlying model that assumes a...
In recent years, multimessenger astronomy has provided new oportunities to reveal the mysteries of cosmology and potentially resolve the tension in the Hubble Constant measurement. The Dark Energy Survey collaborates with LIGO through electromagnetic follow-up of LIGO-Virgo detections of gravitational wave events. For binary neutron star and perhaps neutron star-black hole mergers we expect to...
The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) is a haloscope search for the dark matter axion. The QCD axion, if discovered, solves both the strong CP problem in nuclear physics and the dark matter problem in cosmology. ADMX seeks to detect axions by their resonant conversion to microwave photons in a high Q cavity immersed in a strong magnetic field. Because the expected signal is of yocto-watt...
The constituents of dark matter are still unknown, and the viable possibilities span a very large mass range. Specific scenarios for the origin of dark matter sharpen the focus on a narrower range of masses: the natural scenario where dark matter originates from thermal contact with familiar matter in the early Universe requires the DM mass to lie within about an MeV to 100 TeV. Considerable...
The constituents of dark matter are still unknown, and the viable possibilities span a very large mass range. The Light Dark Matter eXperiment (LDMX) is a planned fixed-target experiment at SLAC that will probe a variety of dark matter models in the sub-GeV mass range using a missing momentum technique. A subset of rare photonuclear (PN) events can produce neutral hadrons that escape the...
If light dark matter gains enough kinetic energy from collision with cosmic rays, it could leave a detectable signal in a neutrino experiment detector. PROSPECT, the PRecision Oscillation and SPECTrum Experiment, is a reactor antineutrino experiment deployed on surface with minimal overburden (< 1 m.w.e). This configuration provides the opportunity to test hard-to-reach regions of dark matter...
The Fermilab accelerator division provides world class accelerator infrastructure that is key to many particle physics experiments at the intensity frontier. At Fermilab, the proton accelerator and the NuMI target system create the most intense neutrino beam in the world and are capable of handling 850 kW beam power now. NuMI beam power will gradually increase to 1 MW as several upgrades and...
Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) are becoming some of the most used neutrino detectors due to their tracking, particle identification and energy reconstruction capabilities. The Liquid Argon in a Test Beam (LArIAT) experiment was used to measure a known charged particle beam, the detector was located in the Test Beam Facility at Fermilab from 2015 to 2017. Due to the good...
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is the next generation long-baseline neutrino experiment. DUNE’s far detector modules are based on liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) technology and will be the largest LArTPCs ever to be built. In this talk, I will present two topics related to DUNE that I am currently working on. The first topic is the development of an ionization...
Controversy and disagreements exist among different approaches to reproducing the overall normalization and possible structures in the reactor antineutrino energy spectrum. This situation is often referred to as the Reactor Anti-Neutrino Anomaly (RAA). One recent paper [Dwyer and Langford 2015], suggests that an experimentally observed bump at antineutrino energy 5 to 7 MeV (Positron energy...
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) Collaboration is rapidly developing liquid-noble bubble chambers to detect sub-keV nuclear recoils. Demonstrations in liquid xenon at the few-gram scale have confirmed that this technique combines the event-by-event energy resolution of a liquid-noble scintillation detector with the world-leading electron-recoil discrimination capability of the bubble...
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is currently constructing its first physics-scale detector, a bubble chamber containing 10 kg of liquid argon. This first device (SBC-Fermilab) will be used for calibrations in superheated liquid argon, with a goal of attaining sensitivity to 100 eV nuclear recoils while remaining insensitive to bubble nucleation by electron recoils. Similar...
MicroBooNE is an 85 tonne liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detector situated on-axis 470m downstream the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB). The high spatial resolution and good calorimetric energy reconstruction of the MicroBooNE detector offers excellent particle identification and reconstruction of low-energy charged particles. While MicroBooNE is proposed to address the...
MicroBooNE is a liquid argon time projection chamber detector situated downstream the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB). One of the major goals of MicroBooNE is to investigate the electromagnetic-like low energy excess (LEE) in $\nu_{e}$ charged-current quasielastic events observed in MiniBooNE. Possible explanations include the hypothesis that the excess is events with single electrons and...
The Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) will be one of three liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) neutrino detectors positioned along the axis of the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermilab, as part of the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program. The detector is currently in the construction phase and is anticipated to begin operation in the second half of 2022. SBND is characterised...
The Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) is one of three detectors in the SBN program at Fermilab and will be using LArTPC technology to visualize neutrino interactions. The detector will have an active mass of ~112 tons of liquid argon and be stationed at ~110 m away from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) target. The SBND experiment will investigate more into the low energy excess observed by...
The Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) will be one of the three Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) making up the Short Baseline Neutrino program (SBN) on Fermilab’s Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB). SBND will exploit its 112 ton active volume and its position just 110m along the BNB to observe upwards of 6 million neutrino argon interactions over a planned three year exposure. As a...
ICARUS is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber, which is the Far Detector of the Short-Baseline Neutrino program. It uses the Booster beam and is located 103 mrad off-axis from the NuMI beamline at Fermilab. Prospects for cross-section measurements and progress with the selection of the electron neutrino from NuMI interactions will be shown. Accurate measurements of the neutrino...
Forty million times per second, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produces the highest energy collisions ever created in a laboratory. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is located at one of four collision points on the LHC ring. Built like a cylindrical onion, CMS uses distinct layers of detectors to identify and measure outgoing particles. The resulting data can be used to study...
The CMS Phase-2 upgrade is intended to handle the increased data output and fluence expected in the high-luminosity operation of the LHC and requires developing and installing a redesigned silicon tracker. Silicon sensors close to the beam pipe will receive heavy radiation doses, leading to increased dark current and bias voltages that in turn generate increased heat load and put the detectors...
The observation and cross-section measurements of the WWW production using Run II data of the ATLAS detector with an integrated luminosity of 139 fb$^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV are presented. Measurements are performed in two final states. In two leptons final state, WWW decays into two same-sign leptons associated with two jets are selected whereas, three leptons final state contains three...
Recently, machine learning applications, which have become extremely widespread in many fields of study, have enabled new work in the field of top quark physics. Deep learning models, which are biologically inspired algorithms that are rough simulations of the brain and contain interconnected nodes and layers, have particularly contributed to improved measurement techniques in recent years....
Over the course of recent runs, the KOTO Experiment has collected 1.8 million $K_L\rightarrow3\pi^0$ decay events yielding an incredible amount of virtually background-free $\pi^0$ decay data. This offers an opportunity to study $\pi^0$ decay to make a precision measurement of the $\pi^0$ Dalitz decay branching ratio. The E14 KOTO detector provides an excellent means of identifying $\pi^0$...
The SpinQuest (Fermilab E1039) experiment is a fixed target experiment with a transversely polarized $NH_3$ and $ND_3$ targets. Muon pairs from both Drell-Yan process and charmonium decay will be measured. The measurement of the azimuthal asymmetry can provide information on the Sivers function for the light sea quarks as well as the gluon. A non-zero Sivers function would evidence of orbital...
In the E1039/SpinQuest experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Main Injector beam of 120 GeV protons will be incident upon a transversely polarized proton (NH$_3$) target, and we will observe $\mu^+\mu^-$ pairs from charmonium and Drell-Yan production. We expect that the $J/\psi$ and $\psi'$ will be produced by a mixture of $q\bar{q}$ and $gg$ interactions. Due to the high...
The SpinQuest experiment at Fermilab aims to perform the first Sivers function measurement on sea quarks to find evidence for non-zero orbital angular momentum of light antiquarks in the nucleon. In particular, the SpinQuest spectrometer will detect pairs of positive and negative muons from Drell-Yan production on polarized nucleons. In order to efficiently separate these events from the large...
NOvA is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment which uses two functionally identical liquid scintillator detectors separated by 810 km. Both detectors are situated 14 mrad off-axis with respect to the NuMI neutrino beam at Fermilab. NOvA is primarily designed to measure the muon (anti)neutrino disappearance and electron (anti)neutrino appearance to constrain the neutrino mass...
Abstract
Neutrino cross sections are an essential component to any neutrino measurement. With the modern neutrino experiments targeting to measure precision parameters, such as those in long-baseline oscillation experiments like NOvA, the need for a detailed understanding of neutrino interactions has become even more important. Among the neutrino-nucleus interactions, Charged Current...
NOvA is a neutrino oscillation experiment that uses Near and Far detectors to measure electron neutrino appearance and muon neutrino disappearance. The classification of neutrino flavour will be helped by the identification of final state particles of the neutrino interaction. So, NOvA has developed a Convolutional neural network (CNN) for single particle classification which employs...
We present the status of the measurement of muon neutrino charged-current cross section with zero mesons in the final state in the NOvA near detector. NOvA is a long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiment at Fermilab whose physics goals include precision neutrino oscillation as well as cross section measurements. The present work aims to produce differential cross section measurements with...
The primary goal of the Muon $g-2$ experiment at Fermilab (E989) is to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, $a_{\mu}$, to a precision of 140 ppb. This anomaly receives contributions from all sectors of the Standard Model (SM), and beyond, via loop diagrams at the muon-photon vertex. As such, any divergence of $a_{\mu}$ from the SM is indirect evidence of new physics. In April...
The purpose of the Mu2e experiment is to search for the charged lepton flavor violating process muon to electron conversion in the field of a nucleus. A discovery from Mu2e would be a clear sign of physics beyond the standard model. Several cutting edge techniques will be employed in the experiment to improve the current experimental limits by four orders of magnitude. An intense beam of muons...
The muon campus program at Fermilab includes the Mu2e experiment that will search for a charged-lepton flavor violating processes where a negative muon converts into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus, improving by four orders of magnitude the search sensitivity reached so far.
Mu2e’s Trigger and Data Acquisition System (TDAQ) uses $\it{otsdaq}$ solution. Developed at Fermilab,...
The Mu2e experiment aims to search for the CLFV neutrinoless, coherent conversion process of muons into electrons, in the field of a nucleus. The goal of our work is to enhance the Offline event display of the experiment, developed using the ROOT based 3-D event visualisation framework called TEve. New features have been added to the existing display and further improvements are underway to...
In this talk, I will give a brief overview of simulating quantum field theories on a quantum computer in the Hamiltonian formalism. Especially, I will discuss the renormalization of such quantum simulations: in order to perform calculations on finite computers, one must discretize the quantum field theories, and perform renormalization which accounts for and removes discretization errors to...
Pulse-level control of variational algorithms can be used to design hardware-efficient ansatzes capable of implementing Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithms (QAOA) [1]. We study the framework in the context of qudits which are defined as controllable modes on superconducting radio frequency (SRF) 3D cavity-qubit systems. The SRF cavities have long coherence time and can support...
Flavor superposed neutrino states exhibit bipartite and tripartite mode entanglement [1]. In [2], the quantum simulation of bipartite entanglement in the two-neutrino system has been done on an IBM quantum computer. The present work describes the mapping of two and three mode neutrino states to the Poincare sphere using the SU(2) Pauli matrices and SU(3) Gell-Mann matrices, respectively. This...
Experimental system design, or the problem of developing an instrument architecture for an experiment, is a difficult optimization problem due to its high dimensionality, combination of discrete and continuous variables, and the implicit cross dependency of those variables. Conventional methods, such as genetic algorithms, are inefficient due to their ignorance of how specific sub-choices...
The “muon-to-electron conversion” (Mu2e) experiment at Fermilab will search for the Charged Lepton Flavour Violating neutrino-less coherent conversion of a muon into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus. The observation of this process would be the unambiguous evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. Mu2e detectors comprise a straw-tracker, an electromagnetic calorimeter and...
This paper generalizes the quantum amplitude amplification and amplitude estimation algorithms to work with non-boolean oracles. The action of a non-boolean oracle Uφ on an eigenstate |x⟩ is to apply a state-dependent phase-shift φ(x). Unlike boolean oracles, the eigenvalues exp(iφ(x)) of a non-boolean oracle are not restricted to be ±1. Two new oracular algorithms based on such non-boolean...
The smallest and faintest galaxies around the Milky Way are the most ancient, most metal-poor, and most dark-matter-dominated systems known. These extreme objects offer unique access to small scales where the stellar and dark matter content can be studied simultaneously and hold the promise of major breakthroughs in understanding the nature of dark matter, and a more complete picture of galaxy...