Particle accelerators are used in a wide variety of fields, ranging from medicine and biology to high-energy physics. The accelerating fields in conventional accelerators are limited to a few tens of MeV m(-1), owing to material breakdown at the walls of the structure. Thus, the production of energetic particle beams currently requires large-scale accelerators and expensive infrastructures. Laser-plasma accelerators have been proposed as a next generation of compact accelerators because of the huge electric fields they can sustain (>100 GeV m(-1)). However, it has been difficult to use them efficiently for applications because they have produced poor-quality particle beams with large energy spreads, owing to a randomization of electrons in phase space. Here we demonstrate that this randomization can be suppressed and that the quality of the electron beams can be dramatically enhanced. Within a length of 3 mm, the laser drives a plasma bubble that traps and accelerates plasma electrons. The resulting electron beam is extremely collimated and quasi-monoenergetic, with a high charge of 0.5 nC at 170 MeV.

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micrOMEGAs 2.0 is a code which calculates the relic density of a stable massive particle in an arbitrary model. The underlying assumption is that there is a conservation law like R-parity in supersymmetry which guarantees the stability of the lightest odd particle. The new physics model must be incorporated in the notation of CalcHEP, a package for the automatic generation of squared matrix elements. Once this is done, all annihilation and coannihilation channels are included automatically in any model. Cross-sections at v = 0, relevant for indirect detection of dark matter, are also computed automatically. The package includes three sample models: the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), the MSSM with complex phases and the NMSSM. Extension to other models, including non supersymmetric models, is described.

We present a new module of the micrOMEGAs package for the calculation of WIMP-nuclei elastic scattering cross sections relevant for the direct detection of dark matter through its interaction with nuclei in a large detector. With this new module, the computation of the direct detection rate is performed automatically for a generic model of new physics which contains a WIMP candidate. This model needs to be implemented within micrOMEGAs 2.2.1 Here we use χ to designate the DM candidate whether a fermion, scalar or vector boson.

We present a code that calculates the relic density of the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) in the minimal supersymmetric standard model. All tree-level processes for the annihilation of the LSP are included as well as all possible coannihilation processes with neutralinos, charginos, sleptons, squarks and gluinos. In all we have included over 2800 processes not counting charged conjugate states. The cross-sections extracted from CompHEP are calculated exactly. Relativistic formulae for the thermal average are used and care is taken to handle poles and thresholds by adopting specific integration routines. The input parameters can be either the soft SUSY parameters in a general MSSM or the five parameters of a SUGRA model. A link with ISASUGRA/ISAJET allows to calculate the parameters of the MSSM at the weak scale for an input at the GUT scale. The Higgs masses are calculated with FeynHiggsFast. Routines calculating (g − 2) µ and b → sγ are also included.

Energy spectra of ions and fast electrons accelerated by a channeling laser pulse in near-critical plasma are studied using three-dimensional (3D) Particle-In-Cell simulations. The realistic 3D geometry of the simulations allows us to obtain not only the shape of the spectra, but also the absolute numbers of accelerated particles. It is shown that ions are accelerated by a collisionless radial expansion of the channel and have nonthermal energy spectra. The electron energy spectra instead are Boltzmann-like. The effective temperature Teff scales as I1/2. The form of electron spectra and Teff depends also on the length of the plasma channel. The major mechanism of electron acceleration in relativistic channels is identified. Electrons make transverse betatron oscillations in the self-generated static electric and magnetic fields. When the betatron frequency coincides with the laser frequency as witnessed by the relativistic electron, a resonance occurs, leading to an effective energy exchange between the laser and electron. This is the inverse free-electron laser mechanism. Electrons are accelerated at the betatron resonance when the laser power overcomes significantly the critical power for self-focusing.

An accord specifying a unique set of conventions for supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model together with generic file structures for 1) supersymmetric model specifications and input parameters, 2) electroweak scale supersymmetric mass and coupling spectra, and 3) decay tables is presented, to provide a universal interface between spectrum calculation programs, decay packages, and high energy physics event generators. 1 skands@fnal.gov. See home.fnal.gov/∼skands/slha/ for updates and examples.