Accelerator Neutrinos

Abstract:

The production of charged pions in minimum bias p+C interactions is studied using a sample of 377000 inelastic events obtained with the NA49 detector at the CERN SPS at 158 GeV/c beam momentum. The data cover a phase space area ranging from 0 to 1.8 GeV/c in transverse momentum and from -0.1 to 0.5 in Feynman xF. Inclusive invariant cross sections are given on a grid of 270 bins per charge, thus offering for the first time a dense coverage of the projectile hemisphere and of the cross-over region into the target fragmentation zone. © 2007 Springer-Verlag.

Abstract:

We report a measurement of the top-quark mass, Mt, in the dilepton decay channel of tt̄→b ′+ν ′b̄ -ν̄ using an integrated luminosity of 1.0fb-1 of pp̄ collisions collected with the CDF II detector. We apply a method that convolutes a leading-order matrix element with detector resolution functions to form event-by-event likelihoods; we have enhanced the leading-order description to describe the effects of initial-state radiation. The joint likelihood is the product of the likelihoods from 78 candidate events in this sample, which yields a measurement of Mt=164.5±3.9(stat.)±3.9(syst.)GeV/c2, the most precise measurement of Mt in the dilepton channel. © 2007 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We report an upper limit on the fraction of V+A current, fV+A, in top-quark decays, using approximately 700pb-1 of pp̄ collisions at s=1.96TeV acquired by the upgraded Collider Detector at Fermilab. For the decay t→Wb→ νb (where =e or μ), the invariant mass of the charged lepton and the bottom quark jet is sensitive to the polarization of the W boson. We determine fV+A=-0.06±0.25 given a top-quark mass of 175GeV/c2. We set an upper limit on fV+A of 0.29 at the 95% confidence level, an improvement by a factor of 2 on the previous best direct limit. © 2007 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

HARP is a high-statistics, large solid angle experiment to measure hadron production using proton and pion beams with momenta between 1.5 and 15 GeV/c impinging on many different solid and liquid targets from low to high Z. The experiment, located in the T9 beam of the CERN PS, took data in 2001 and 2002. For the measurement of momenta of produced particles and for the identification of particle types, the experiment includes a large-angle spectrometer, based on a Time Projection Chamber and a system of Resistive Plate Chambers, and a forward spectrometer equipped with a set of large drift chambers, a threshold Cherenkov detector, a time-of-flight wall and an electromagnetic calorimeter. The large angle system uses a solenoidal magnet, while the forward spectrometer is based on a dipole magnet. Redundancy in particle identification has been sought, to enable the cross-calibration of efficiencies and to obtain a few percent overall accuracy in the cross-section measurements. Detector construction, operation and initial physics performances are reported. In addition, the full chain for data recording and analysis, from trigger to the software framework, is described. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

A search for a manifestly exotic S=-2 baryon state decaying to Ξ-π-, and its neutral partner decaying to Ξ-π+, has been performed using 220pb-1 of pp̄ collisions at s=1.96TeV collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. The Ξ- trajectories were measured in a silicon tracker before their decay, resulting in a sample with low background and excellent position resolution. No evidence was found for S=-2 pentaquark candidates in the invariant mass range of 1600-2100MeV/c2. Upper limits on the product of pentaquark production cross section times its branching fraction to Ξ-π+,-, relative to the cross section of the well-established Ξ(1530) resonance, are presented for neutral and doubly negative candidates with pT>2GeV/c and |y|<1 as a function of pentaquark mass. At 1862MeV/c2, these upper limits for neutral and doubly negative final states were found to be 3.2% and 1.7% at the 90% confidence level, respectively. © 2007 The American Physical Society.