The energy dependence of the cross section of the ( <italic>n,p</italic>) and ( <italic>n,d</italic>) reactions on natC has been studied for the first time at the n_TOF facility at CERN, from the particle detection threshold up to 25 MeV. The measurement was performed with two telescopes made of position-sensitive silicon &#916; <italic>E</italic>- <italic>E</italic> detectors, covering the angular range from 20 &#8728; to 140 &#8728;. A detector efficiency has been determined by means of Monte Carlo simulations of the experimental setup. Various assumptions on the angular distributions and branching ratios of the excited levels of the residual 11B, 12B, 13B nuclei were considered. In particular, theoretical calculations based on the TALYS-2.0 code were used and the systematic uncertainties in the analysis results were determined from the variations in these distributions. The n_TOF data on the ( <italic>n,p</italic>) and ( <italic>n,d</italic>) reaction on carbon are characterized by a higher accuracy and wider energy range than currently available in literature. A comparison with current evaluations from different libraries reveals a rather significant disagreement with the n_TOF results, while a remarkable agreement is observed with the prediction of TALYS-2.0 for this light element.

Croatia

P. Žugec

Italy

N. Colonna

Switzerland

D. Rochman

M. Barbagallo

Poland

J. Andrzejewski

J. Perkowski

A. Ventura

D. Bosnar

A. Gawlik-Ramięga

Spain

M. Sabaté-Gilarte

Austria

France

M. Bacak

F. Mingrone

United Kingdom

E. Chiaveri

O. Aberle

V. Alcayne

S. Amaducci

L. Audouin

V. Babiano-Suarez

S. Bennett

E. Berthoumieux

J. Billowes

A. Brown

M. Busso

M. Caamaño

L. Caballero-Ontanaya

F. Calviño

M. Calviani

D. Cano-Ott

A. Casanovas

F. Cerutti

G. Cortés

M.A. Cortés-Giraldo

L. Cosentino

S. Cristallo

L.A. Damone

P.J. Davies

Greece

M. Diakaki

M. Dietz

C. Domingo-Pardo

R. Dressler

Germany

Q. Ducasse

E. Dupont

I. Durán

Z. Eleme

B. Fernández-Domínguez

A. Ferrari

P. Finocchiaro

V. Furman

K. Göbel

R. Garg

S. Gilardoni

Portugal

I.F. Gonçalves

E. González-Romero

C. Guerrero

F. Gunsing

Japan

H. Harada

S. Heinitz

Belgium

J. Heyse

D.G. Jenkins

A. Junghans

F. Käppeler

Y. Kadi

A. Kimura

Czechia

I. Knapová

M. Kokkoris

Y. Kopatch

M. Krtička

D. Kurtulgil

I. Ladarescu

C. Lederer-Woods

H. Leeb

J. Lerendegui-Marco

S.J. Lonsdale

D. Macina

A. Manna

T. Martínez

M. Martínez-Cañada

A. Masi

C. Massimi

P. Mastinu

M. Mastromarco

E.A. Maugeri

A. Mazzone

E. Mendoza

A. Mengoni

V. Michalopoulou

P.M. Milazzo

J. Moreno-Soto

A. Musumarra

Romania

A. Negret

R. Nolte

F. Ogállar

A. Oprea

N. Patronis

A. Pavlik

C. Petrone

L. Piersanti

E. Pirovano

I. Porras

J. Praena

Measurement of the natC( <italic>n,p</italic>) and natC( <italic>n,d</italic>) reactions from n_TOF at CERN

We use holography to study correlation functions of local operators in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories arising on the world-volume of D$\textit{p}$-branes in the large-$\textit{N}$ and strong-coupling limit. The relevant supergravity backgrounds obtained from the near-horizon limit of the D$\textit{p}$-branes enjoy a scaling similarity, which leads to an auxiliary AdS space of fractional dimension. This suggests that holographic correlation functions in this setup can be computed by integrating standard CFT correlators over the auxiliary extra dimensions. We apply this prescription to analytically compute two- and three-point correlators of scalar operators. The resulting two-point functions take a familiar CFT form but with shifted conformal dimensions, while the three-point correlators have a much more involved position dependence which we calculate explicitly in terms of a sum of Appell functions.

Nikolay Bobev

Guillermo Mera Álvarez

Hynek Paul

Correlation functions for non-conformal D$\textit{p}$-brane holography

The observation of a resonance structure in the opening angle of the electron-positron pairs in the $$^{7}$$ Li(p,e $$^+$$ e $$^-$$ ) $$^{8}$$ Be reaction was claimed and interpreted as the production and subsequent decay of a hypothetical particle (X17). Similar excesses, consistent with this particle, were later observed in processes involving $$^{4}$$ He and $$^{12}$$ C nuclei with the same experimental technique. The MEG II apparatus at PSI, designed to search for the $$\mu ^+ \rightarrow \textrm{e}^+ \gamma $$ decay, can be exploited to investigate the existence of this particle and study its nature. Protons from a Cockroft–Walton accelerator, with an energy up to 1.1 MeV, were delivered on a dedicated Li-based target. The $$\gamma $$ and the e $$^{+}$$ e $$^{-}$$ pair emerging from the $$^8\textrm{Be}^*$$ transitions were studied with calorimeters and a spectrometer, featuring a broader angular acceptance than previous experiments. We present in this paper the analysis of a four-week data-taking in 2023 with a beam energy of 1080 keV, resulting in the excitation of two different resonances with Q-value 17.6 and 18.1 MeV. No significant signal was found, and limits at 90% C.L. on the branching ratios (relative to the $$\gamma $$ emission) of the two resonances to X17 were set, $$R_{17.6} <{1.8}\,\times \,10^{-6}$$ and $$R_{18.1} < {1.2}\,\times \,10^{-5}$$ in the mass range between $${16.5}\hbox { MeV}/\hbox {c}^{2}$$ and $${17.1}\hbox { MeV}/\hbox {c}^{2}$$ .

Russia

K. Afanaciev

A. Baldini

S. Ban

H. Benmansour

G. Boca

P. Cattaneo

G. Cavoto

F. Cei

M. Chiappini

A. Corvaglia

G. Maso

A. Bari

M. Gerone

L. Barusso

M. Francesconi

L. Galli

G. Gallucci

F. Gatti

L. Gerritzen

F. Grancagnolo

E. Grandoni

M. Grassi

D. Grigoriev

M. Hildebrandt

F. Ignatov

F. Ikeda

T. Iwamoto

S. Karpov

P. Kettle

N. Khomutov

A. Kolesnikov

N. Kravchuk

V. Krylov

N. Kuchinskiy

F. Leonetti

W. Li

V. Malyshev

A. Matsushita

M. Meucci

S. Mihara

United States

W. Molzon

T. Mori

D. Nicolò

H. Nishiguchi

A. Ochi

W. Ootani

A. Oya

D. Palo

M. Panareo

A. Papa

V. Pettinacci

A. Popov

F. Renga

S. Ritt

M. Rossella

A. Rozhdestvensky

S. Scarpellini

P. Schwendimann

G. Signorelli

M. Takahashi

Y. Uchiyama

A. Venturini

B. Vitali

C. Voena

K. Yamamoto

R. Yokota

T. Yonemoto

Search for the X17 particle in $$^{7}\textrm{Li}(\textrm{p},\textrm{e}^+ \textrm{e}^{-}) ^{8}\textrm{Be}$$ processes with the MEG II detector

A study of the charmless baryonic decays $$ {B}_{(s)}^0\to {K}^0p\overline{p} $$ is presented, where $$ {B}_{(s)}^0 $$ denotes either a $\textit{B}$ or a $$ {B}_s^0 $$ meson. The analysis is based on proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies of 7, 8, and 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9 fb . The decay $$ {B}_s^0\to {K}^0p\overline{p} $$ is observed for the first time, with a measured branching fraction of (9$\textit{.}$14 $\textit{±}$ 1$\textit{.}$69 $\textit{±}$ 0$\textit{.}$90 $\textit{±}$ 0$\textit{.}$33 $\textit{±}$ 0$\textit{.}$20) $\textit{×}$ 10 and a significance of 5.6$\textit{σ}$. The uncertainties respectively account for statistical and systematic contributions, the precision of the branching fraction of the normalisation channel $\textit{B}$ $\textit{→ K}$ $\textit{π}$ $\textit{π}$ and the fragmentation fraction ratio $\textit{f}$ $\textit{/f}$ . The branching fraction determined for $$ {B}^0\to {K}^0p\overline{p} $$ is (2$\textit{.}$82 $\textit{±}$ 0$\textit{.}$08 $\textit{±}$ 0$\textit{.}$12 $\textit{±}$ 0$\textit{.}$10) $\textit{×}$ 10 , which is the most precise measurement to date.

Netherlands

R. Aaij

A. Abdelmotteleb

C. Abellan Beteta

F. Abudinén

T. Ackernley

A. Adefisoye

Observation of the decay $$ {B}_s^0\to {K}^0p\overline{p} $$ and measurement of the $$ {B}_{(s)}^0\to {K}^0p\overline{p} $$ branching fractions