Determination of the pionium lifetime in the DIRAC experiment at CERN

• Autores: Jose Luis Fungueiriño Pazos
• Directores de la Tesis: Bernardo Adeva Andany (codir. tes.), Antonio Romero Vidal (codir. tes.), Máximo Pló Casasús (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidade de Santiago de Compostela ( España ) en 2012
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Armando Lanaro (presid.), Juan Jose Saborido Silva (secret.), Joan Soto Riera (voc.), Cibrán Santamarina Ríos (voc.), Oton Vázquez Doce (voc.)
• Materias:
  • Física
    • Nucleónica
      • Aceleradores de partículas
      • Detectores de partículas
    • Física teórica
      • Hadrones
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: MINERVA
• Resumen

  • This work presents the latest and most accurate measurement of the pionium lifetime accomplished by the DIRAC experiment at CERN. The pionium breakup probability in a Nickel targe was measured and the pionium lifetime was extracted after precise simulation of the atom interactions with matter, leading to the result tau = (3,15 + 0,20 - 0,19) femtoseconds.

    Much previous activity has been devoted to the determination of the pionium lifetime in DIRAC, but the present work has accomplished a new selection method using the upstream position detectors yielding an enhanced data sample, and a refined simulation of the detector and trigger response. As a consequence of the latter, a most complete and meticulous description of the systematic errors involved in the lifetime measurement has been provided. The result has been a reduction of the systematic uncertainties with respect to our previous publication.