Abstract: This paper presents measurements of W(+/-)Z production in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The gauge bosons are reconstructed using their leptonic decay modes into electrons and muons. The data were collected in 2012 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb(-1). The measured inclusive cross section in the detector fiducial region is sigma W(+/-)Z -> l'nu ll = 35.1 +/- 0.9(stat) +/- 0.8(sys) +/- 0.8(lumi) fb, for one leptonic decay channel. In comparison, the next-to-leading-order Standard Model expectation is 30.0 +/- 2.1 fb. Cross sections for W(+)Z and W(-)Z production and their ratio are presented as well as differential cross sections for several kinematic observables. Limits on anomalous triple gauge boson couplings are derived from the transverse mass spectrum of the W(+/-)Z system. From the analysis of events with a W and a Z boson associated with two or more forward jets an upper limit at 95% confidence level on the W(+/-)Z scattering cross section of 0.63 fb, for each leptonic decay channel, is established, while the Standard Model prediction at next-to-leading order is 0.13 +/- 0.01 fb. Limits on anomalous quartic gauge boson couplings are also extracted.

Abstract: Ward-Green-Takahashi (WGT) identities play a crucial role in hadron physics, e.g. imposing stringent relationships between the kernels of the one-and two-body problems, which must be preserved in any veracious treatment of mesons as bound states. In this connection, one may view the dressed gluon-quark vertex, Gamma(alpha)(mu), as fundamental. We use a novel representation of Gamma(alpha)(mu), in terms of the gluon-quark scattering matrix, to develop a method capable of elucidating the unique quark-antiquark Bethe-Salpeter kernel, K, that is symmetry consistent with a given quark gap equation. A strength of the scheme is its ability to expose and capitalize on graphic symmetries within the kernels. This is displayed in an analysis that reveals the origin of H-diagrams in K, which are two-particle-irreducible contributions, generated as two-loop diagrams involving the three-gluon vertex, that cannot be absorbed as a dressing of Gamma(alpha)(mu) in a Bethe-Salpeter kernel nor expressed as a member of the class of crossed-box diagrams. Thus, there are no general circumstances under which the WGT identities essential for a valid description of mesons can be preserved by a Bethe-Salpeter kernel obtained simply by dressing both gluon-quark vertices in a ladderlike truncation; and, moreover, adding any number of similarly dressed crossed-box diagrams cannot improve the situation.

Abstract: We calculate the neutral pion photoproduction on the proton near threshold in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory, including the Delta(1232) resonance as an explicit degree of freedom, up to chiral order p(7/2) in the delta counting. We compare our results with recent low-energy data from the Mainz Microtron for angular distributions and photon asymmetries. The convergence of the chiral series of the covariant approach is found to improve substantially with the inclusion of the Delta(1232) resonance.