Theoretical expectations for σtot at the large hadron collider

In this note, we summarize and compare various model predictions forpp total cross-section σ _tot ^pp , giving an estimate of the range of predictions for the total cross-section, σ _tot ^pp expected at the LHC. We concentrate on the results for σ _tot ^pp obtained in a particular QCD based model of the energy dependence of the total cross-section, including the effect of soft gluon radiation. We obtain the range of predictions in this model by exploring the allowed range of model parameters. We further give a handy parametrisation of these results which incidentally spans the range of various other available predictions at the LHC as well     

Isospin breaking in nuclear physics: The Nolen-Schiffer effect

Using the QCD sum rules we calculate the neutron-proton mass difference at zero density as a function of the difference in bare quark massm _d—m _u. We confirm results of Hatsuda, Høgaasen and Prakash that the largest term results from the difference in up and down quark condensates, the explicitC(m _d—m _u) entering with the opposite sign. The quark condensates are then extended to finite density to estimate the Nolen-Schiffer effect. The neutron-proton mass difference is extremely density dependent, going to zero at roughly nuclear matter density.The Ioffe formula for the nucleon mass is interpreted as a derivation, within the QCD sum rule approach, of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio formula. This clarifies theN _c counting and furthermore provides an alternative interpretation of the Borel mass.     

The <Emphasis Type="Italic">η</Emphasis>′ meson from lattice QCD

We study the flavour-singlet pseudoscalar mesons from first principles using lattice QCD. With N _f=2 flavours of light quarks, this is the so-called η ₂ meson and we discuss the phenomenological status of this meson. Using maximally twisted-mass lattice QCD, we extract the mass of the η ₂ meson at two values of the lattice spacing for lighter quarks than previously discussed in the literature. We are able to estimate the mass value in the limit of light quarks with their physical masses.     

Charmonium states in quark-gluon plasma

We discuss how the spectral changes of quarkonia at T _c can reflect the ‘critical’ behaviour of QCD phase transition. Starting from the temperature dependencies of the energy density and pressure from lattice QCD calculation, we extract the temperature dependencies of the scalar and spin-2 gluon condensates near T _c. We also parametrize these changes into the electric and magnetic condensate near T _c. While the magnetic condensate hardly changes across T _c, we find that the electric condensate increases abruptly above T _c. Similar abrupt change is also seen in the scalar condensate. Using the QCD second-order Stark effect and QCD sum rules, we show that these sudden changes induce equally abrupt changes in the mass and width of J/ψ, both of which are larger than 100 MeV at slightly above T _c.      

Spectator interactions and theK-factor in the Drell-Yan process

The precise value of theO(α _s perturbative QCD correction to the Drell-Yan cross-section seems to depend on the calculational procedure. We show how this ambiguity is removed when proper account is taken of the additional interactions involving spectator quarks. Explicit calculations in the scalar quark model reveal that the important contributions come from values of the gluon momentum that are very soft.

     

Quantum chromodynamics results from HERA and JLAB

Recent QCD results from electron?Cproton interactions at HERA and JLAB are presented. Inclusive cross-section measurements as well as studies of the hadronic final state like jet production or the production of heavy quarks are discussed. The results are compared with perturbative QCD predictions and their impact on the determination of the parton density functions of the proton as well as of the strong coupling ?? _s is discussed.     

Distinguishing a SM-like MSSM Higgs boson from SM Higgs boson at muon collider

We explore the possibility of distinguishing the SM-like MSSM Higgs boson from the SM Higgs boson via Higgs boson pair production at future muon collider. We study the behavior of the production cross-section in SM and MSSM with Higgs boson mass for various MSSM parameters tan β and m _A . We observe that at fixed CM energy, in the SM, the total cross-section increases with the increase in Higgs boson mass whereas this trend is reversed for the MSSM. The changes that occur for the MSSM in comparison to the SM predictions are quantified in terms of the relative percentage deviation in cross-section. The observed deviations in cross-section for different choices of Higgs boson masses suggest that the measurements of the cross-section could possibly distinguish the SM-like MSSM Higgs boson from the SM Higgs boson.      

<Emphasis Type="Italic">B</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">B</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">s</Emphasis></Subscript> decay constants from moments of finite energy sum rules in QCD

We use an appropriate combination of moments of finite energy sum rules in QCD in order to compute the B _q -meson decay constants f _B and . We perform the calculation using a two-loop computation of the imaginary part of the pseudoscalar two point function in terms of the running bottom quark mass. The results are stable against the so-called QCD duality threshold, and they are in agreement with the estimates obtained from Borel transform QCD sum rules and lattice computations.Received: 28 July 2004, Revised: 10 September 2004, Published online: 23 November 2004PACS: 12.38.Bx, 12.38.LgSupported by MCYT-FEDER under contract FPA2002-00612.     

Heavy-flavor production in <Emphasis Type="Italic">pp</Emphasis> and heavy-ion collisions in QCD up-to-LHC energies

Charm production in pp collisions is considered in the framework of perturbative QCD. The values of two parameters, the charm quark mass m _c and the QCD scale μ², are determined from the comparison of the theoretical calculations with experimental data. The RHIC data on charm and beauty production are compared with the k _T -factorization approach predictions and with standard NLO QCD. The calculated results underestimate the STAR Collaboration data. The role of possible nuclear effects is discussed. The predictions for LHC energies are also given.     

Momentum spectra of identified hadrons at e+e? annihilations: comparison with QCD calculations

Charged particle momentum distributions are studied in the reaction e⁺e⁻ → hadrons, using data collected with the AMY detector at center of mass energy of 58 GeV. The measured distributions and derived quantities in combination with the corresponding results obtained at both lower and higher center of mass energies are compared to QCD predictions in theoretical approach to study the energy dependence of the strong interaction, and to test QCD as the theory describing it. To achieve this, the mean charged particle multiplicity, the charged particle momentum spectrum and its peak position are compared with predictions of the modified-leading logarithmic approximation. In general, good agreement is observed between the data and the above approximation in the regions where the model is expected to be valid. In addition the strong coupling constant α _s is determined from a fit of the QCD prediction to x _p distribution of the Feynman scaling. When we leave α _s as a free parameter in the fit we obtain α _s = 0.115 ± 0.008.     

The spatial string tension and dimensional reduction in QCD

The spatial string tension is calculated in 2+1 flavor QCD with a physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses on lattices with N_t=4,6 and 8. The results are compared with predictions of dimensionally reduced QCD. They suggest that dimensional reduction works also in the presence of light dynamical quarks down to temperatures of about 1.5T_c.     

Sum rule estimate of the subleading non-perturbative contributions to Bs–$\bar{ B}_{s}$ mixing

We use QCD sum rules to compute the matrix elements of the ΔB=2 operators appearing in the heavy-quark expansion of the width difference of the B _s mass eigenstates. The main focus of our analysis is on the subleading operators R ₂ and R ₃, which appear at next-to-leading order in the 1/m _b expansion. The matrix elements of these operators are already essential for precise phenomenology, but their calculation in lattice QCD is lacking and the values given here provide a first estimate of their values. We conclude that the violation of the factorization approximation for these matrix elements due to non-perturbative vacuum condensates is as low as 1–2%.     

A remark on the large difference between the glueball mass and T<Subscript>c</Subscript> in quenched QCD

The lattice QCD studies indicate that the critical temperature T _c ≃ 260-280 MeV of the deconfinement phase transition in quenched QCD is considerably smaller than the lowest-lying glueball mass m _G ≃ 1500-1700 MeV, i.e., T _c ≪ m _G. As a consequence of this large difference, the thermal excitation of the glueball in the confinement phase is strongly suppressed by the statistical factor e ^-mG/Tc ≃ 0.00207 even near T ≃ T _c. We consider its physical implication, and argue the abnormal feature of the deconfinement phase transition in quenched QCD from the statistical viewpoint. To appreciate this, we demonstrate a statistical argument of the QCD phase transition using the recent lattice QCD data. From the phenomenological relation between T _c and the glueball mass, the deconfinement transition is found to take place in quenched QCD before a reasonable amount of glueballs is thermally excited. In this way, quenched QCD reveals a question “what is the trigger of the deconfinement phase transition ?” Received: 18 November 2002 / Accepted: 4 February 2003 / Published online: 29 April 2003     

Search for QCD instanton-induced processes in deep-inelastic scattering at HERA

Signals of QCD instanton-induced processes are searched for in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) at the electron-proton collider HERA in a kinematic region defined by the Bjorken-scaling variables x &gt; 10^-3, 0.1 &lt; y &lt; 0.6 and photon virtualities < 100 GeV². Several observables characterising hadronic final state properties of QCD instanton-induced events are exploited to identify a potentially instanton-enriched domain. While an excess of events with instanton-like topology is observed it cannot be claimed significant given the uncertainty of the standard DIS background simulation. Upper limits on the cross-section for instanton-induced processes of between 60 pb and 1000 pb are set dependent on the kinematic domain considered. The data do not exclude the cross-section predicted by instanton perturbation theory for small instanton sizes. At large instanton sizes a naive extrapolation of instanton perturbation theory yields a cross-section in the range of sensitivity of this study. Such a cross-section is not observed, in agreement with non-perturbative lattice simulations of the QCD vacuum. Received: 27 May 2002 / Published online: 24 September 2002     

A new slant on hadron structure

Rather than regarding the restriction of current lattice QCD simulations to quark masses that are 5–10 times larger than those observed as a problem, we note that this presents a wonderful opportunity to deepen our understanding of QCD. Just as it has been possible to learn a great deal about QCD by treating N _c as a variable, so the study of hadron properties as a function of quark mass is leading us to a deeper appreciation of hadron structure. As examples we cite progress in using the chiral properties of QCD to connect hadron masses, magnetic moments, charge radii and structure functions calculated at large quark masses within lattice QCD with the values observed physically.     

Three-loop running of the strong coupling constant and the mass of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">b</Emphasis>-quark in the supersymmetric QCD

Supersymmetric extension of the QCD (SQCD) is considered and the scale dependence of some important parameters, i.e. strong coupling α _s and b-quark running mass m _b , is studied with the help of threeloop renormalization group equations. Five-flavour QCD is considered as a low-energy effective theory of SQCD and two-loop decoupling (threshold) effects are taken into account. Variations in running α _s and m _b at the GUT scale μ_GUT = 10¹⁶ GeV due to uncertainties in the initial experimental data and the ambiguities in the decoupling scale are analyzed for a particular point of the parameter space. Comparison with known results is given.     

Higher-order constraints on the Higgs production rate from fixed-target DIS data

The constraints of fixed-target DIS data in fits of parton distributions including QCD corrections to next-to-next-to leading order are studied. We point out a potential problem in the analysis of the NMC data which can lead to inconsistencies in the extracted value for α _s (M _Z ) and the gluon distribution at higher orders in QCD. The implications for predictions of rates for Standard Model Higgs boson production at hadron colliders are investigated. We conclude that the current range of excluded Higgs boson masses at the Tevatron appears to be much too large.     

Supersymmetric enhancement factor for the 1-jet cross-section inp - \bar p reactions

We compare the 1-jet inclusive cross-section at highp _⊥ in proton-antiproton reaction atSPS collider predicted by standard QCD and by its simplest supersymmetric extension (SQCD). We first compute the total enhancement factorK between QCD and SQCD jets as a function ofp _⊥. Then we compute the observable enhancement factor which is smaller thanK since the transverse momentum of supersymmetric particles is not fully observable. We have analyzed two cases (i)p _⊥ is small compared to the masses of squarks and only light gluinos (2 GeV) are considered (ii)p _⊥ is large compared to the masses of squarks (17 GeV in our analysis) and both gluinos and squarks are taken into account. The observable enhancement factor between QCD and SQCD is found to be small (of order 1.3 to 1.5 forp _⊥=100 GeV). Missingp _⊥ events with one ordinary jet and one jet due to the production of a supersymmetric particle are found to be non negligible with respect to those with two supersymmetric jets. We also display some interesting supersymmetric relations among parton cross-sections.