Observation of the March maximum in the daemon flux from near-Earth orbits in the year 2005: new efforts and new effects

Abstract

The experiments of 2005 aimed at detection of low-velocity (~10-15 km s -1 ) daemons falling on to the Earth's surface from Near-Earth, Almost Circular Heliocentric Orbits (NEACHOs) have corroborated once more the existence of the March maximum in their flux by raising its confidence level to 99.99%. In addition, these experiments permitted us to identify several FEU-167-1-type PM tubes, with a few times thicker inner Al coating, which appear to be capable to detect, without any scintillator, the crossing of negatively charged daemons. As a result, detection efficiency increases tens of times, thus raising the measured level of the March daemon flux to f ⊕ ×10 -7 cm -2 s -1 .

Towards Special Daemon-Sensitive Electron Multiplier: Positive Outcome of March 2009 Experiment

“…Our analysis of the possible factors which could activate a PMT to a daemon crossing it ended up with the simplest assumption [10] that in passing through vacuum in the PM tube the c-daemon can not only conserve its negative charge |Z eff | ≥ 1 but even increase it, because it does not capture a new nucleus in vacuum. Therefore, in passing through the PMT wall, such an object is capable of capturing a nucleus, accompanied by electron emission, already in moving a distance ≤1 µm.…”

“…Indeed, induction measurements revealed [10] that some of the FEU-167-1 multipliers ( Fig. 1) most sensitive to daemon passage have, by and large, a noticeably thicker (up to ~0.5 µm) Al mirror coating on the internal (cylindrical side and conical rear) surfaces of the cathode section of their glass bulb, for the standard average thickness of ~0.1 µm.…”

“…To compare the results, we conducted in March 2009 experiments with the old, daemonsensitive bottom FEU-167-1 (this is No00099 in the former module 3 [10] used also in Baksan [12] in 2005-2006 (presently this is module 23), and No00068 in the former module 4 (presently module 3), see Table 1), as well as with two modified TEU-167; the latter differ from the FEU-167 tubes in a continuous (including the front disc also) internal, fairly thick (up to ~0.5 µm) Al coating (the bottom instruments in modules 1 and 4). Figure 1.…”

“…The distance from the ZnS(Ag) layer to the screen of the top (triggering) FEU-167 was 22 cm, and that to the screen of the bottom PMT covered with aluminum-coated Lavsan film was 29 cm. Just as before [5,10,13], the scintillation screen was mounted inside a tinned-iron sheet cubic box, 51 cm on a side, whose top lid (intended to enhance on purpose the detector asymmetry with respect to the up/down direction [5]) was made of two sheets of black paper. To reduce the number of signals from these 'noisy' FEU-167-1 (in the period from 24 February to 8 March, 2009 (285 h altogether), each of these PMTs produced about 970 double events) whose face screens were made from K-containing C-52-1 glass ( The results of the present experiment are summed up in the two last lines of Table 1.…”

“…We encountered a lack of reproducibility of our first positive results of March 2000 already in April-May 2000. Only one year later did we understand [13] that it originated from the half-year variation in the daemon flux, which provided an insight [6,10,12,13] into the key part played by celestial mechanics in the creation, evolution, and buildup of the daemon a To avoid ambiguities, we have to note the N(∆t) given in [5] (Fig. 2) contains some events with HPSs in the second trace, while N(∆t) in [13] (Fig.…”