Particle Physics at the Year of 150th Anniversary of the Mendeleev's Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, pp. 373-379 (2021) No AccessGENERATION OF MEDICAL RADIO NUCLEI VIA ELECTRON ACCELERATORSA. Widom, J. Swain, Yogendra Srivastava, Georges de Montmollin, P. Tercier, O. Pisaturo, and F. MiévilleA. WidomPhysics Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MASS, USA, J. SwainPhysics Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MASS, USA, Yogendra SrivastavaDepartment of Physics & Geology, U. of Perugia, Italy, Georges de MontmollinLenr-Cities Suisse Sarl, Neuchtel CH, Switzerland, P. TercierRadiation Oncology Department, hopital fribourgeois, Fribourg, CH, Switzerland, O. PisaturoRadiation Oncology Department, hopital fribourgeois, Fribourg, CH, Switzerland, and F. MiévilleRadiation Oncology Department, hopital fribourgeois, Fribourg, CH, Switzerlandhttps://doi.org/10.1142/9789811233913_0069Cited by:0 PreviousNext AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Abstract: Electron accelerators routinely available in radiation oncology departments when suitably modified can be used to generate radio nuclides — needed for imaging and treatment in nuclear medicine — through the giant dipole mechanism and electro-strong interactions. The method is applied to the particularly important case of (i) Copper radio nuclides(RI) [62Cu, 64Cu] that are of interest both for imaging and cancer treatment, as well as (ii) for the production of the imaging RI 18F and 11C together. Experimental data that show the feasibility of the scheme are presented here through the production of radio nuclides [62Cu & 64Cu] when a sample of pure Copper was irradiated by a beam of 22 MeV electrons from the accelerator facility in the radiation oncology department of the Swiss Fribourg hospital. Firm evidence of RI production is provided through the measurements of the radiation from the two Copper RI and the two measured life-times are within 2% of their expected values. Also presented — to our knowledge for the first time — are experimental results about the production of the much sought after RI 18F along with another 11C in one shot, through a non-cyclotron or a nuclear reactor source. Our results confirm the hypothesis that upon suitable modifications, electron accelerators available at medical radiation oncology centers, can indeed be used to produce the required amounts of radio nuclei in situ locally, when needed. It should reduce the cost of production as well as that of transport and at the same time avoid the use of nuclear reactors [or nuclear cyclotrons] that (may) suffer from the production of unwanted nuclear waste. For the future, a scaled up RI production through high intensity electron machines can allow us to develop a novel strategy: pinpoint a tumor through an RI with a chelated material accompanying it to fight the tumor -in real time-with less cumbersome biological assays. FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Particle Physics at the Year of 150th Anniversary of the Mendeleev's Periodic Table of Chemical ElementsMetrics History PDF download

A brief review of our previously introduced forward and backward in time formalism for non-relativistic electron diffraction and its relativistic extension to study photons in time and space is presented. The zero-point energy in the Planck black body spectrum emerges naturally once time-symmetric motion — inherent in Maxwell equations — is invoked for photons. A study of two-slit experiments for slits smaller than the wavelength of the photon unravels novel phenomena due to the spin of the photon. Our proposed experiments are within reach of present technology and could be of interest for modern imaging and quantum optics.

All therapeutic methods dealing with coronavirus (past and present) are based on chemicals. We test for it (positive or negative) chemically and hope to cure it with a future vaccine (some complicated chemical preparation). If and when the virus mutates, another set of chemical protocols for its testing and a hunt for new chemicals as a vaccine shall begin again and again. But the history of modern (western) medicine tells us that our biotechnology is not so limited. Copious scientific evidence for sonic and low energy electromagnetic signals produced by all biological elements (DNA, cells, bacteria, parasites, virus) exists; in turn, the biological elements are affected by these non-chemical signals as well. A careful analysis and a catalogue of the spectrum of these non-chemical signals are proposed here as a unique biophysical signature.

An earlier forward and backward in time formalism developed by us to discuss non-relativistic electron diffraction is generalized to the relativistic case and here applied to photons. We show how naturally the zero-point energy emerges in the Planck black-body spectrum once symmetric in time motion - inherent in the Maxwell equations - is invoked for photons. Then, a detailed study is made of two-slit experiments for photons and some novel phenomena, amenable to experiments, are proposed, that arise due to the spin of the photon.

A statistical thermodynamic viewpoint is employed towards the electro-mechanical properties of current carrying wires under tension. In particular, we consider the loss in the tensile strength of the wire and the tendency to fracture into small segments explosively, in terms of the electronic (relativistic) kinetic energies contributing to the pressure tensor and weakening the metallic chemical binding. A sufficiently violent explosion from a strong current pulse is a conventional manufacturing method for fabricating metallic nano-particles. Such high current fracture explosions are known to often be accompanied by low energy nuclear reactions. We consider the strength of threshold currents for some explicit nuclear reactions from the conventional thermodynamic theory of reaction chemical potentials. Numerical values are provided for important threshold currents.

We update our previous search for trapped magnetic monopoles in LHC Run 2 using nearly six times more integrated luminosity and including additional models for the interpretation of the data. The MoEDAL forward trapping detector, comprising 222 kg of aluminium samples, was exposed to 2.11 fb−1 of 13 TeV proton–proton collisions near the LHCb interaction point and analysed by searching for induced persistent currents after passage through a superconducting magnetometer. Magnetic charges equal to the Dirac charge or above are excluded in all samples. The results are interpreted in Drell–Yan production models for monopoles with spins 0, 1/2 and 1: in addition to standard point-like couplings, we also consider couplings with momentum-dependent form factors. The search provides the best current laboratory constraints for monopoles with magnetic charges ranging from two to five times the Dirac charge.

Cosmological expansion on a local scale is usually neglected in part due to its smallness, and in part due to components of bound systems (especially those bound by non-gravitational forces such as atoms and nuclei) not following the geodesics of the cosmological metric. However, it is interesting to ask whether or not experimental tests of cosmological expansion on a local scale (well within our own galaxy) might be experimentally accessible in some manner. We point out, using the Pioneer satellites as an example, that current satellite technology allows for this possibility within time scales of less than one human lifetime.

MoEDAL is designed to identify new physics in the form of long-lived highly ionizing particles produced in high-energy LHC collisions. Its arrays of plastic nuclear-track detectors and aluminium trapping volumes provide two independent passive detection techniques. We present here the results of a first search for magnetic monopole production in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions using the trapping technique, extending a previous publication with 8 TeV data during LHC Run 1. A total of 222 kg of MoEDAL trapping detector samples was exposed in the forward region and analyzed by searching for induced persistent currents after passage through a superconducting magnetometer. Magnetic charges exceeding half the Dirac charge are excluded in all samples and limits are placed for the first time on the production of magnetic monopoles in 13 TeV pp collisions. The search probes mass ranges previously inaccessible to collider experiments for up to five times the Dirac charge.

Electrons in low energy condensed matter physics are typically treated using the non-relativistic Schrodinger or Pauli equations, with relativistic effects included, if at all, via corrections of order v/c. We show that using the full Dirac equation with 4-component spinors leads to a number of important qualitative effects and, perhaps surprisingly, some striking simplifications over the conventional lower energy treatments, already for nuclei with Z >2.

A long-standing puzzle in cosmic ray physics has been the nature of the spectrum, which is very well modeled by a broken power law with differing exponents, both close to -3, above and below the "knee".We show that a rather simple hadronic evaporation model reproduces the correct noninteger exponents as well as why they are close to 3, in addition to the location of the knee -all without requiring fits or any free parameters.It is also consistent with the observed composition changes with energy.The model is predictive, with some successful predictions already and has broader implications for nuclear physics and particle astrophysics.

We re-examine published theories that predict large acceleration of electrons for materials under great stress and that successfully describe neutron and other particle production in natural phenomena as well as in laboratory experiments. A fracture mechanics analysis obeying Griffith’s law allows us to deduce the critical micro-crack size and elastic stresses essential for estimating the electric fields; boosts in the Lorentz factor of the electrons and towards the expected frequency spectrum of electro-magnetic radiation in micro-cavities. They are also applied here to study the energetics behind shredding and fracture of a cathode in a battery under substantial dc voltages (⩾400V). We show quantitatively that the electric fields generated and the subsequent acceleration of electrons and ions at the tip of a shredding cathode can be comparable to that in fracturing rocks and other geophysical processes. Some experimental evidence showing production of new elements is presented. We also reconsider previous theory and experiments about Coulomb explosions and establish easy and proper protocols for the Coulomb explosions of alkali metals in our quest for establishing processes-beyond purely chemical-discovered in other electrolytes.

We have recently shown that the cosmic ray energy distributions as detected on earthbound, low flying balloon or high flying satellite detectors can be computed by employing the heats of evaporation of high energy particles from astrophysical sources. In this manner, the experimentally well known power law exponents of the cosmic ray energy distribution have been theoretically computed as 2.701178 for the case of ideal Bose statistics, 3.000000 for the case of ideal Boltzmann statistics and 3.151374 for the case of ideal Fermi statistics. By "ideal" we mean virtually zero mass (i.e. ultra-relativistic) and noninteracting. These results are in excellent agreement with the experimental indices of 2.7 with a shift to 3.1 at the high energy ~ PeV "knee" in the energy distribution. Our purpose here is to discuss the nature of cosmic ray power law exponents obtained by employing conventional thermal quantum field theoretical models such as quantum chromodynamics to the cosmic ray sources in a thermodynamic scheme wherein gamma and zeta function regulation is employed. The key reason for the surprising accuracy of the ideal boson and ideal fermion cases resides in the asymptotic freedom or equivalently the Feynman "parton" structure of the ultra-high energy tails of spectral functions.

Charge fluctuations in nano-circuits with capacitor components are shown to give rise to a novel type of long-ranged interaction, which co-exist with the regular Casimir/van der Waals force. The developed theory distinguishes between thermal and quantum mechanical effects, and it is applied to capacitors involving graphene nanostructures. The charge fluctuations mechanism is captured via the capacitance of the system with geometrical and quantum mechanical components. The dependence on the distance separation, temperature, size, and response properties of the system shows that this type of force can have a comparable and even dominant effect to the Casimir interaction. Our results strongly indicate that fluctuations induced interactions due to various thermodynamic quantities can have important thermal and quantum mechanical contributions at the micro- and nanoscale.

The magnitude of the work function to bring an electron from a metal into the exclusion zone water layer making hydrophilic contact with the metallic interface is theoretically computed. The agreement with recent experimental measurements is satisfactory.

The magnetic monopole appears in theories of spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking and its existence would explain the quantisation of electric charge. MoEDAL is the latest approved LHC experiment, designed to search directly for monopoles produced in high-energy collisions. It has now taken data for the first time. The MoEDAL detectors are based on two complementary techniques: nuclear-track detectors are sensitive to the high-ionisation signature expected from a monopole, and the magnetic monopole trapper (MMT) relies on the stopping and trapping of monopoles inside an aluminium array which is then analysed with a superconducting magnetometer. The first results obtained with the MoEDAL MMT test array deployed in 2012 are presented. This experiment probes monopoles carrying a multiple of the fundamental unit magnetic charge for the first time at the LHC.

To exploit the full potential of radio measurements of cosmic-ray air showers at MHz frequencies, a detector timing synchronization within 1 ns is needed. Large distributed radio detector arrays such as the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) rely on timing via the Global Positioning System (GPS) for the synchronization of individual detector station clocks. Unfortunately, GPS timing is expected to have an accuracy no better than about 5 ns. In practice, in particular in AERA, the GPS clocks exhibit drifts on the order of tens of ns. We developed a technique to correct for the GPS drifts, and an independent method is used to cross-check that indeed we reach a nanosecond-scale timing accuracy by this correction. First, we operate a ``beacon transmitter'' which emits defined sine waves detected by AERA antennas recorded within the physics data. The relative phasing of these sine waves can be used to correct for GPS clock drifts. In addition to this, we observe radio pulses emitted by commercial airplanes, the position of which we determine in real time from Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcasts intercepted with a software-defined radio. From the known source location and the measured arrival times of the pulses we determine relative timing offsets between radio detector stations. We demonstrate with a combined analysis that the two methods give a consistent timing calibration with an accuracy of 2 ns or better. Consequently, the beacon method alone can be used in the future to continuously determine and correct for GPS clock drifts in each individual event measured by AERA.