Dr Farrukh Azfar

Abstract:

A study of event-shape observables in proton-antiproton collisions at √s=1.96TeV is presented. The data for this analysis were recorded by the CDF II Detector at the Tevatron Collider. The variables studied are the transverse thrust and thrust minor, both defined in the plane perpendicular to the beam direction. The observables are measured using energies from unclustered calorimeter cells. In addition to studies of the differential distributions, we present the dependence of event-shape mean values on the leading-jet transverse energy. Data are compared with pythia Tune A and to resummed parton-level predictions that were matched to fixed-order results at next-to-leading-order (NLO) accuracy (NLO+NLL). Predictions from pythia Tune A agree fairly well with the data. However, the underlying event contributes significantly to these observables, making it difficult to make direct comparisons to the NLO+NLL predictions, which do not account for the underlying event. To overcome this difficulty, we introduce a new observable, a weighted difference of the mean values of the thrust and thrust minor, which is less sensitive to the underlying event, allowing for a comparison with NLO+NLL. Both pythia Tune A and the NLO+NLL calculations agree well within the 20% theoretical uncertainty with the data for this observable, indicating that perturbative QCD successfully describes shapes of the hadronic final states. © 2011 American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We report on the first measurement of the angular distributions of final state electrons in pp̄→γ*/Z→e +e-+X events produced in the Z boson mass region at √s=1.96TeV. The data sample collected by the CDF II detector for this result corresponds to 2.1fb-1 of integrated luminosity. The angular distributions are studied as a function of the transverse momentum of the electron-positron pair and show good agreement with the Lam-Tung relation, consistent with a spin-1 description of the gluon, and demonstrate that, at high values of the transverse momentum, Z bosons are produced via quark-antiquark annihilation and quark-gluon Compton processes. © 2011 American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We present a new measurement of the inclusive forward-backward tt̄ production asymmetry and its rapidity and mass dependence. The measurements are performed with data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.3fb -1 of pp̄ collisions at √s=1.96TeV, recorded with the CDF-II Detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. Significant inclusive asymmetries are observed in both the laboratory frame and the tt̄ rest frame, and in both cases are found to be consistent with CP conservation under interchange of t and t̄. In the tt̄ rest frame, the asymmetry is observed to increase with the tt̄ rapidity difference, Δy, and with the invariant mass M tt̄ of the tt̄ system. Fully corrected parton-level asymmetries are derived in two regions of each variable, and the asymmetry is found to be most significant at large Δy and Mtt̄. For Mtt̄?450GeV/c2, the parton-level asymmetry in the tt̄ rest frame is Att̄=0.475±0.114 compared to a next-to-leading order QCD prediction of 0.088±0.013. © 2011 American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We present a measurement of the top quark mass in the lepton+jets and dilepton channels of tt̄ decays using the data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.6fb-1 of pp̄ collisions at Tevatron with √s=1.96TeV, collected with the CDF II detector. We construct templates of two reconstructed top quark masses from different jets-to-quarks combinations and the invariant mass of two jets from the W decays in the lepton+jets channel, and a reconstructed top quark mass and mT2, a variable related to the transverse mass in events with two missing particles, in the dilepton channel. The simultaneous fit of the templates from signal and background events in the lepton+jets and dilepton channels to the data yields a measured top quark mass of Mtop=172.1±1.1(stat)±0. 9(syst)GeV/c2. © 2011 American Physical Society.