Abstract: Momentum measurements for very high momentum charged particles, such as muons from electroweak vector boson decays, are particularly susceptible to charge-dependent curvature biases that arise from misalignments of tracking detectors. Low momentum charged particles used in alignment procedures have limited sensitivity to coherent displacements of such detectors, and therefore are unable to fully constrain these misalignments to the precision necessary for studies of electroweak physics. Additional approaches are therefore required to understand and correct for these effects. In this paper the curvature biases present at the LHCb detector are studied using the pseudomass method in proton-proton collision data recorded at centre of mass energy root s = 13 TeV during 2016, 2017 and 2018. The biases are determined using Z -> mu(+)mu(-) decays in intervals defined by the data-taking period, magnet polarity and muon direction. Correcting for these biases, which are typically at the 10(-4) GeV-1 level, improves the Z -> mu(+)mu(-) mass resolution by roughly 18% and eliminates several pathological trends in the kinematic-dependence of the mean dimuon invariant mass.

Abstract: The identification of helium nuclei at LHCb is achieved using a method based on measurements of ionisation losses in the silicon sensors and timing measurements in the Outer Tracker drift tubes. The background from photon conversions is reduced using the RICH detectors and an isolation requirement. The method is developed using pp collision data at root s = 13 TeV recorded by the LHCb experiment in the years 2016 to 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.5 fb(-1). A total of around 10(5) helium and antihelium candidates are identified with negligible background contamination. The helium identification efficiency is estimated to be approximately 50% with a corresponding background rejection rate of up to O(10(12)). These results demonstrate the feasibility of a rich programme of measurements of QCD and astrophysics interest involving light nuclei.

Abstract: For accurate determination of particle masses accurate knowledge of the momentum scale of the detectors is crucial. The procedure used to calibrate the momentum scale of the LHCb spectrometer is described and illustrated using the performance obtained with an integrated luminosity of 1.6 fb-1 collected during 2016 in pp running. The procedure uses large samples of J/qi -> mu+mu- and B+ -> J/qiK+ decays and leads to a relative accuracy of 3 x 10-4 on the momentum scale.

Abstract: Purpose: There are perineal templates for interstitial implants such as MUPIT and Syed applicators. Their limitations are the intracavitary component deficit and the necessity to use computed tomography (CT) for treatment planning since both applicators are non-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) compatibles. To overcome these problems, a new template named Template Benidorm (TB) has been recently developed. Titanium needles are usually reconstructed based on their own artifacts, mainly in T1-weighted sequence, using the void on the tip as the needle tip position. Nevertheless, patient tissues surrounding the needles present heterogeneities that complicate the accurate identification of these artifact patterns. The purpose of this work is to improve the titanium needle reconstruction uncertainty for the TB case using a simple method based on the free needle lengths and typical MRI pellets markers. Material and methods: The proposed procedure consists on the inclusion of three small A-vitamin pellets (hyper-intense on MRI images) compressed by both applicator plates defining the central plane of the plate's arrangement. The needles used are typically 20 cm in length. For each needle, two points are selected defining the straight line. From such line and the plane equations, the intersection can be obtained, and using the free length (knowing the offset distance), the coordinates of the needle tip can be obtained. The method is applied in both T1W and T2W acquisition sequences. To evaluate the inter-observer variation of the method, three implants of T1W and another three of T2W have been reconstructed by two different medical physicists with experience on these reconstructions. Results and conclusions: The differences observed in the positioning were significantly smaller than 1 mm in all cases. The presented algorithm also allows the use of only T2W sequence either for contouring or reconstruction purposes. The proposed method is robust and independent of the visibility of the artifact at the tip of the needle.

Abstract: A production representation of partial-wave S matrix is utilized to construct low-energy elastic pion-nucleon scattering amplitudes from cuts and poles on complex Riemann sheets. Among them, the contribution of left-hand cuts is estimated using the O (p(3)) results obtained in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory within the extendedon-nass-shell scheme. By fitting to data on partial-wave phase shifts, it is indicated that the existences of hidden poles in S-11 and P-11 channels, as conjectured in our previous paper [Eur. Phys. J. C, 78(7): 543 (2018)], are firmly established. Specifically, the pole mass of the S-11 hidden resonance is determined to be (895 +/- 81)-(164 +/- 23)i MeV, whereas, the virtual pole in the P-11 channel locates at (966 +/- 18) MeV. It is found that analyses at the O (p(3)) level improves significantly the fit quality, comparing with the previous O (p(2)) one. Quantitative studies with cautious physical discussions are also conducted for the other S- and P-wave channels.