LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Oyanguren, A., & Ruiz Valls, P. (2013). Precision measurement of the B-s(0)-(B)over-bar(s)(0) oscillation frequency with the decay B-s(0) -> D-s(-)pi(+). New J. Phys., 15, 053021–15pp.
Abstract: A key ingredient to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model in B-s(0) mixing phenomena is the measurement of the B-s(0)-(B) over bar (0)(s) oscillation frequency, which is equivalent to the mass difference Delta m(s) of the B-s(0) mass eigenstates. Using the world's largest B-s(0) meson sample accumulated in a dataset, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb(-1), collected by the LHCb experiment at the CERN LHC in 2011, a measurement of Delta m(s) is presented. A total of about 34 000 B-s(0) -> D-s(-)pi(+) signal decays are reconstructed, with an average decay time resolution of 44 fs. The oscillation frequency is measured to be Delta m(s) = 17.768 +/- 0.023 (stat) +/- 0.006 (syst) ps(-1), which is the most precise measurement to date.
|
LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Oyanguren, A., & Ruiz Valls, P. (2013). Precision measurement of D meson mass differences. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 065–17pp.
Abstract: Using three- and four-body decays of D mesons produced in semileptonic b-hadron decays, precision measurements of D meson mass differences are made together with a measurement of the D-0 mass. The measurements are based on a dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb(-1) collected in pp collisions at 7 TeV. Using the decay D-0 -> K+K-K-pi(+), the D-0 mass is measured to be M(D-0) = 1864.75 +/- 0.15 (stat) +/- 0.11 (syst) MeV/c(2). The mass differences M(D+) – M(D-0) = 4.76 +/- 0.12 (stat) +/- 0.07 (syst) MeV/c(2), M(D-s(+)) – M(D+) = 98.68 +/- 0.03 (stat) +/- 0.04 (syst) MeV/c(2) are measured using the D-0 -> K+K-pi(+)pi(-) and D-(s)(+) -> K+K-pi(+) modes.
|
Mateu, V., Stewart, I. W., & Thaler, J. (2013). Power corrections to event shapes with mass-dependent operators. Phys. Rev. D, 87(1), 014025–25pp.
Abstract: We introduce an operator depending on the "transverse velocity'' r that describes the effect of hadron masses on the leading 1/Q power correction to event-shape observables. Here, Q is the scale of the hard collision. This work builds on earlier studies of mass effects by Salam and Wicke [J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2001) 061] and of operators by Lee and Sterman [Phys. Rev. D 75, 014022 (2007)]. Despite the fact that different event shapes have different hadron mass dependence, we provide a simple method to identify universality classes of event shapes whose power corrections depend on a common nonperturbative parameter. We also develop an operator basis to show that at a fixed value of Q, the power corrections for many classic observables can be determined by two independent nonperturbative matrix elements at the 10% level. We compute the anomalous dimension of the transverse velocity operator, which is multiplicative in r and causes the power correction to exhibit nontrivial dependence on Q. The existence of universality classes and the relevance of anomalous dimensions are reproduced by the hadronization models in Pythia 8 and Herwig++, though the two programs differ in the values of their low-energy matrix elements.
|
Chen, H. X., & Oset, E. (2013). pi pi interaction in the rho channel in finite volume. Phys. Rev. D, 87(1), 016014–15pp.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate an efficient strategy that allows one to obtain pi pi phase shifts and rho meson properties from QCD lattice data with high precision. For this purpose we evaluate the levels of the pi pi system in the rho channel in finite volume using chiral unitary theory. We investigate the dependence on the pi mass and compare this with other approaches which use QCD lattice calculations and effective theories. We also illustrate the errors induced by using the conventional Luscher approach instead of a more accurate one that was recently developed that takes into account exactly the relativistic two-meson propagators. Finally, we make use of this latter approach to solve the inverse problem, getting pi pi phase shifts from “synthetic” lattice data, providing an optimal strategy and showing which accuracy is needed in these data to obtain the rho properties with a desired accuracy.
|
Cabello, J., Torres-Espallardo, I., Gillam, J. E., & Rafecas, M. (2013). PET Reconstruction From Truncated Projections Using Total-Variation Regularization for Hadron Therapy Monitoring. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 60(5), 3364–3372.
Abstract: Hadron therapy exploits the properties of ion beams to treat tumors by maximizing the dose released to the target and sparing healthy tissue. With hadron beams, the dose distribution shows a relatively low entrance dose which rises sharply at the end of the range, providing the characteristic Bragg peak that drops quickly thereafter. It is of critical importance in order not to damage surrounding healthy tissues and/or avoid targeting underdosage to know where the delivered dose profile ends-the location of the Bragg peak. During hadron therapy, short-lived beta(+)-emitters are produced along the beam path, their distribution being correlated with the delivered dose. Following positron annihilation, two photons are emitted, which can be detected using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. The low yield of emitters, their short half-life, and the wash out from the target region make the use of PET, even only a few minutes after hadron irradiation, a challenging application. In-beam PET represents a potential candidate to estimate the distribution of beta(+)-emitters during or immediately after irradiation, at the cost of truncation effects and degraded image quality due to the partial rings required of the PET scanner. Time-of-flight (ToF) information can potentially be used to compensate for truncation effects and to enhance image contrast. However, the highly demanding timing performance required in ToF-PET makes this option costly. Alternatively, the use of maximum-a-posteriori-expectation-maximization (MAP-EM), including total variation (TV) in the cost function, produces images with low noise, while preserving spatial resolution. In this paper, we compare data reconstructed with maximum-likelihood-expectation-maximization (ML-EM) and MAP-EM using TV as prior, and the impact of including ToF information, from data acquired with a complete and a partial-ring PET scanner, of simulated hadron beams interacting with a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) target. The results show that MAP-EM, in the absence of ToF information, produces lower noise images and more similar data compared to the simulated beta(+) distributions than ML-EM with ToF information in the order of 200-600 ps. The investigation is extended to the combination of MAP-EM and ToF information to study the limit of performance using both approaches.
|
n_TOF Collaboration(Guerrero, C. et al), Domingo-Pardo, C., Giubrone, G., & Tain, J. L. (2013). Performance of the neutron time-of-flight facility n_TOF at CERN. Eur. Phys. J. A, 49(2), 27–15pp.
Abstract: The neutron time-of-flight facility n_TOF features a white neutron source produced by spallation through 20 GeV/c protons impinging on a lead target. The facility, aiming primarily at the measurement of neutron-induced reaction cross sections, was operating at CERN between 2001 and 2004, and then underwent a major upgrade in 2008. This paper presents in detail all the characteristics of the new neutron beam in the currently available configurations, which correspond to two different collimation systems and two choices of neutron moderator. The characteristics discussed include the intensity and energy dependence of the neutron flux, the spatial profile of the beam, the in-beam background components and the energy resolution/broadening. The discussion of these features is based on dedicated measurements and Monte Carlo simulations, and includes estimations of the systematic uncertainties of the mentioned quantities.
|
ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo Gimenez, V., Costa, M. J., Fassi, F., Ferrer, A., et al. (2013). Performance of jet substructure techniques for large-R jets in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV using the ATLAS detector. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 076–83pp.
Abstract: This paper presents the application of a variety of techniques to study jet substructure. The performance of various modified jet algorithms, or jet grooming techniques, for several jet types and event topologies is investigated for jets with transverse momentum larger than 300 GeV. Properties of jets subjected to the mass-drop filtering, trimming, and pruning algorithms are found to have a reduced sensitivity to multiple proton-proton interactions, are more stable at high luminosity and improve the physics potential of searches for heavy boosted objects. Studies of the expected discrimination power of jet mass and jet substructure observables in searches for new physics are also presented. Event samples enriched in boosted W and Z bosons and top-quark pairs are used to study both the individual jet invariant mass scales and the efficacy of algorithms to tag boosted hadronic objects. The analyses presented use the full 2011 ATLAS dataset, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 +/- 0.1 fb(-1) from proton-proton collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 7 TeV.
|
Mateu, V., & Rodrigo, G. (2013). Oriented event shapes at (NLL)-L-3 + O(alpha(2)(S)). J. High Energy Phys., 11(11), 030–29pp.
Abstract: We analyze oriented event-shapes in the context of Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) and in fixed-order perturbation theory. Oriented event-shapes are distributions of event-shape variables which are differential on the angle theta(T) that the thrust axis forms with the electron-positron beam. We show that at any order in perturbation theory and for any event shape, only two angular structures can appear: F-0 = 3/8 (1+cos(2) theta(T)) and F-1 = (1 – 3 cos(2) theta(T)). When integrating over theta(T) to recover the more familiar event-shape distributions, only F-0 survives. The validity of our proof goes beyond perturbation theory, and hence only these two structures are present at the hadron level. The proof also carries over massive particles. Using SCET techniques we show that singular terms can only arise in the F-0 term. Since only the hard function is sensitive to the orientation of the thrust axis, this statement applies also for recoil-sensitive variables such as Jet Broadening. We show how to carry out resummation of the singular terms at (NLL)-L-3 for Thrust, Heavy-Jet Mass, the sum of the Hemisphere Masses and C-parameter by using existing computations in SCET. We also compute the fixed-order distributions for these event-shapes at O(alpha(S)) analytically and at O(alpha(2)(S)) with the program Event2.
|
Scandale, W. et al, & Lari, L. (2013). Optimization of the crystal assisted collimation of the SPS beam. Phys. Lett. B, 726(1-3), 182–186.
Abstract: The possibility for optimization of crystal assisted collimation has been studied at the CERN SPS for stored beams of protons and Pb ions with 270 GeV/c per unit charge. A bent silicon crystal used as a primary collimator deflects halo particles in the channeling regime, directing them into a tungsten absorber. In channeling conditions a strong reduction of off-momentum particle numbers produced in the crystal and absorber, which form collimation leakage, has been observed in the first high dispersion (HD) area downstream. The present study shows that the collimation leakage is minimal for some values of the absorber offset relative to the crystal. The optimal offset value is larger for Pb ions because of their considerably larger ionization losses in the crystal, which cause large increases of particle betatron oscillation amplitudes. The optimal absorber offset allows obtaining maximal efficiency of crystal-assisted collimation.
|
NEXT Collaboration(Alvarez, V. et al), Carcel, S., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Diaz, J., Ferrario, P., Gil, A., et al. (2013). Operation and first results of the NEXT-DEMO prototype using a silicon photomultiplier tracking array. J. Instrum., 8, P09011–20pp.
Abstract: NEXT-DEMO is a high-pressure xenon gas TPC which acts as a technological test-bed and demonstrator for the NEXT-100 neutrinoless double beta decay experiment. In its current configuration the apparatus fully implements the NEXT-100 design concept. This is an asymmetric TPC, with an energy plane made of photomultipliers and a tracking plane made of silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) coated with TPB. The detector in this new configuration has been used to reconstruct the characteristic signature of electrons in dense gas, demonstrating the ability to identify the MIP and “blob” regions. Moreover, the SiPM tracking plane allows for the definition of a large fiducial region in which an excellent energy resolution of 1.82% FWHM at 511 keV has been measured (a value which extrapolates to 0.83% at the xenon Q(beta beta)).
|