LHCb

Abstract:

It is shown that the timing capabilities of the LHCb detector operated during the LHC Run 2 can be used to identify light ion particles with momenta of a few GeV/c. This is achieved by estimating the particle time of flight through a newly developed technique. A dedicated reconstruction procedure and a neural-network-based estimator of the particle speed have been developed to enable deuteron identification by suppressing the abundant background from lighter particles. The performance of the identification procedure is demonstrated in a sample of proton-helium collisions at sNN$$\sqrt{s_{\scriptscriptstyle \text {NN}}} $$ = 110 GeV, where the production of deuteron and triton particles is observed. This novel approach opens the way to study deuteron and antideuteron production for different collision systems at different energy scales, exploiting the rich dataset collected by the LHCb experiment.

Abstract:

The invariant-mass distribution for the coherent photoproduction of dipions in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions is measured using data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 224.6 ± 9.6μb−1, collected by the LHCb experiment in 2018 at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy sNN=5.02 TeV. In the mass range from 400 to 1200 MeV, the results are consistent with previous experiments, with the spectrum dominated by the ρ0 meson, which interferes with a nonresonant component, together with a smaller ω meson contribution. In an extended mass range up to 2300 MeV, models previously used do not fit the data and a consistent description requires the introduction of two resonances at masses of 1350 ± 20 MeV and 1790 ± 20 MeV with widths of about 300 MeV. The cross-section for each meson is measured differentially in twelve bins of rapidity from 2.05 to 4.90. The ρ0 cross-section increases with rapidity from about 400 to 600 mb and is measured with a typical precision of 8%, while the cross-section times branching fraction for the ω, ρ′ and ρ′′, with the statistical precision of the data, do not have a pronounced rapidity dependence and are between 0.5 and 1.5mb, with uncertainties up to 30%. A large nuclear suppression is observed for the ρ0 meson compared to expectations based on photoproduction on the proton that use the impulse approximation. Significant suppression is also observed compared to that predicted by elastic scattering described in the Glauber approach, or with the addition of inelastic scattering in a Gribov-Glauber model.

Abstract:

In response to the 2020 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) Feasibility Study was launched as an international collaboration hosted by CERN. This report describes the FCC integrated programme, which consists of two stages: an electron-positron collider (FCC-ee) in the first phase, serving as a high-luminosity Higgs, top, and electroweak factory; followed by a proton-proton collider (FCC-hh) at the energy frontier in the second phase. The FCC-ee is designed to operate at four key centre-of-mass energies: the Z pole, the WW pair production threshold, the ZH production peak, and the top/anti-top production threshold—each delivering the highest possible luminosities to four experiments. Over 15 years of operation, FCC-ee will produce more than 6 trillion Z bosons, 200 million WW pairs, nearly 3 million Higgs bosons, and 2 million top anti-top pairs. Precise energy calibration at the Z pole and WW threshold will be achieved through frequent resonant depolarisation of pilot bunches. The sequence of operation modes between the Z, WW, and ZH substages remains flexible. The FCC-hh will operate at a centre-of-mass energy of approximately 85 TeV—nearly an order of magnitude higher than the LHC—and is designed to deliver 5 to 10 times the integrated luminosity of the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC. Its mass reach for direct discovery extends to several tens of TeV. In addition to proton-proton collisions, the FCC-hh is capable of supporting ion-ion, ion-proton, and lepton-hadron collision modes. This second volume of the Feasibility Study Report presents the complete design of the FCC-ee collider, its operation and staging strategy, the full-energy booster and injector complex, required accelerator technologies, safety concepts, and technical infrastructure. It also includes the design of the FCC-hh hadron collider, development of high-field magnets, hadron injector options, and key technical systems for FCC-hh.

Abstract:

A new algorithm is developed to identify the flavour of neutral B mesons at production in pp collisions by utilising all tracks from the hadronisation process. The algorithm is calibrated separately for B0 and Bs0 mesons using B0 → J/ψK+π− and Bs0→Ds−π+ decays from pp collision data collected by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. This new algorithm improves the tagging power by 35% for B0 mesons and 20% for Bs0 mesons when compared to the combined performance of the existing LHCb flavour-tagging algorithms.