Professor Amanda Cooper-Sarkar

Abstract:

A search for events containing an isolated electron or muon and missing transverse momentum produced in e±p collisions is performed with the H1 and ZEUS detectors at HERA. The data were taken in the period 1994-2007 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 0.98 fb-1. The observed event yields are in good overall agreement with the Standard Model prediction, which is dominated by single W production. In the e+p data, at large hadronic transverse momentum PTX < 25GeV, a total of 23 events are observed compared to a prediction of 14.0 ±1.9. The total single W boson production cross section is measured as 1.06 ± 0.16 (stat.) ± 0.07 (sys.) pb, in agreement with an Standard Model (SM) expectation of 1.26 ± 0.19 pb.

Abstract:

Charm production in deep inelastic scattering has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 120 pb-1. The hadronic decay channels D+ → KS0π+, Λc+ → pKS0 and Λc+ → Λπ+, and their charge conjugates, were reconstructed. The presence of a neutral strange hadron in the final state reduces the combinatorial background and extends the measured sensitivity into the low transverse momentum region. The kinematic range is 0 < pT (D+,Λc+ ) < 10GeV, |η(D+,Λc+ )| < 1.6, 1.5 < Q2 < 1000GeV2 and 0.02 < y < 0.7. Inclusive and differential cross sections for the production of D+ mesons are compared to next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. The fraction of c quarks hadronising into Λc+ baryons is extracted.

Abstract:

The proton-dissociative diffractive photoproduction of J/ψ mesons has been studied in ep collisions with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 112 pb^-1. The cross section is presented as a function of the photon-proton centre-ofmass energy and of the squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex. The results are compared to perturbative QCD calculations.