CP asymmetry in $B \rightarrow \phi K_{S}$ in a general two-Higgs-doublet model with fourth-generation quarks

We discuss the time-dependent CP asymmetry of the decay in an extension of the standard model with both a two Higgs doublet and additional fourth-generation quarks. We show that, although the standard model with a two Higgs doublet and the standard model with fourth-generation quarks alone are not likely to largely change the effective from the decay , the model with both an additional Higgs doublet and fourth-generation quarks can easily account for the possible large negative value of without conflicting with other experimental constraints. In this model, additional large CP violating effects may arise from the flavor-changing Yukawa interactions between neutral Higgs bosons and the heavy fourth-generation down type quark, which can modify the QCD penguin contributions. With the constraints obtained from processes such as and , this model can lead to an effective as large as - 0.4 in the CP asymmetry of .Received: 25 March 2004, Revised: 20 April 2004, Published online: 18 June 2004     

Measurement of the strange spectral function in hadronic \tau decays

Tau lepton decays with open strangeness in the final state are measured with the OPAL detector at LEP to determine the strange hadronic spectral function of the lepton. The decays , and with final states consisting of neutral and charged kaons and pions have been studied. The invariant mass distributions of of these final states have been experimentally determined. Monte Carlo simulations have been used for the remaining and for the strange final states including mesons. The reconstructed strange final states, corrected for resolution effects and detection efficiencies, yield the strange spectral function of the lepton. The moments of the spectral function and the ratio of strange to non-strange moments, which are important input parameters for theoretical analyses, are determined. Furthermore, the branching fractions and have been measured.Received: 18 February 2004, Revised: 30 April 2004, Published online: 15 June 2004     

An analysis of the time-dependent CP asymmetryin $B \to \pi \pi$ decays in the standard model

Measurements of the time-dependent CP-asymmetry in the decay and its charge conjugate by the BELLE and BABAR collaborations currently yield and , characterizing the direct and mixing-induced CP-asymmetries, respectively. We study the implication of these measurements on the CKM phenomenology taking into account the available information in the quark mixing sector. Our analysis leads to the results that the ratio |P _c /T _c | involving the QCD-penguin and tree amplitudes and the related strong phase difference in the decays are quite substantial. Using the isospin symmetry to constrain |P _c /T _c | and , where parameterizes the penguin-induced contribution, we present a fit of the current data including the measurements of and . Our best-fits yield , , , , and . At 68% C.L., the ranges are , , , and . Currently en vogue dynamical approaches to estimate the hadronic matrix elements in decays do not provide a good fit of the current data.Received: 5 April 2004, Published online: 14 July 2004A.Ya. Parkhomenko: On leave of absence from Department of Theoretical Physics, Yaroslavl State University, Sovietskaya 14, 150000 Yaroslavl, Russia.     

Strange particle production at RHIC in the dual parton model

We compute the mid-rapidity densities of pions, kaons, baryons and antibaryons in Au-Au collisions at GeV in the dual parton model supplemented with final state interaction (comovers interaction). The ratios ( ) increase between peripheral ( ) and central ( collisions by a factor 2.4 (2.0) for the , 4.8 (4.1) for the and 16.5 (13.5) for the . The ratio increases by a factor 1.3 in the same centrality range. A comparison with the available data is presented.Received: 28 April 2003, Published online: 11 July 2003     

Jet production in charged current deep inelastic <Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis><Superscript> + </Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis> scatteringat HERA

The production rates and substructure of jets have been studied in charged current deep inelastic e ⁺ p scattering for Q ² > 200 GeV² with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 110.5 pb^-1. Inclusive jet cross sections are presented for jets with transverse energies GeV and pseudorapidities in the range . Dijet cross sections are presented for events with a jet having GeV and a second jet having GeV. Measurements of the mean subjet multiplicity, , of the inclusive jet sample are presented. Predictions based on parton-shower Monte Carlo models and next-to-leading-order QCD calculations are compared to the measurements. The value of , determined from at for jets with GeV, is . The mean subjet multiplicity as a function of Q ² is found to be consistent with that measured in NC DIS.Received: 5 June 2003, Published online: 10 October 2003     

CP-sensitive observables in chargino production with transverse $e^{\pm}$ beam polarization

We consider the process at a linear collider with transverse beam polarization. We investigate the influence of the CP phases on azimuthal asymmetries in with subsequent two-body decays and . We show that triple product correlations involving the transverse beam polarization vanish if at least one subsequent chargino decay is not observed. We derive this result within the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) with complex parameters; however, it holds also in the general MSSM with SUSY flavor violation.Received: 29 March 2004, Published online: 30 July 2004     

Resumming QCD vacuum fluctuations in three-flavor Chiral Perturbation Theory

Due to its light mass, of order , the strange quark can play a special role in chiral symmetry breaking ( SB): differences in the pattern of SB in the limits N_f = 2 ( , m_s physical) and N_f = 3 ( ) may arise due to vacuum fluctuations of pairs, related to the violation of the Zweig rule in the scalar sector and encoded in particular in the O(p⁴) low-energy constants L₄ and L₆. In case of large fluctuations, we show that the customary treatment of SU(3) x SU(3) chiral expansions generates instabilities upsetting their convergence. We develop a systematic program to cure these instabilities by resumming non-perturbatively vacuum fluctuations of pairs, in order to extract information about SB from experimental observations even in the presence of large fluctuations. We advocate a Bayesian framework for treating the uncertainties due to the higher orders. As an application, we present a three-flavor analysis of the low-energy scattering and show that the recent experimental data imply a lower bound on the quark mass ratio at 95% confidence level. We outline how additional information may be incorporated to further constrain the pattern of SB in the N_f = 3 chiral limit.Received: 2 December 2003, Published online: 3 March 2004J. Stern: stern@ipno.in2p3.fr     

New gauge bosons from the littlest Higgs modeland the process $e^{ + }e^{-}\rightarrow t\bar{t}$

In the context of the littlest Higgs (LH) model, we study the process . We find that the new gauge bosons Z _H and B _H can produce significant correction effects on this process, which can be further enhanced by suitably polarized beams. In most of the parameter space preferred by the electroweak precision data, the absolute value of the relative correction parameter is larger than 5 %. As long as and the absolute value of the relative correction parameter is larger than . With reasonable values of the parameters of the LH model, the possible signals of the new gauge bosons B _H and Z _H can be detected via the process in the future LC experiments with the CM energy . B _H exchange and Z _H exchange can generate significantly corrections to the forward-backward asymmetry only in a small part of the parameter space.Received: 29 October 2004, Revised: 29 November 2004, Published online: 15 February 2005     

Semihard scattering unraveled from collective flow at the SPS

A study of elliptic flow and two-particle azimuthal correlations of charged particles ( GeV/c) and high- pions ( GeV/c) in Pb + Au collisions at 158A GeV/c, close to midrapidity, is presented. Elliptic flow (v ₂) rises linearly with to a value of about 10 at 2 GeV/c. Beyond 1.5 GeV/c, the slope decreases and possibly indicates a v ₂ saturation at high . Two-pion azimuthal anisotropies for 1.2 GeV/c exceed the v ₂ values by about 60 in semicentral collisions. This non-flow component is attributed to near-side and away-side jetlike correlations. While the near-side peak remains constant with centrality 0.23 0.03 rad, as expected for fragmentation, the away-side peak experiences broadening and disappears in central collisions. Arrival of the final proofs: 30 June 2005 PACS: 25.75.Ld, 25.75.Gz     

Structures of the f 0(980), a 0(980) mesons and the strong coupling constants g_{f_0 K^+ K^-} , g_{a_0 K^+ K^-} with light-cone QCD sum rules

Making the assumption of explicit isospin violation arising from f ₀(980)-a ₀(980) mixing, we take the point of view that the scalar mesons f ₀(980) and a ₀(980) have both strange and non-strange quark-antiquark components and evaluate the strong coupling constants within the framework of the light-cone QCD sum rules approach. The large strong scalar-KK couplings through both the and components , , and will support the hadronic dressing mechanism; furthermore, in spite of the constituent structure differences between the f ₀(980) and a ₀(980) mesons, the strange components have larger strong coupling constants with the K ⁺ K ^- state than the corresponding non-strange ones, and . From the existing controversial values, we cannot reach a general consensus on the strong coupling constants and the mixing angles.Received: 9 January 2004, Revised: 23 July 2004, Published online: 2 September 2004     

The pion nucleon coupling constant

The latest elastic scattering data are re-analysed to determine the coupling constant g_c of the charged pion, using the dispersion relation for the invariant amplitude B^{(+ )}. Depending on the choice of data-base, values to 13.65 are obtained with errors of . The mass difference between charge states of is MeV, close to twice the mass difference between neutron and proton. The difference in widths on resonance is MeV. One may account for a width difference of 4.5 MeV from phase space for decays and the extra channel .Received: 21 January 2004, Published online: 3 March 2004     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">T</Emphasis>-dependent Dyson-Schwinger equation in IR regime of QCD: the critical point

The quark mass function in QCD is revisited, using a gluon propagator in the form 1/(k ² + m _g ²) plus , where the second (IR) term gives linear confinement for m _g = 0 in the instantaneous limit, being another scale. To find we propose a new (differential) form of the Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) for , based on an infinitesimal subtractive renormalization via a differential operator which lowers the degree of divergence in integration on the RHS, by two units. This warrants in the integrand since its k-dependence is no longer sensitive to the principal term (p-k)² in the quark propagator. The simplified DSE (which incorporates the Ward-Takahashi (WT) identity in the Landau gauge) is satisfied for large p ² by = , except for Log factors. The limit p ² = 0 determines . A third limit, p ² = -m ₀ ², defines the dynamical mass m ₀ via . After two checks ( MeV and = ), for with MeV, the T-dependent DSE is used in the real time formalism to determine the critical index analytically, with the IR term partly serving as the H-field. We find MeV and check the vanishing of and at T _c.Received: 31 August 2004, Published online: 11 January 2005PACS: 24.85. + p, 12.38.Lg, 12.38.AwA.N. Mitra: Permanent address: 244 Tagore Park, Delhi-110009, India.     

The $\eta_{c}(2980)$ formation in two-photon collisions at LEP energies

production in interactions has been detected via its decays into ,K ⁺ K ^- K ⁺ K ^- and in the data taken with the DELPHI detector at LEP1 and LEP2 energies. The two-photon radiative width averaged over all observed decay channels is = 13.9 2.0 (stat.) 1.4(syst.) 2.7 (BR) keV. No direct decay channel has been observed. An upper limit < 5.5 keV at 95% confidence level has been evaluated for this decay mode.Received: 3 July 2003, Published online: 7 November 2003     

Search for lepton-flavor violation at HERA

A search for lepton-flavor-violating interactions and has been performed with the ZEUS detector using the entire HERA I data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of . The data were taken at center-of-mass energies, , of 300 and . No evidence of lepton-flavor violation was found, and constraints were derived on leptoquarks (LQs) that could mediate such interactions. For LQ masses below , limits were set on , where is the coupling of the LQ to an electron and a first-generation quark q₁, and is the branching ratio of the LQ to the final-state lepton (μ or ) and a quark q. For LQ masses much larger than , limits were set on the four-fermion interaction term for LQs that couple to an electron and a quark and to a lepton and a quark , where and are quark generation indices. Some of the limits are also applicable to lepton-flavor-violating processes mediated by squarks in R-Parity-violating supersymmetric models. In some cases, especially when a higher-generation quark is involved and for the process , the ZEUS limits are the most stringent to date. Received: 1 April 2005, Revised: 13 July 2005, Published online: 18 October 2005     

Waiting for the discovery of $B^0_d\to K^0\bar K^0$

The CP asymmetries of the decay , which originates from flavor-changing neutral-current processes, and its CP-averaged branching ratio BR offer interesting avenues to explore flavor physics. We show that we may characterize this channel, within the standard model, in a theoretically clean manner through a surface in observable space. In order to extract the relevant information from BR , further information is required, which is provided by the system and the SU(3) flavor symmetry, where we include the leading factorizable SU(3)-breaking corrections and discuss how experimental insights into non-factorizable effects can be obtained. We point out that the standard model implies a lower bound for BR , which is very close to its current experimental upper bound, thereby suggesting that this decay should soon be observed. Moreover, we explore the implications for color suppression in the system, and convert the data for these modes in a peculiar standard-model pattern for the CP-violating observables.Received: 3 August 2004, Published online: 15 November 2004     

Isospin breaking in $K \rightarrow \pi\pi$ decays

We perform a complete analysis of isospin breaking in amplitudes in chiral perturbation theory, including both strong isospin violation ( ) and electromagnetic corrections to next-to-leading order in the low-energy expansion. The unknown chiral couplings are estimated at leading order in the 1/N_c expansion. We study the impact of isospin breaking on CP conserving amplitudes and rescattering phases. In particular, we extract the effective couplings g₈ and g₂₇ from a fit to branching ratios, finding small deviations from the isospin-limit case. The ratio measuring the enhancement is found to decrease from in the isospin limit to in the presence of isospin breaking. We also analyze the effect of isospin violation on the CP violation parameter , finding a destructive interference between three different sources of isospin violation. Within the uncertainties of large-N_c estimates for the low-energy constants, the isospin violating correction for is below 15%.Received: 21 November 2003, Published online: 4 February 2004Work supported in part by IHP-RTN, Contract No. HPRN-CT2002-00311 (EURIDICE) and by Acciones Integradas, Project No. 19/2003 (Austria), HU2002-0044 (MCYT, Spain)     

Longitudinal $\bar{\Lambda}_0$ polarization in heavy-ion collisions as a probe for QGP formation

We present an analysis of the longitudinal polarization in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. The polarization of s coming from the decay chain exhibits a very well differentiated behavior depending on the production region of the primordial s. This effect reflects the different values of the ratio in the QGP region, where nucleon-nucleon interactions take place in a hot and dense environment, and the peripherical region, in which ordinary nucleon-nucleon interactions occur. An increase in the longitudinal polarization signals a strangeness enhancement which is thought of as a property of the QGP phase.Received: 21 September 2004, Revised: 25 October 2004, Published online: 17 December 2004     

Isospin constraints from/on $B \to \pi\pi$

The Standard Model constraints on which can be derived from the decays are revisited in some depth. As experimental inputs, the , decays complemented by the decays, the CP parameters and , and/or the value of as determined by the global CKM fit are used. The constraints discussed here are model independent in the sense that they rely only on Isospin symmetry, following the Gronau-London proposal. A new bound on and the function are introduced. While another bound applied to BABAR results is shown to imply that is negative. The Grossman-Quinn bound is rediscussed. A close form expression is given for as a function of the measurements. Various scenarios for the future of the isospin analysis are explored. To probe the Standard Model the plane is introduced.Received: 17 December 2004, Published online: 25 January 2005     

Measurement of the energy dependence of hadronic jet rates and the strong coupling $\alpha_s$ from the four-jet rate with the DELPHI detector at LEP

Hadronic events from the data collected with the DELPHI detector at LEP within the energy range from 89 Gev to 209 Gev are selected, their jet rates are determined and compared to predictions of four different event generators. One of them is the recently developed APACIC + + generator which performs a massive matrix element calculation matched to a parton shower followed by string fragmentation. The four-jet rate is used to measure in the next-to-leading-order approximation yielding The running of determined by using four-jet events has been tested. The logarithmic energy slope is measured to be Since the analysis is based on four-jet final states it represents an alternative approach to previous DELPHI measurements using event shape distributions.Received: 4 August 2004, Revised: 1 October 2004, Published online: 7 December 2004