Professor Amanda Cooper-Sarkar

Abstract:

A measurement of the cross-section for Υ(1S)→μ+μ- production in proton-proton collisions at centre of mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The cross-section is measured as a function of the Υ(1S) transverse momentum in two bins of rapidity, |yΥ(1S)|<1.2 and 1.2<|yΥ(1S)|<2.4. The measurement requires that both muons have transverse momentum pTμ>4 GeV and pseudorapidity |ημ|<2.5 in order to reduce theoretical uncertainties on the acceptance, which depend on the poorly known polarisation. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 1.13 pb-1, collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The cross-section measurement is compared to theoretical predictions: it agrees to within a factor of two with a prediction based on the NRQCD model including colour-singlet and colour-octet matrix elements as implemented in Pythia while it disagrees by up to a factor of ten with the next-to-leading order prediction based on the colour-singlet model. © 2011 CERN.

Abstract:

The PDF4LHC group has benchmarked six modern PDF sets and used them to make predictions for W,Z prdocution and Higgs production at the LHC. The reasons why pre- dictions differ are examined and recent updates to the PDFs and their predictions are presented.

Abstract:

We compare predictions for high energy neutrino and anti-neutrino deep inelastic scattering cross-sections within the conventional DGLAP formalism of next-to-leading order QCD, using the latest parton distribution functions such as CT10, HERAPDF1.5 and MSTW08 and taking account of PDF uncertainties. From this we derive a benchmark cross-section and uncertainty which is consistent with the results obtained earlier using the ZEUS-S PDFs. We advocate the use of this for analysing data from neutrino telescopes, in order to facilitate comparison between their results.

Abstract:

Making use of 36 pb-1 of proton-proton collision data at √s = 7 TeV, the ATLAS Collaboration has performed a search for diphoton events with large missing transverse energy. Observing no excess of events above the Standard Model prediction, a 95% Confidence Level (CL) upper limit is set on the cross section for new physics of σ < 0.38-0.65 pb in the context of a generalised model of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking (GGM) with a bino-like lightest neutralino, and of σ < 0.18-0.23 pb in the context of a specific model with one universal extra dimension (UED). A 95% CL lower limit of 560 GeV, for bino masses above 50 GeV, is set on the GGM gluino mass, while a lower limit of 1/R > 961 GeV is set on the UED compactification radius R. These limits provide the most stringent tests of these models to date.

Abstract:

A search for long-lived charged particles reaching the muon spectrometer is performed using a data sample of 37 pb-1 from pp collisions at √s=7 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010. No excess is observed above the estimated background. Stable τ̃ sleptons are excluded at 95% CL up to a mass of 136 GeV, in GMSB models with N5=3, mmessenger=250 TeV, sign(μ)=1 and tanβ=5. Electroweak production of sleptons is excluded up to a mass of 110 GeV. Gluino R-hadrons in a generic interaction model are excluded up to masses of 530 GeV to 544 GeV depending on the fraction of R-hadrons produced as g̃-balls. © 2011 CERN.