Search

The PandaX-4T liquid xenon detector at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory is used to measure the solar $^8$B neutrino flux by detecting neutrinos through coherent scattering with xenon nuclei. Data samples requiring the coincidence of scintillation and ionization signals (paired), as well as unpaired ionization-only signals (US2), are selected with energy threshold of approximately 1.1 keV (0.33 keV) nuclear recoil energy. Combining the commissioning run and the first science run of PandaX-4T, a total exposure of 1.25 and 1.04 tonne$\cdot$year are collected for the paired and US2, respectively. After unblinding, 3 and 332 events are observed with an expectation of 2.8$\pm$0.5 and 251$\pm$32 background events, for the paired and US2 data, respectively. A combined analysis yields a best-fit $^8$B neutrino signal of 3.5 (75) events from the paired (US2) data sample, with $\sim$37\% uncertainty, and the background-only hypothesis is disfavored at 2.64$\sigma$ significance. This gives a solar $^8$B neutrino flux of ($8.4\pm3.1$)$\times$10$^6$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, consistent with the standard solar model prediction. This is the first indication of solar $^8$B neutrino ``fog'' in a dark matter direct detection experiment.

We report the first search for the elastic scatterings between cosmic-ray boosted sub-MeV dark matter and electrons in the PandaX-4T liquid xenon experiment. Sub-MeV dark matter particles can be accelerated by scattering with electrons in the cosmic rays and produce detectable electron recoil signals in the detector. Using the commissioning data from PandaX-4T of 0.63~tonne$\cdot$year exposure, we set new constraints on DM-electron scattering cross sections for DM masses ranging from 10~eV/$c^2$ to 3~keV/$c^2$., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

Neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae are essential for the understanding of neutrino physics and stellar evolution. The dual-phase xenon dark matter detectors can provide a way to track explosions of galactic supernovae by detecting neutrinos through coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scatterings. In this study, a variation of progenitor masses as well as explosion models are assumed to predict the neutrino fluxes and spectra, which result in the number of expected neutrino events ranging from 6.6 to 13.7 at a distance of 10 kpc over a 10-second duration with negligible backgrounds at PandaX-4T. Two specialized triggering alarms for monitoring supernova burst neutrinos are built. The efficiency of detecting supernova explosions at various distances in the Milky Way is estimated. These alarms will be implemented in the real-time supernova monitoring system at PandaX-4T in the near future, providing the astronomical communities with supernova early warnings., Comment: 9 pages,6 figures

PandaX-4T experiment is a deep-underground dark matter direct search experiment that employs a dual-phase time projection chamber with a sensitive volume containing 3.7 tonne of liquid xenon. The detector of PandaX-4T is capable of simultaneously collecting the primary scintillation and ionization signals, utilizing their ratio to discriminate dark matter signals from background sources such as gamma rays and beta particles. The signal response model plays a crucial role in interpreting the data obtained by PandaX-4T. It describes the conversion from the deposited energy by dark matter interactions to the detectable signals within the detector. The signal response model is utilized in various PandaX-4T results. This work provides a comprehensive description of the procedures involved in constructing and parameter-fitting the signal response model for the energy range of approximately 1 keV to 25 keV for electronic recoils and 6 keV to 90 keV for nuclear recoils. It also covers the signal reconstruction, selection, and correction methods, which are crucial components integrated into the signal response model.

Real-world autonomous driving (AD) especially urban driving involves many corner cases. The lately released AD simulator CARLA v2 adds 39 common events in the driving scene, and provide more quasi-realistic testbed compared to CARLA v1. It poses new challenge to the community and so far no literature has reported any success on the new scenarios in V2 as existing works mostly have to rely on specific rules for planning yet they cannot cover the more complex cases in CARLA v2. In this work, we take the initiative of directly training a planner and the hope is to handle the corner cases flexibly and effectively, which we believe is also the future of AD. To our best knowledge, we develop the first model-based RL method named Think2Drive for AD, with a world model to learn the transitions of the environment, and then it acts as a neural simulator to train the planner. This paradigm significantly boosts the training efficiency due to the low dimensional state space and parallel computing of tensors in the world model. As a result, Think2Drive is able to run in an expert-level proficiency in CARLA v2 within 3 days of training on a single A6000 GPU, and to our best knowledge, so far there is no reported success (100\% route completion)on CARLA v2. We also propose CornerCase-Repository, a benchmark that supports the evaluation of driving models by scenarios. Additionally, we propose a new and balanced metric to evaluate the performance by route completion, infraction number, and scenario density, so that the driving score could give more information about the actual driving performance.

We propose a major upgrade to the existing PandaX-4T experiment in the China Jinping Underground Laboratory. The new experiment, PandaX-xT, will be a multi-ten-tonne liquid xenon, ultra-low background, and general-purpose observatory. The full-scaled PandaX-xT contains a 43-tonne liquid xenon active target. Such an experiment will significantly advance our fundamental understanding of particle physics and astrophysics. The sensitivity of dark matter direct detection will be improved by nearly two orders of magnitude compared to the current best limits, approaching the so-called "neutrino floor" for a dark matter mass above 10 GeV/$c^2$, providing a decisive test to the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle paradigm. By searching for the neutrinoless double beta decay of $^{136}$Xe isotope in the detector, the effective Majorana neutrino mass can be measured to a [10 -- 41] meV/$c^2$ sensitivity, providing a key test to the Dirac/Majorana nature of neutrino s. Astrophysical neutrinos and other ultra-rare interactions can also be measured and searched for with an unprecedented background level, opening up new windows of discovery. Depending on the findings, PandaX-xT will seek the next stage upgrade utilizing isotopic separation on natural xenon.

The proton-proton ($pp$) fusion chain dominates the neutrino production from the Sun. The uncertainty of the predicted $pp$ neutrino flux is at the sub-percent level, whereas that of the best measurement is $\mathcal{O}(10\%)$. In this paper, we present the first result to measure the solar $pp$ neutrinos in the electron recoil energy range from 24 to 144 keV, using the PandaX-4T commissioning data with 0.63 tonne$\times$year exposure. The $pp$ neutrino flux is determined to be $(8.0 \pm 3.9 \,{\rm{(stat)}} \pm 10.0 \,{\rm{(syst)}} )\times 10^{10}\, $$\rm{s}^{-1} \rm{cm}^{-2}$, consistent with Standard Solar Model and existing measurements, corresponding to a flux upper limit of $23.3\times 10^{10}\, $$\rm{s}^{-1} \rm{cm}^{-2}$ at 90\% C.L.., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

With the expanding reach of physics, xenon-based detectors such as PandaX-4T in the China Jinping Underground Laboratory aim to cover an energy range from sub-keV to multi-MeV. A linear response of the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) is required for both scintillation and electroluminescence signals. Through a dedicated bench test, we investigated the cause of the non-linear response in the Hamamatsu R11410-23 PMTs used in PandaX-4T. The saturation and suppression of the PMT waveform observed during the commissioning of PandaX-4T were caused by the high-voltage divider base. The bench test data validated the de-saturation algorithm used in the PandaX-4T data analysis. We also confirmed the improvement in linearity of a new PMT base design, which will be used to upgrade the PMT readout system in PandaX-4T., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures

$^{134}$Xe is a candidate isotope for neutrinoless double beta decay~($0\nu\beta\beta$) search. In addition, the two-neutrino case ($2\nu\beta\beta$) allowed by the Standard Model of particle physics has not yet been observed. Utilizing the 10.4% of $^{134}$Xe in the natural xenon in the PandaX-4T detector and its first 94.9-day exposure, we have established the most stringent constraints on $2\nu\beta\beta$ and $0\nu\beta\beta$ of $^{134}$Xe half-lives, with limits of $2.8\times10^{22}$ yr and $3.0\times10^{23}$ yr at 90% confidence level, respectively. The $2\nu\beta\beta$ ($0\nu\beta\beta$) limit surpasses the previously reported best result by a factor of 32 (2.7), highlighting the potential of large monolithic natural xenon detectors.

Signal reconstruction through software processing is a crucial component of the background and signal models in the PandaX-4T experiment, which is a multi-tonne dark matter direct search experiment. The accuracy of signal reconstruction is influenced by various detector artifacts, including noise, dark count of photomultiplier, impurity photoionization in the detector, and other relevant considerations. In this study, we present a detailed description of a semi-data-driven approach designed to simulate the signal waveform. This work provides a reliable model for the efficiency and bias of the signal reconstruction in the data analysis of PandaX-4T. By comparing critical variables which relate to the temporal shape and hit pattern of the signals, we demonstrate a good agreement between the simulation and data.

Batch Normalization (BN) has become an essential technique in contemporary neural network design, enhancing training stability. Specifically, BN employs centering and scaling operations to standardize features along the batch dimension and uses an affine transformation to recover features. Although standard BN has shown its capability to improve deep neural network training and convergence, it still exhibits inherent limitations in certain cases. Current enhancements to BN typically address only isolated aspects of its mechanism. In this work, we critically examine BN from a feature perspective, identifying feature condensation during BN as a detrimental factor to test performance. To tackle this problem, we propose a two-stage unified framework called Unified Batch Normalization (UBN). In the first stage, we employ a straightforward feature condensation threshold to mitigate condensation effects, thereby preventing improper updates of statistical norms. In the second stage, we unify various normalization variants to boost each component of BN. Our experimental results reveal that UBN significantly enhances performance across different visual backbones and different vision tasks, and notably expedites network training convergence, particularly in early training stages. Notably, our method improved about 3% in accuracy on ImageNet classification and 4% in mean average precision on both Object Detection and Instance Segmentation on COCO dataset, showing the effectiveness of our approach in real-world scenarios.

The PandaX-III experiment searches the neutrinoless double beta decay of $^{136}$Xe with a high-pressure xenon gaseous time projection chamber~(TPC). Thermal-bonding Micromegas modules are used for charge collection. Benefitting from the excellent energy resolution and imaging capability, the background rate can be significantly suppressed through the topological information of events. The technology is successfully demonstrated by a prototype detector. The final detector has been constructed. In this paper, we will report the status of the PandaX-III experiment, including the construction and commissioning of the final detector, and the Micromegas-based TPC performance test in the prototype detector.

Large language models (LLMs) have shown impressive capabilities across various natural language tasks. However, evaluating their alignment with human preferences remains a challenge. To this end, we propose a comprehensive human evaluation framework to assess LLMs' proficiency in following instructions on diverse real-world tasks. We construct a hierarchical task tree encompassing 7 major areas covering over 200 categories and over 800 tasks, which covers diverse capabilities such as question answering, reasoning, multiturn dialogue, and text generation, to evaluate LLMs in a comprehensive and in-depth manner. We also design detailed evaluation standards and processes to facilitate consistent, unbiased judgments from human evaluators. A test set of over 3,000 instances is released, spanning different difficulty levels and knowledge domains. Our work provides a standardized methodology to evaluate human alignment in LLMs for both English and Chinese. We also analyze the feasibility of automating parts of evaluation with a strong LLM (GPT-4). Our framework supports a thorough assessment of LLMs as they are integrated into real-world applications. We have made publicly available the task tree, TencentLLMEval dataset, and evaluation methodology which have been demonstrated as effective in assessing the performance of Tencent Hunyuan LLMs. By doing so, we aim to facilitate the benchmarking of advances in the development of safe and human-aligned LLMs.

We report results of a search for dark-matter-nucleon interactions via a dark mediator using optimized low-energy data from the PandaX-4T liquid xenon experiment. With the ionization-signal-only data and utilizing the Migdal effect, we set the most stringent limits on the cross section for dark matter masses ranging from 30~$\rm{MeV/c^2}$ to 2~$\rm{GeV/c^2}$. Under the assumption that the dark mediator is a dark photon that decays into scalar dark matter pairs in the early Universe, we rule out significant parameter space of such thermal relic dark-matter model., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We report the calibration of a gaseous Time Projection Chamber based on Micromegas charge readout modules with cosmic ray muons, utilizing their penetrating power and relatively uniform energy deposition per unit length. Muon events were selected through track reconstruction to characterize detector performances, such as the drift velocity, electron lifetime, detector gain, and electric field distortion. The evolution of detector performances with gas purities and electric drift fields over a 50-day data-taking cycle was measured by the muon calibration method. For instance, the drift velocity degraded with gas impurities from ${3.40\pm 0.07 ~ cm/\mu s}$ to ${3.06\pm 0.06 ~ cm/\mu s}$, and then recovered with gas purification. A ${^{137}Cs}$ calibration source was also placed inside the detector as a reference for muon calibrations.

Recently, the concept of holographic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is emerging as one of the promising technologies beyond massive MIMO. Many challenges need to be addressed to bring this novel idea into practice, including electromagnetic (EM)-compliant channel modeling and accurate performance evaluation. In this paper, an EM-compliant channel model is proposed for the holographic MIMO systems, which is able to model both the characteristics of the propagation channel and the non-ideal factors caused by mutual coupling at the transceivers, including the antenna pattern distortion and the decrease of antenna efficiency. Based on the proposed channel model, a more realistic performance evaluation is conducted to show the performance of the holographic MIMO system in both the single-user and the multi-user scenarios. Key challenges and future research directions are further provided based on the theoretical analyses and numerical results., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to be published in IEEE GLOBECOM 2022

In this paper, the channel of an indoor holographic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is measured. It is demonstrated through experiments for the first time that the spatial oversampling of holographic MIMO systems is able to increase the capacity of a wireless communication system significantly. However, the antenna efficiency is the most crucial challenge preventing us from getting the capacity improvement. An extended EM-compliant channel model is also proposed for holographic MIMO systems, which is able to take the non-isotropic characteristics of the propagation environment, the antenna pattern distortion, the antenna efficiency, and the polarization characteristics into consideration., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

We report a search for light dark matter produced through the cascading decay of $\eta$ mesons, which are created as a result of inelastic collisions between cosmic rays and Earth's atmosphere. We introduce a new and general framework, publicly accessible, designed to address boosted dark matter specifically, with which a full and dedicated simulation including both elastic and quasi-elastic processes of Earth attenuation effect on the dark matter particles arriving at the detector is performed. In the PandaX-4T commissioning data of 0.63 tonne$\cdot$year exposure, no significant excess over background is observed. The first constraints on the interaction between light dark matter generated in the atmosphere and nucleus through a light scalar mediator are obtained. The lowest excluded cross-section is set at $5.9 \times 10^{-37}{\rm cm^2}$ for dark matter mass of $0.1$ MeV$/c^2$ and mediator mass of 300 MeV$/c^2$. The lowest upper limit of $\eta$ to dark matter decay branching ratio is $1.6 \times 10^{-7}$., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

A steerable parametric loudspeaker array is known for its directivity and narrow beam width. However, it often suffers from the grating lobes due to periodic array distributions. Here we propose the array configuration of hyperuniform disorder, which is short-range random while correlated at large scales, as a promising alternative distribution of acoustic antennas in phased arrays. Angle-resolved measurements reveal that the proposed array suppresses grating lobes and maintains a minimal radiation region in the vicinity of the main lobe for the primary frequency waves. These distinctive emission features benefit the secondary frequency wave in canceling the grating lobes regardless of the frequencies of the primary waves. Besides that, the hyperuniform disordered array is duplicatable, which facilitates extra-large array design without any additional computational efforts.

The tracks left by charged particles in a gaseous time projection chamber~(TPC) incorporate important information about the interaction process and drift of electrons in gas. The electron diffusion information carried by the tracks is an effective signature to reconstruct $z_0$, the vertex position in drift direction at which the event takes place. In this paper, we propose to reconstruct $z_0$ with convolution neural network~(CNN) in the PandaX-III experiment. A CNN model VGGZ0net is built and validated with Monte Carlo simulation data. It gives $z_0$ with a 11~cm precision for the events above 2~MeV uniformly distributed along a drift distance of 120~cm, and then the electron lifetime can be deduced. The energy resolution of detector is significantly improved after the electron lifetime correction, i.e., from 10.1\% to 4.0\% FWHM at the Q-value of double beta decay of $^{136}$Xe for the scenario with an electron lifetime of 6.5~ms. The CNN model is also successfully applied to the experimental data of the PandaX-III prototype detector for $z_0$ reconstruction.

The tracks recorded by a gaseous detector provide a possibility for charged particle identification. For searching the neutrinoless double beta decay events of 136Xe in the PandaX-III experiment, we optimized the convolutional neural network based on the Monte Carlo simulation data to improve the signal-background discrimination power. EfficientNet is chosen as the baseline model and the optimization is performed by tuning the hyperparameters. In particular, the maximum discrimination power is achieved by optimizing the channel number of the top convolutional layer. In comparison with our previous work, the significance of discrimination has been improved by about 70%., Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures

We present the constraints on the axial-vector and pseudo-scalar mediated WIMP-nucleus interactions from the PandaX-4T experiment, using the data set corresponding to a total exposure of 0.63~tonne$\cdot$year. No significant signal excess is observed, and the most stringent upper limits to date on the spin-dependent WIMP-neutron scattering cross section are set at 90\% confidence level with the minimum WIMP-neutron scattering cross section of 5.8$\times 10^{-42}$\si{\cm^{2}} for WIMP mass of 40~\si{\GeV/}$c^2$. Exclusion limits on the axial-vector and pseudo-scalar simplified models are also derived.

Low radioactive material screening is becoming essential for rare event search experiments, such as neutrinoless double beta decay and dark matter searches in underground laboratories. A gaseous time projection chamber (TPC) can be used for such purposes with large active areas and high efficiency. A gaseous TPC with a Micromegas readout plane of approximately 20$\times$20 cm$^2$ is successfully constructed for surface alpha contamination measurements. We have characterized the energy resolution, gain stability, and tracking capability with calibration sources. With the unique track-related background suppression cuts of the gaseous TPC, we have established that the alpha background rate of the TPC is 0.13$\pm$0.03 $\mu$Bq/cm$^2$, comparable to the leading commercial solutions.

A search for interactions from solar $^8$B neutrinos elastically scattering off xenon nuclei using PandaX-4T commissioning data is reported. The energy threshold of this search is further lowered compared with the previous search for dark matter, with various techniques utilized to suppress the background that emerges from data with the lowered threshold. A blind analysis is performed on the data with an effective exposure of 0.48 tonne$\cdot$year, and no significant excess of events is observed. Among results obtained using the neutrino-nucleus coherent scattering, our results give the best constraint on the solar $^8$B neutrino flux. We further provide a more stringent limit on the cross section between dark matter and nucleon in the mass range from 3 to 9 GeV/c$^2$., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Neutron-induced nuclear recoil background is critical to the dark matter searches in the PandaX-4T liquid xenon experiment. This paper studies the feature of neutron background in liquid xenon and evaluates their contribution in the single scattering nuclear recoil events through three methods. The first method is fully Monte Carlo simulation based. The last two are data-driven methods that also use the multiple scattering signals and high energy signals in the data, respectively. In the PandaX-4T commissioning data with an exposure of 0.63 tonne-year, all these methods give a consistent result that there are $1.15\pm0.57$ neutron-induced background in dark matter signal region within an approximated nuclear recoil energy window between 5 and 100 keV., Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables

We report a search on a sub-MeV fermionic dark matter absorbed by electrons with an outgoing active neutrino using the 0.63 tonne-year exposure collected by PandaX-4T liquid xenon experiment. No significant signals are observed over the expected background. The data are interpreted into limits to the effective couplings between such dark matter and electrons. For axial-vector or vector interactions, our sensitivity is competitive in comparison to existing astrophysical bounds on the decay of such dark matter into photon final states. In particular, we present the first direct detection limits for an axial-vector (vector) interaction which are the strongest in the mass range from 25 to 45 (35 to 50) keV/c$^2$.

This paper describes results on R&D of an economical and efficient cryogenic system prototype for future liquid xenon detector. The test module of the prototype has a "cold head" attached to a copper rod, which is specially designed to transport heat loads to a free-boiling liquid nitrogen bath. The performance of the test module and commercial refrigerators is compared. The module with an optimized copper rod has demonstrated more than 1500W cooling power at 178K.The temperature of the "cold head" can be kept stable with an error of 0.02K, its fluctuation is within 0.1K., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures

Compared with the signature of dark matter elastic scattering off nuclei, the absorption of fermionic dark matter by nuclei opens up a new searching channel for light dark matter with a characteristic monoenergetic signal. In this Letter, we explore the $95.0$-day data from the PandaX-4T commissioning run and report the first dedicated searching results of the fermionic dark matter absorption signal through a neutral current process. No significant signal was found, and the lowest limit on the dark matter-nucleon interaction cross section is set to be $1.5\times10^{-50}$ cm$^2$ for a fermionic dark matter mass of $40$ MeV/$c^2$ with 90\% confidence level., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

Precise measurement of two-neutrino double beta decay (DBD) half-life is an important step for the searches of Majorana neutrinos with neutrinoless double beta decay. We report the measurement of DBD half-life of $^{136}$Xe using the PandaX-4T dual-phase Time Projection Chamber (TPC) with 3.7-tonne natural xenon and the first 94.9-day physics data release. The background model in the fiducial volume is well constrained in situ by events in the outer active region. With a $^{136}$Xe exposure of 15.5 kg-year, we establish the half-life as $2.27 \pm 0.03 (stat.)\pm 0.10 (syst.)\times 10^{21}$ years. This is the first DBD half-life measurement with natural xenon and demonstrates the physics capability of a large-scale liquid xenon TPC in the field of rare event searches., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

In the two-component Majorana dark matter model, one dark matter particle can scatter off the target nuclei, and turn into a slightly heavier component. In the framework of a simplified model with a vector boson mediator, both the tree-level and loop-level processes contribute to the signal in direct detection experiment. In this paper, we report the search results for such dark matter from PandaX-II experiment, using total data of the full 100.7 tonne$\cdot$day exposure. No significant excess is observed, so strong constraints on the combined parameter space of mediator mass and dark matter mass are derived. With the complementary search results from collider experiments, a large range of parameter space can be excluded.

Acrylic is a popular structural material in experiments requiring low background because of its radio-purity, machinability, and mechanical strength. However, its porosity may cause significant gas absorption and influence the detector stability in the long term. The interaction between acrylic and other detector materials becomes one of the key concerns in the detector design. In this paper, we carry out an experiment to measure quantitatively the absorption process of high-pressure xenon gas into acrylic. A specific setup is designed for the measurement, and systematic measurements are done to obtain a result of the absorption amount: 0.98 g xenon into 332 g of acrylic.

We report a novel search for the cosmic ray boosted dark matter using the 100~tonne$\cdot$day full data set of the PandaX-II detector located at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory. With the extra energy gained from the cosmic rays, sub-GeV dark matter particles can produce visible recoil signals in the detector. The diurnal modulations in rate and energy spectrum are utilized to further enhance the signal sensitivity. Our result excludes the dark matter-nucleon elastic scattering cross section between 10$^{-31}$cm$^{2}$ and 10$^{-28}$cm$^{2}$ for a dark matter masses from 0.1 MeV/$c^2$ to 0.1 GeV/$c^2$, with a large parameter space previously unexplored by experimental collaborations., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. New constraints adopted a CRDM energy cutoff at 0.2 GeV, and some uncertainties from the cosmic ray propagation model and dark matter density are studied