51�������

Abstract:

The SNO+ neutrino detector is an acrylic sphere (radius 6 m) with a thin vertical neck containing almost 800 tonnes of liquid scintillator. The apparatus is immersed in a water-filled underground cavern, the neck protruding upward into a manifold above water level, with scintillator filling the sphere and rising up the neck some 6 m to an interface with purified nitrogen gas. Time-dependent flow simulations have been performed to investigate convective motion of the scintillator fluid, motivated by observations of a transient radon (²²²Rn) contamination layer which, over a period of two weeks, sank from near the base of the neck to the detector’s equator. According to simulations, this motion may have been induced by heat transfer through the detector wall, that resulted in buoyant ascending flow within a thin wall boundary layer and compensating sink elsewhere. This mechanism can result in transport down the neck to the sphere on a time scale of several hours. If the scintillator happens to be thermally stratified, the same forcing by a weak wall heat flux produces internal gravity waves in the spherical flow domain, at the Brunt–Väisälä frequency. Nevertheless as oscillatory motion is by its nature non-diffusive, simulations confirm that imposing strong thermal stratification over the depth of the neck can mitigate mixing due to transient heat fluxes.

Abstract:

Constraints on the Higgs boson self-coupling are set by combining double-Higgs boson analyses in the bb̅bb̅, bb̅τ⁺τ⁻ and bb̅γγ decay channels with single-Higgs boson analyses targeting the γγ, ZZ^∗, WW^∗, τ⁺τ⁻ and bb̅ decay channels. The data used in these analyses were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton–proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 126–139 fb⁻¹. The combination of the double-Higgs analyses sets an upper limit of μ_HH <2.4 at 95% confidence level on the double-Higgs production cross-section normalised to its Standard Model prediction. Combining the single-Higgs and double-Higgs analyses, with the assumption that new physics affects only the Higgs boson self-coupling (λ_HHH ), values outside the interval −0.4 < κ_λ = (λ_HHH /λ^SM_HHH) < 6.3 are excluded at 95% confidence level. The combined single-Higgs and double-Higgs analyses provide results with fewer assumptions, by adding in the fit more coupling modifiers introduced to account for the Higgs boson interactions with the other Standard Model particles. In this relaxed scenario, the constraint becomes −1.4 < κ_λ < 6.1 at 95% CL.