Professor Amanda Cooper-Sarkar

Abstract:

Measurements of fiducial cross sections for the electroweak production of two jets in association with a Z-boson are presented. The measurements are performed using 20.3 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data collected at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s)=8 TeV by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The electroweak component is extracted by a fit to the dijet invariant mass distribution in a fiducial region chosen to enhance the electroweak contribution over the dominant background in which the jets are produced via the strong interaction. The electroweak cross sections measured in two fiducial regions are in good agreement with the Standard Model expectations and the background-only hypothesis is rejected with significance above the 5 sigma level. The electroweak process includes the vector boson fusion production of a Z-boson and the data are used to place limits on anomalous triple gauge boson couplings. In addition, measurements of cross sections and differential distributions for inclusive Z-boson-plus-dijet production are performed in five fiducial regions, each with different sensitivity to the electroweak contribution. The results are corrected for detector effects and compared to predictions from the SHERPA and POWHEG event generators.

Abstract:

© 2014, The Author(s).Abstract: The production of beauty and charm quarks in ep interactions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA for exchanged four-momentum squared 5 < Q2< 1000 GeV2 using an integrated luminosity of 354 pb−1. The beauty and charm content in events with at least one jet have been extracted using the invariant mass of charged tracks associated with secondary vertices and the decay-length significance of these vertices. Differential cross sections as a function of Q2, Bjorken x, jet trans- verse energy and pseudorapidity were measured and compared with next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. The beauty and charm contributions to the proton structure functions were extracted from the double-differential cross section as a function of x and Q2. The running beauty-quark mass, mb at the scale mb, was determined from a QCD fit at next-to-leading order to HERA data for the first time and found to be mb(mb) = 4.07 ± 0.14 (fit)− 0.07+ 0.01(mod.)− 0.00+ 0.05(param.)− 0.05+ 0.08(theo.) GeV.

Abstract:

Abstract: The production of beauty and charm quarks in ep interactions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA for exchanged four-momentum squared 5 < Q2< 1000 GeV2using an integrated luminosity of 354 pb−1. The beauty and charm content in events with at least one jet have been extracted using the invariant mass of charged tracks associated with secondary vertices and the decay-length significance of these vertices. Differential cross sections as a function of Q2, Bjorken x, jet trans- verse energy and pseudorapidity were measured and compared with next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. The beauty and charm contributions to the proton structure functions were extracted from the double-differential cross section as a function of x and Q2. The running beauty-quark mass, mbat the scale mb, was determined from a QCD fit at next-to-leading order to HERA data for the first time and found to be mb(mb) = 4.07 ± 0.14 (fit)− 0.07+ 0.01(mod.)− 0.00+ 0.05(param.)− 0.05+ 0.08(theo.) GeV.

Abstract:

© 2014, CERN. Measurements of differential production cross-sections of a Z boson in association with b-jets in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV are reported. The data analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb^-1 recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Particle-level cross-sections are determined for events with a Z boson decaying into an electron or muon pair, and containing b-jets. For events with at least one b-jet, the cross-section is presented as a function of the Z boson transverse momentum and rapidity, together with the inclusive b-jet cross-section as a function of b-jet transverse momentum, rapidity and angular separations between the b-jet and the Z boson. For events with at least two b-jets, the cross-section is determined as a function of the invariant mass and angular separation of the two highest transverse momentum b-jets, and as a function of the Z boson transverse momentum and rapidity. Results are compared to leading-order and next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations.