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ABSTRACT Extremely elongated, conducting dust particles (also known as metallic ‘needles’ or ‘whiskers’) are seen in carbonaceous chondrites and in samples brought back from the Itokawa asteroid. Their formation in protostellar nebulae and subsequent injection into the interstellar medium have been demonstrated, both experimentally and theoretically. Metallic needles have been suggested to explain a wide variety of astrophysical phenomena, ranging from the mid-infrared interstellar extinction at $$\sim \,$$3–8$$\, {\rm \mu m}$$ to the thermalization of starlight to generate the cosmic microwave background. To validate (or invalidate) these suggestions, an accurate knowledge of the optics (e.g. the amplitude and the wavelength dependence of the absorption cross sections) of metallic needles is crucial. Here we calculate the absorption cross sections of iron needles of various aspect ratios over a wide wavelength range, by exploiting the discrete dipole approximation, the most powerful technique for rigorously calculating the optics of irregular or nonspherical grains. Our calculations support the earlier findings that the antenna theory and the Rayleigh approximation, which are often taken to approximate the optical properties of metallic needles, are indeed inapplicable. 

We report a new measurement of transverse single-spin asymmetries for dijet production in collisions of polarized protons at $\sqrt{s}=200\mathrm{GeV}$. Correlations between the proton spin and the transverse momenta of its partons, each perpendicular to the proton momentum direction, are probed at high $Q^2\approx 160{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. Evidence for nonzero Sivers effects is measured for the first time in dijets from proton-proton collisions, but only when the jets are sorted by their net charge, which enhances the otherwise canceling opposite-sign $u$- or $d$-quark contributions to separate data samples. The resulting asymmetries are compared to recent theoretical calculations. Separately, the associated Sivers observable $⟨k_T⟩$, the average parton transverse momentum, is extracted using a simple kinematics approach which further enables a determination of the individual partonic contributions to the observed asymmetries. 

We present constraints on low-mass dark matter electron scattering and absorption interactions using a SuperCDMS high-voltage eV-resolution (HVeV) detector. Data were taken underground in the NEXUS facility located at Fermilab with an overburden of 225 meters of water equivalent. The experiment benefits from the minimizing of luminescence from the printed circuit boards in the detector holder used in all previous HVeV studies. A blind analysis of $6.1\mathrm{g}·\mathrm{days}$of exposure produces exclusion limits for dark matter-electron scattering cross sections for masses as low as $1\mathrm{MeV}/c^2$, as well as on the photon-dark photon mixing parameter and the coupling constant between axionlike particles and electrons for particles with masses $>1.2\mathrm{eV}/c^2$probed via absorption processes.