The Cosmic Neutrino Background Asymmetry near the Surface of the Earth

Description
It has been recently claimed that there is a local enhancement of neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry in the Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB) near the surface of the Earth of order $10^{-4}$ due to the in-matter potential experienced by relic neutrinos. This asymmetry

It has been recently claimed that there is a local enhancement of neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry in the Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB) near the surface of the Earth of order $10^{-4}$ due to the in-matter potential experienced by relic neutrinos. This asymmetry is significantly larger than the expected $10^{-9}$ from the baryon asymmetry and is a promising step towards detecting the CNB. However, this claim makes many simplifying assumptions to reach this outcome, the most significant of which is the geometry used to model the Earth. Here, we approach the problem with a more realistic geometry for the Earth, and we find that the neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry near Earth is $10^{-8}$, which agrees with other recently reported results from other authors}.
Date Created
2024-05
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Millimeter-wave Superconducting and Quantum Non-linear Kinetic Inductance Circuits and Devices

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Description
Millimeter wave technologies have various applications in many science and engineering disciplines, from astronomy and chemistry to medicine and security. The superconducting circuit technology, in particular mm-wave, is one of the most appealing candidates due to their extremely low loss,

Millimeter wave technologies have various applications in many science and engineering disciplines, from astronomy and chemistry to medicine and security. The superconducting circuit technology, in particular mm-wave, is one of the most appealing candidates due to their extremely low loss, near quantum-limited noise performance, and scalable fabrication. Two main immediate applications of these devices are in astronomical instrumentation and quantum computing and sensing. The kinetic inductance caused by the inertia of cooper pairs in thin-film superconductors dominates over the geometric inductance of the superconducting circuit. The nonlinear response of the kinetic inductance to an applied field or current provides a Kerr-like medium. This nonlinear platform can be used for mixing processes, parametric gain, and anharmonic resonance. In this thesis, I present the development of an mm-wave superconducting on-chip Fourier transform spectrometer (SOFTS) based on a nonlinear kinetic inductance of superconducting thin films. The circuit elements of the SOFTS device include a quadrature hybrid and current-controllable superconducting transmission lines in an inverted microstrip geometry. Another similar device explored here is a kinetic inductance traveling wave parametric amplifier (KI-TWPA) with wide instantaneous bandwidth, quantum noise limited performance, and high dynamic range as a candidate for the readout of cryogenic detectors and superconducting qubits. I report four-wave mixing gain measurements of ~ 30 dB from 0.2 - 5 GHz in KI-TWPAs made of capacitively shunted microstrip lines. I show that the gain can be tuned over the above-mentioned frequency range by changing the pump tone frequency. I also discuss the measured gain (~ 6 dB) of a prototype mm-wave KI-TWPA in the 75 - 100 GHz frequency range. Finally, I present, for the first time, the concept and simulation of a kinetic inductance qubit I named Kineticon. The qubit exploits the nonlinearity of the kinetic inductance of a very thin nanowire connecting two capacitive pads with a resonant frequency of ~ 96 GHz. the qubit is embedded in an mm-wave aluminum cavity. I show that mm-wave anharmonic microstrip resonators made of NbTiN have quality factors > 60,000. These measurements are promising for implementing high-quality factor resonators and qubits in the mm-wave regime.
Date Created
2023
Agent