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Abstract We report results of characterizing the response and light transport of wavelength-shifting (WLS) and scintillating-wavelength-shifting (Sci-WLS) fibers under irradiation by radioactive α, β, and γ sources. Light yield and light transmission were measured for the WLS fiber BCF-91A from Saint-Gobain and for a new Sci-WLS fiber EJ-160 from Eljen Technology. The two variants with different fluor mixtures, EJ-160I and EJ-160II, exhibited approximately five and seven times higher light yield than BCF-91A, respectively, while their attenuation lengths were 3.80 m for BCF-91A, 4.00 m for EJ-160I, and 2.50 m for EJ-160II. 

Abstract We report results of optical characterizations of new wavelength-shifting and scintillating-wavelength-shifting fibers EJ-182 and EJ-160 from Eljen Technology and compare them to the wavelength-shifting fiber BCF-91A from Saint-Gobain. The wavelength-dependence of attenuation was derived from spectral measurements confirming that the long attenuation length increases with wavelength, while short attenuation effects become less significant at longer wavelengths. The impact of the environmental refractive index was studied by immersing the EJ-160II fiber in water. Immersing the fiber in water reduced the overall light output and suppressed the short attenuation component, which can be explained by reduced light-collection efficiency due to the smaller refractive-index contrast between the fiber cladding and the surrounding medium. 

Abstract We present the first unquenched lattice-QCD calculation of the form factors for the decay $$B\rightarrow D^*\ell \nu $$ B → D ∗ ℓ ν at nonzero recoil. Our analysis includes 15 MILC ensembles with $$N_f=2+1$$ N f = 2 + 1 flavors of asqtad sea quarks, with a strange quark mass close to its physical mass. The lattice spacings range from $$a\approx 0.15$$ a ≈ 0.15 fm down to 0.045 fm, while the ratio between the light- and the strange-quark masses ranges from 0.05 to 0.4. The valence b and c quarks are treated using the Wilson-clover action with the Fermilab interpretation, whereas the light sector employs asqtad staggered fermions. We extrapolate our results to the physical point in the continuum limit using rooted staggered heavy-light meson chiral perturbation theory. Then we apply a model-independent parametrization to extend the form factors to the full kinematic range. With this parametrization we perform a joint lattice-QCD/experiment fit using several experimental datasets to determine the CKM matrix element $$|V_{cb}|$$ | V cb | . We obtain $$\left| V_{cb}\right| = (38.40 \pm 0.68_{\text {th}} \pm 0.34_{\text {exp}} \pm 0.18_{\text {EM}})\times 10^{-3}$$ V cb = ( 38.40 ± 0 . 68 th ± 0 . 34 exp ± 0 . 18 EM ) × 10 - 3 . The first error is theoretical, the second comes from experiment and the last one includes electromagnetic and electroweak uncertainties, with an overall $$\chi ^2\text {/dof} = 126/84$$ χ 2 /dof = 126 / 84 , which illustrates the tensions between the experimental data sets, and between theory and experiment. This result is in agreement with previous exclusive determinations, but the tension with the inclusive determination remains. Finally, we integrate the differential decay rate obtained solely from lattice data to predict $$R(D^*) = 0.265 \pm 0.013$$ R ( D ∗ ) = 0.265 ± 0.013 , which confirms the current tension between theory and experiment. 

This paper presents a search for massive, charged, long-lived particles with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider using an integrated luminosity of $$140~fb^{−1}$$ of proton-proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=13$$~TeV. These particles are expected to move significantly slower than the speed of light. In this paper, two signal regions provide complementary sensitivity. In one region, events are selected with at least one charged-particle track with high transverse momentum, large specific ionisation measured in the pixel detector, and time of flight to the hadronic calorimeter inconsistent with the speed of light. In the other region, events are selected with at least two tracks of opposite charge which both have a high transverse momentum and an anomalously large specific ionisation. The search is sensitive to particles with lifetimes greater than about 3 ns with masses ranging from 200 GeV to 3 TeV. The results are interpreted to set constraints on the supersymmetric pair production of long-lived R-hadrons, charginos and staus, with mass limits extending beyond those from previous searches in broad ranges of lifetime 

This report presents a comprehensive collection of searches for new physics performed by the ATLAS Collaboration during the Run~2 period of data taking at the Large Hadron Collider, from 2015 to 2018, corresponding to about 140~$$^{-1}$$ of $$\sqrt{s}=13$$~TeV proton--proton collision data. These searches cover a variety of beyond-the-standard model topics such as dark matter candidates, new vector bosons, hidden-sector particles, leptoquarks, or vector-like quarks, among others. Searches for supersymmetric particles or extended Higgs sectors are explicitly excluded as these are the subject of separate reports by the Collaboration. For each topic, the most relevant searches are described, focusing on their importance and sensitivity and, when appropriate, highlighting the experimental techniques employed. In addition to the description of each analysis, complementary searches are compared, and the overall sensitivity of the ATLAS experiment to each type of new physics is discussed. Summary plots and statistical combinations of multiple searches are included whenever possible.