Abstract: This Letter presents a search for new resonances with mass larger than 250 GeV, decaying to a Z boson and a photon. The dataset consists of an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1) of pp collisions collected at root s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The Z bosons are identified through their decays either to charged, light, lepton pairs (e(+) e(-), mu(+) mu(-)) or to hadrons. The data are found to be consistent with the expected background in the whole mass range investigated and upper limits are set on the production cross section times decay branching ratio to Z gamma of a narrow scalar boson with mass between 250 GeV and 2.75 TeV.

Abstract: A search for the CP-violating strong decays eta -> pi(+)pi(-) and eta ' (958) -> pi(+)pi(-) has been performed using approximately 2.5 x 10(7) events of each of the decays D+ -> pi(+)pi(+)pi(-) and D-s(+) -> pi(+)pi(+)pi(-), recorded by the LHCb experiment. The data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb(-1) of pp collision data recorded during LHC Run 1 and 0.3fb(-1) recorded in Run 2. No evidence is seen for D-(s)(+) -> pi(+)eta((')) with eta((')) -> pi(+)pi(-), and upper limits at 90% confidence level are set on the branching fractions, B(eta -> pi(+)pi(-)) < 1.6 x 10(-5) and B(eta' -> pi(+)pi(-)) < 1.8 x 10(-5). The limit for the eta decay is comparable with the existing one, while that for the eta' is a factor of three smaller than the previous limit.

Abstract: The AAPM TG-43 brachytherapy dosimetry formalism, introduced in 1995, has become a standard for brachytherapy dosimetry worldwide; it implicitly assumes that charged-particle equilibrium (CPE) exists for the determination of absorbed dose to water at different locations, except in the vicinity of the source capsule. Subsequent dosimetry developments, based on Monte Carlo calculations or analytical solutions of transport equations, do not rely on the CPE assumption and determine directly the dose to different tissues. At the time of relating dose to tissue and dose to water, or vice versa, it is usually assumed that the photon fluence in water and in tissues are practically identical, so that the absorbed dose in the two media can be related by their ratio of mass energy-absorption coefficients. In this work, an efficient way to correlate absorbed dose to water and absorbed dose to tissue in brachytherapy calculations at clinically relevant distances for low-energy photon emitting seeds is proposed. A correction is introduced that is based on the ratio of the water-to-tissue photon energy-fluences. State-of-the art Monte Carlo calculations are used to score photon fluence differential in energy in water and in various human tissues (muscle, adipose and bone), which in all cases include a realistic modelling of low-energy brachytherapy sources in order to benchmark the formalism proposed. The energy-fluence based corrections given in this work are able to correlate absorbed dose to tissue and absorbed dose to water with an accuracy better than 0.5% in the most critical cases (e.g. bone tissue).

Abstract: We study the strange vector meson (K*, (K) over bar*) dynamics in relativistic heavy-ion collisions based on the microscopic parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach which incorporates partonic and hadronic degrees of freedom, a phase transition from hadronic to partonic matter-quark-gluon-plasma (QGP)-and a dynamical hadronization of quarks and antiquarks as well as final hadronic interactions. We investigate the role of in-medium effects on the K*, (K) over bar* meson dynamics by employing Breit-Wigner spectral functions for the K* with self-energies obtained from a self-consistent coupled-channelG-matrix approach. Furthermore, we confront the PHSD calculations with experimental data for p + p, Cu + Cu, and Au + Au collisions at energies up to root s(NN) = 200 GeV. Our analysis shows that, at relativistic energies, most of the final K* (observed experimentally) are produced during the late hadronic phase, dominantly by the K + pi -> K* channel, such that the fraction of the K* from the QGP is small and can hardly be reconstructed from the final observables. The influence of the in-medium effects on the K* dynamics at energies typical of the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is rather modest due to their dominant production at low baryon densities (but high meson densities); however, it increases with decreasing beam energy. Moreover, we find that the additional cut on the invariant-mass region of the K* further influences the shape and the height of the final spectra. This imposes severe constraints on the interpretation of the experimental results.

Abstract: The first observation of the rare decay B-s(0) -> phi pi(+) pi(-) and evidence for B-0 -> phi pi(+) pi(-) are reported, using pp collision data recorded by the LHCb detector at center-of-mass energies root s = 7 and 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb(-1). The branching fractions in the pi(+) pi(-) invariant mass range 400 < m(pi(+) pi(-)) < 1600 MeV/c(2) are [3.48 +/- 0.23 +/- 0.17 +/- 0.35 +/- x 10(-6)] and [1.82 +/- 0.25 +/- 0.41 +/- 0.14 +/- x 10(-7) for B-s(0) -> phi pi(+) pi(-) and B-0 -> phi pi(+) pi(-) respectively, where the uncertainties are statistical, systematic and from the normalization mode B-s(0)-> phi phi. A combined analysis of the pi(+) pi(-) mass spectrum and the decay angles of the final-state particles identifies the exclusive decays B-s(0) -> phi f(0)(980), B-s(0) -> phi f(2)(1270), and B-s(0) -> phi rho(0) with branching fractions of [1.12 +/- 0.16(-0.08)(+0.09) +/- 0.11] x 10(-6), [0.61 +/- 0.13(-0.05)(+0.12) +/- 0.06] x 10-6 and [2.7 +/- 0.7 +/- 0.2 +/- 0.2] x 10(-7), respectively.