Abstract: We report on a measurement of the flavor-specific B-s(0) lifetime and of the D-s(-) lifetime using proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, collected by the LHCb experiment and corresponding to 3.0 fb(-1) of integrated luminosity. Approximately 407 000 B-s(0) -> D-s(()*()) -> D-s(()*()-) mu+v(mu) decays are partially reconstructed in the K+K-pi(-)mu(+) final state. The B-s(0) and D-s(-) natural widths are determined using, as a reference, kinematically similar B-0 -> Dd(*)(-) mu+v(mu) decays reconstructed in the same final state. The resulting differences between widths of B-s(0) and B-0 mesons and of D-s(-) and D- mesons are Delta(Gamma)(B) = -0.0115 +/- 0.0053(stat) +/- 0.0041 (syst) ps(-1) and Delta(Gamma)(D) = 1.0131 +/- 0.0117(stat) +/- 0.0065(syst) ps(-1), respectively. Combined with the known B-0 and D- lifetimes, these yield the flavor-specific B-s(0) lifetime, tau(fs)(Bs0) = 1.547 +/- 0.013 (stat) +/- 0.010 (syst) +/- 0.004(tau(B)) ps and the D-s(-) lifetime, tau(Ds-) = 0.5064 +/- 0.0030(stat) +/- 0.0017(syst) +/- 0.0017(sys) +/- 0.0017(tau(D)). The last uncertainties originate from the limited knowledge of the B-0 and D- lifetimes. The results improve upon current determinations.

Abstract: A scheme is proposed for hardware estimation of the location of zero crossings of sampled signals with subsample resolution for timing applications, which consists of interpolating the signal with a cubic spline near the zero crossing and then finding the root of the resulting polynomial. An iterative algorithm based on the bisection method is presented that obtains one bit of the result per step and admits an efficient digital implementation using fixed-point representation. In particular, the root estimation iteration involves only two additions, and the initial values can be obtained from finite impulse response (FIR) filters with certain symmetry properties. It is shown that this allows online real-time estimation of timestamps in free-running sampling detector systems with improved accuracy with respect to the more common linear interpolation. The method is evaluated with simulations using ideal and real timing signals, and estimates are given for the resource usage and speed of its implementation.

Abstract: Inclusive jet production cross-sections are measured in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 8 TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The total integrated luminosity of the analysed data set amounts to 20.2 fb(-1). Double-differential cross-sections are measured for jets defined by the anti-k(t) jet clustering algorithm with radius parameters of R = 0.4 and R = 0.6 and are presented as a function of the jet transverse momentum, in the range between 70 GeV and 2.5 TeV and in six bins of the absolute jet rapidity, between 0 and 3.0. The measured cross-sections are compared to predictions of quantum chromodynamics, calculated at next-to-leading order in perturbation theory, and corrected for non-perturbative and electroweak effects. The level of agreement with predictions, using a selection of different parton distribution functions for the proton, is quantified. Tensions between the data and the theory predictions are observed.