Direct top-quark width measurement at CDF
Physical Review Letters 105:23 (2010)
Abstract:
We present a measurement of the top-quark width in the lepton+jets decay channel of tt̄ events produced in pp̄ collisions at Fermilab's Tevatron collider and collected by the CDF II detector. From a data sample corresponding to 4.3fb⊃-1 of integrated luminosity, we identify 756 candidate events. The top-quark mass and the mass of the hadronically decaying W boson that comes from the top-quark decay are reconstructed for each event and compared with templates of different top-quark widths (Γt) and deviations from nominal jet energy scale (ΔJES) to perform a simultaneous fit for both parameters, where ΔJES is used for the in situ calibration of the jet energy scale. By applying a Feldman-Cousins approach, we establish an upper limit at 95% confidence level (CL) of Γt<7.6GeV and a two-sided 68% CL interval of 0.3GeV<Γt<4.4GeV for a top-quark mass of 172.5GeV/c2, which are consistent with the standard model prediction. © 2010 The American Physical Society.CMS tracking performance results from early LHC operation
European Physical Journal C 70:4 (2010) 1165-1192
Abstract:
The first LHC pp collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 0.9 and 2.36 TeV were recorded by the CMS detector in December 2009. The trajectories of charged particles produced in the collisions were reconstructed using the all-silicon Tracker and their momenta were measured in the 3.8 T axial magnetic field. Results from the Tracker commissioning are presented including studies of timing, efficiency, signal-to-noise, resolution, and ionization energy. Reconstructed tracks are used to benchmark the performance in terms of track and vertex resolutions, reconstruction of decays, estimation of ionization energy loss, as well as identification of photon conversions, nuclear interactions, and heavy-flavour decays. © 2010 CERN for the benefit of the CMS collaboration.Erratum: Measurement of particle production and inclusive differential cross sections in pp¯ collisions at s=1.96 TeV [Phys. Rev. D 79, 112005 (2009)]
Physical Review D American Physical Society (APS) 82:11 (2010) 119903
Investigating the merger origin of early-type galaxies using ultra-deep optical images
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union 6:S277 (2010) 238-241
Abstract:
The mass assembly of galaxies leaves various imprints on their surroundings, such as shells, streams and tidal tails. The frequency and properties of these fine structures depend on the mechanism driving the mass assembly: e.g. a monolithic collapse, rapid cold-gas accretion followed by violent disk instabilities, minor mergers or major dry/wet mergers. Therefore, by studying the outskirts of galaxies, one can learn about their main formation mechanism. I present here our on-going work to characterize the outskirts of Early-Type Galaxies (ETGs), which are powerful probes at low redshift of the hierarchical mass assembly of galaxies. This work relies on ultra-deep optical images obtained at CFHT with the wide-field of view MegaCam camera of field and cluster ETGs obtained as part of the ATLAS3D and NGVS projects. State of the art numerical simulations are used to interpret the data. The images reveal a wealth of unknown faint structures at levels as faint as 29 mag arcsec-2 in the g-band. Initial results for two galaxies are presented here. © Copyright International Astronomical Union 2011.LOFT: A large observatory for x-ray timing
Proceedings of Science (2010)