Astronomical instrumentation

Abstract:

This Letter presents evidence for the associated production of a W boson and a top quark using 2.05 fb -1 of pp collision data at s=7TeV accumulated with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The analysis is based on the selection of the dileptonic final states with events featuring two isolated leptons, electron or muon, with significant transverse missing momentum and at least one jet. An approach based on boosted decision trees has been developed to improve the discrimination of single top-quark Wt events from background. A template fit to the final classifier distributions is performed to determine the cross-section. The result is incompatible with the background-only hypothesis at the 3.3σ level, the expected sensitivity assuming the Standard Model production rate being 3.4σ. The corresponding cross-section is determined and found to be σ Wt =16.8±2.9(stat)±4.9(syst)pb, in good agreement with the Standard Model expectation. From this result the CKM matrix element |Vtb|=1.03-0.19+0.16 is derived assuming that the Wt production through |V ts | and |V td | is small. © 2012 CERN.

Abstract:

A search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the H→WW({star operator})→ℓνℓν (ℓ=e, μ) decay mode is presented. The search is performed using proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 fb-1 at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected during 2011 with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess of events over the expected background is observed. An upper bound is placed on the Higgs boson production cross section as a function of its mass. A Standard Model Higgs boson with mass in the range between 133 GeV and 261 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level, while the expected exclusion range is from 127 GeV to 233 GeV. © 2012 CERN.

Abstract:

A search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the H→WW (⋆) →ℓνℓν (ℓ=e, μ) decay mode is presented. The search is performed using proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 fb -1 at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected during 2011 with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess of events over the expected background is observed. An upper bound is placed on the Higgs boson production cross section as a function of its mass. A Standard Model Higgs boson with mass in the range between 133 GeV and 261 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level, while the expected exclusion range is from 127 GeV to 233 GeV. © 2012 CERN.

Abstract:

As a demonstration of the capabilities of the new Oxford SWIFT integral field spectrograph, we present first observations for a set of 14 early-type galaxies in the core of the Coma cluster. Our data consist of I- and z-band spatially resolved spectroscopy obtained with the Oxford SWIFT spectrograph, combined with r-band photometry from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey archive for 14 early-type galaxies. We derive spatially resolved kinematics for all objects from observations of the calcium triplet absorption features at ∼8500Å. Using this kinematic information we classify galaxies as either fast rotators or slow rotators. We compare the fraction of fast and slow rotators in our sample, representing the densest environment in the nearby Universe, to results from the ATLAS3D survey, finding that the slow rotator fraction is ∼50per cent larger in the core of the Coma cluster than in the volume-limited ATLAS3D sample, a 1.2σ increase given our selection criteria. Comparing our sample to the Virgo cluster core only (which is 24 times less dense than the Coma core) we find no evidence of an increase in the slow rotator fraction. Combining measurements of the effective velocity dispersion σe with the photometric data we determine the Fundamental Plane for our sample of galaxies. We find that the use of the average velocity dispersion within 1 effective radius, σe, reduces the residuals by 13per cent with respect to comparable studies using central velocity dispersions, consistent with other recent integral field Fundamental Plane determinations. © 2012 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2012 RAS.