Week 3 Homework 2

1. What percentage of the energy budget does 4 He occupy? Recall that from a previous weeks lecture, for every one helium nucleus there are twelve hydrogen nuclei. (a) 0.5% (b) 4.4% (c) 1.1% (d) 8.3% 2. Here we explore how much money it would cost to create anti-matter. Lets say electricity 0.2$ costs kW hr . Naively imagining you can power a machine that creates anti-matter at 100% eciency from the electric power, about how much would it cost to create a gram of antiprotons? Comments: kW hr is kilowatt hour, and is a measure of energynally a unit that older people who pay bills will understand and younger students wont :) Also, the reason this is naive and the real cost is explored in the next problem (a) $5 million (5 106 $) (b) $200 million (2 108 $) (c) $50 billion (5 1010 $) (d) $20 trillion (2 1013 $) 3. Continued from problem (2). The actual cost of creating a gram of antiprotons is around 200-400 million billion dollars, $2-41017 (number taken from a CERN cost, found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter#Cost). How much larger is this than the amount your calculated about from problem (2)? Not necessary text, but you might be interested: You might wonder why the cost is so much larger than our naive estimate. The reason for this is that anti-protons are produced by colliding protons at high energies into nuclei, and then trapping the anti-protons. First the colliding protons are accelerated to about 25-100 GeV (note that this is a large energy cost itselfrememeber, protons have a mass of about 1 GeV). Next, for every 105 or so collisions, only one to two anti-protons are produced and successfully trapped. Better techniques for trapping anti-protons would lead to the biggest improvement on cost. Finally, only a fraction of a percent of the electricity out of the wall ends up with the accelerated proton. (a) 104 (b) 107 (c) 109 (d) 1011 4. The CDMS experiment is a dark matter direct detection experiment of the sort described in lecture. It is composed of two types of detectors, silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge). This past April they observed three nuclear recoil events at near the low energy threshold in 1

their Si detectors. They observed no events in their Ge detectors. (See their press release here: http://cdms.berkeley.edu/press.html) These three events could be possible dark matter interactions; if so, they would correspond to a dark matter mass of about 10 GeV. Based on the discussion of direct detection in Nature of Dark Matter II, why is it not surprising that they only observed events in their Si detectors and not Ge detectors? By the way, in problem (6) below we examine a theoretical model which motivates this size of dark matter mass. (a) The Si detectors in CDMS have been running longer than the Ge detectors. Therefore, they are more likely to have seen recoil events. (b) The Si detectors use both phonons and scintillation light to search for events, while Ge detectors only use phonons. (c) There is a minimum threshold of recoil energy needed for an event to be detected. Since Si is lighter than Ge, this minimum recoil energy can be acheived for lower dark matter masses with Si than with Ge. (d) Ge detectors are better for measuring spin-dependent interactions. Since the Si detectors registered the events, this indicates that if these are dark matter events, they are spinindependent interactions. 5. How is a positron to be used in PET? (a) The positive charge repels strongly o of protons in nuclei, allowing one to map the tissue. (b) The positron is captured by a neutron in a nucleus, turning it into a proton (so-called inverse beta decay). The number of these changed nuclei are then counted. (c) A positron PET, unlike dogs and cats which are friendly, will try and annihilate a small piece of you. (d) The positron annihilates with an electron producing two back-to-back gamma rays with energies E = me c2 = 511 keV which are then detected and used to map the tissue. 6. Disclaimer: I know this problem looks long. While the text is long, the question at the end is not too challenging. The idea of the problem is to explain another possible model of dark matter besides the one discussed in lecture. If you have confusion over the language or ideas, please use the discussion boards as I am more than happy to help clarify! The lectures focused on the possibility that dark matter is a so-called WIMP. This rests on the assumption that dark matter was once in thermal equilibrium with the rest of matter in the early universe but is not any longer, and hence is also called a thermal relic. One nice feature of this paradigm was that it naturally predicts a scale for the dark matter mass to be around 100-1000 GeV, an energy range currently being studied at the LHC. This is a nice feature since it might be related to other new physics which could show up at this energy scale. Physicists like these sorts of things because it ties multiple questions together; we have other reasons to believe there is new physics at the energy scales probed by the LHC and we also know there is dark matter in the Universewouldnt it be great if the two were related! Besides the WIMP model, another possibile model of dark matter that has gained popularity in the past several years is so-called asymmetric dark matter (ADM). Some people wonder why the energy budgets of matter and dark matter in the Universe4.4% and 25%, respectivelyare so close to each other; there isnt a reason a priori for them to be of the 2

same order of magnitude. As we explain below, one appealing feature of ADM models is that they give a mechanism for generating dark matter in the Universe while also providing a reason for why the matter and dark matter energy budgets are of a similar size. ADM models purport that the same mechanism responsible for the surplus of matter over anti-matter in our Universe also generates more dark matter particles than anti-dark matter particles. Then, just as in the case for regular matter, the energy budget of dark matter is do to the extra amount of dark matter particles. Since the mechanism for producing this asymmetry is the same for regular matter and dark matter, ADM models predict that there are about the same number of dark matter particles as regular matter particles. Given this and the energy budgets in the previous paragraph, about what mass of dark matter particles do ADM models predict? Recall that protons and neutrons have a mass of about 1 GeV. (a) 200 MeV (b) 1 GeV (c) 5 GeV (d) 50 GeV 7. Here we elaborate on the lower bound for the dark matter mass that Professor Murayama talked about in Nature of Dark Matter I. I will post some notes or a video to explain a bit more of the physics and thoughts behind this problem shortly. In the meantime, we can still do the exercise. The bound came from saying that dark matter has to t in galaxies. Basically the Bohr radius for the dark matter is
2

rB =

GN M m2

where m is the dark matter mass, M is the total amount of dark matter mass contained inside the gravitational atom, and and GN are constants as usual. We have observed features in the dark matter prole in galaxies down to about a kiloparsec (kpc= 3.1 1019 m). If the Bohr radius were larger than this distance, these features would not exist. Since lowering the dark matter mass increases the Bohr radius, this puts a lower bound on the dark matter mass. Taking the dark matter to be of constant density 0 = 1.3 1022 kg/m3 , calculate the lower bound on the dark matter mass m. To do this, you will need to calculate how much mass M is inside this atom using the given density. Give your answer to two signicant gures. 8. In the lecture, Professor Murayama talked about how we can use cosmic ray muons to map otherwise invisible things. A particularly novel example he discussed was Luis Alvarez looking for a hidden chamber in an Egyptian pyramid. In this problem we explore the basic idea a bit further. Muons, since they are charged, lose energy as they pass through material. Energetic muons (1000 GeV E 1 GeV) are in the so-called minimum ionizing case where they lose a constant amount of energy for most of their passage. Just before they stop, they rapidly lose their enery (just like the protons of last weeks proton beam therapy question). If you want to see a plot of energy loss per distance of muons as a function of energy, see gure 30.1 (page 3

4) here: http://pdg.lbl.gov/2013/reviews/rpp2012-rev-passage-particles-matter.pdf In the minimum ionizing case, the stopping power of a material on muons is MeV cm2 dE 2 dx g (dont worry about the derivative signthere is no calculus in this problem!). What stopping power means is that for a given density of material, dE dx is the energy lost per distance of the muon passing through the material (check the units to make sure this is the case!). (a) How far will a 100 GeV muon travel through rock? Take the density of rock to be 2.7 g/cm3 and give your answer to two signicant gures. (b) Now imagine you have three dierent detectors as shown in gure 1. Each detector has an area of 1 m2 . We will be asking how many muons reach each detector. Imagine the # ux of muons (here ux = number per area per time per energy, area time energy ) to be constant up to 100 GeV, and then zero for energies above that. = 100 m2 s1 GeV1 0 for E < 100 GeV for E > 100 GeV

(note that this constant ux in energy is not true in the real worldsee the optional part of this problem). How many muons reach detectors (B) and (C) after one hour? Give your answer to two signicant gures. To help you do this, let me show you how many reach detector (A). Since there is nothing stopping them, all the muons headed for detector (A) reach it. Dimensional analysis essentially tells you the answer: NA = = 100
ux of muons

Adetector

E
energy range reaching detector

t
length of time detector is running

muons 1 m2 100 GeV 3600 s m2 s GeV = 3.6 107 muons (c) Optional Note: below are two variations of the same problem. One requires calculus, the other doesnt. Either answer will be graded as correct. The actual ux is energy dependent, decreasing with energy as E 2.7 . For concreteness, the ux is 100 = m2 s GeV GeV E
2.7

for E > 1 GeV

where E is the energy measured in GeV (so that at E = 1 GeV the ux is the value used in part (b) of the problem). Variation of problem requiring calculus: Using the ux equation above, how many muons with initial energies between 1 and 100 GeV reach detectors (B) and (C) after one hour? Give your answer to two signicant gures. 4

Figure 1: Muons impingent on three dierent detectors. Each detector has an area of 1 m2 . In (A) there is no material above the detector. Detector (B) is beneath 50 m of rock with a density of 1 = 3 g/cm3 . Detector (C) is beneath a tower of two dierent types of rock, 1 = 3 g/cm3 and 2 = 2 g/cm3

Hints/tips/possible problems: If we were really doing this properly, we should specify a detector resolution, i.e. what range of muon energies can our detector measure. We wont worry about this (Ive avoided this problem by not asking you about the ux at detector A where you might notice a problem if you tried to send the energy to zero, as well as by asking you only about the ux for given range of initial energiesnot their energies at the detector). As a check so you dont need to worry about if you are entering answers into the website correctly, if we let the maximum initial energy extend from 100 GeV to innity, you would nd 653 muons at detector B after one hour. Variation of problem without calculus: An approximate form of the muon ux is shown in gure 2. Using this graph, how many muons reach detectors (B) and (C) after one hour? Give your answer to two signcant gures. Hint: part (b) of this problem is like having the histogram at the height of m2 100 for 1 GeV < E < 100 GeV. s GeV To those that have done both ways of the problem, the histogram is an overestimation on the actual answer using calculus. For a better approximation, you could do the height of the histogram at the midway points, i.e. take the height as (E ) at E = 5, 15, 25, 35, . . . GeV.

Figure 2: Approximate ux of muons. The height of each block in the histogram is determined by (E ) at the points E = 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90 GeV. The rst few values at E = 1, 10, and 20 are shown in the gure. Use the equation for to get the values at the other points.