Professor Brian Foster OBE, FRS

Abstract:

A search for single-top production, ep → et X, has been made with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 130.1 pb-1. Events from both the leptonic and hadronic decay channels of the W boson resulting from the decay of the top quark were sought. For the leptonic mode, the search was made for events with isolated high-energy leptons and significant missing transverse momentum. For the hadronic decay mode, three-jet events in which two of the jets had an invariant mass consistent with that of the W were selected. No evidence for top production was found. The results are used to constrain single-top production via flavour-changing neutral current (FCNC) transitions. The ZEUS limit excludes a substantial region in the FCNC tuγ coupling not ruled out by other experiments. © 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

Abstract:

The subjet multiplicity has been measured in neutral current e+p interactions at Q2 > 125 GeV2 with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 38.6 pb-1. Jets were identified in the laboratory frame using the longitudinally invariant kT cluster algorithm. The number of jet-like substructures within jets, known as the subjet multiplicity, is defined as the number of clusters resolved in a jet by reapplying the jet algorithm at a smaller resolution scale ycut. Measurements of the mean subjet multiplicity, (nsbj), for jets with transverse energies ET,jet > 15 GeV are presented. Next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations describe the measurements well. The value of αs(MZ), determined from (nsbj) at ycut = 10-2 for jets with 25 < ET,jet < 71 GeV, is αs(MZ) = 0.1187 ± 0.0017(stat.)-0.0009+0.0024(syst.) -0.0076+0.0093(th.). © 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

Abstract:

Inclusive event-shape variables have been measured in the current region of the Breit frame for neutral current deep inelastic ep scattering using an integrated luminosity of 45.0 pb-1 collected with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The variables studied included thrust, jet broadening and invariant jet mass. The kinematic range covered was 10 < Q2 < 20480 GeV2 and 6 × 10-4 < x < 0.6, where Q2 is the virtuality of the exchanged boson and x is the Bjorken variable. The Q dependence of the shape variables has been used in conjunction with NLO perturbative calculations and the Dokshitzer-Webber non-perturbative corrections ('power corrections') to investigate the validity of this approach.

Abstract:

The cross sections for inelastic photoproduction of J/ψ and ψ′ mesons have been measured in ep collisions with the ZEUS detector at HERA, using an integrated luminosity of 38.0 pb-1. The events were required to have 0.1 < z < 0.9 and 50 < W < 180 GeV, where z is the fraction of the incident photon energy carried by the J/ψ in the proton rest frame and W is the photon-proton centre-of-mass energy. The ψ′ to J/ψ cross-section ratio was measured in the range 0.55 < z < 0.9. The J/ψ data, for various ranges of transverse momentum, are compared to theoretical models incorporating colour-singlet and colour-octet matrix elements. Predictions of a next-to-leading-order colour-singlet model give a good description of the data, although there is a large normalisation uncertainty. The J/ψ helicity distribution for z > 0.4 is compared to leading-order QCD predictions.