Measurement of dijet production at low <Emphasis Type="Italic">Q</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript> at HERA

Triple differential dijet cross sections in interactions are presented in the region of photon virtualities 2 < Q ² < 80 GeV², inelasticities 0.1 < y < 0.85, jet transverse energies E ^* _{T 1} > 7 GeV, E ^* _{T 2} > 5 GeV, and pseudorapidities . The measurements are made in the centre-of-mass frame, using an integrated luminosity of 57 pb^-1. The data are compared with NLO QCD calculations and LO Monte Carlo programs with and without a resolved virtual photon contribution. NLO QCD calculations fail to describe the region of low Q ² and low jet transverse energies, in contrast to a LO Monte Carlo generator which includes direct and resolved photon interactions with both transversely and longitudinally polarised photons. Initial and final state parton showers are tested as a mechanism for including higher order QCD effects in low E _T jet production.Received: 13 January 2004, Revised: 21 July 2004, Published online: 18 August 2004     

Searches for neutral Higgs bosons in extended models

Searches for neutral Higgs bosons produced at LEP in association with Z bosons, in pairs and in the Yukawa process are presented in this paper. Higgs boson decays into b quarks, leptons, or other Higgs bosons are considered, giving rise to four-b, four-b + jets, six-b and four- final states, as well as mixed modes with b quarks and leptons. The whole mass domain kinematically accessible at LEP in these topologies is searched. The analysed data set covers both the LEP1 and LEP2 energy ranges and exploits most of the luminosity recorded by the DELPHI experiment. No convincing evidence for a signal is found, and results are presented in the form of mass-dependent upper bounds on coupling factors (in units of model-independent reference cross-sections) for all processes, allowing interpretation of the data in a large class of models.Received: 26 October 2003, Revised: 1 September 2004, Published online: 28 October 2004     

Search for chargino and neutralino productionat $\sqrt{s} = 192$-209 GeV at LEP

Approximately 438 pb^-1 of e ⁺ e^- data from the OPAL detector, taken with the LEP collider running at centre-of-mass energies of 192-209 GeV, are analyzed to search for evidence of chargino pair production, , or neutralino associated production, . Limits are set at the 95% confidence level on the product of the cross-section for the process and its branching ratios to topologies containing jets and missing energy, or jets with a lepton and missing energy, and on the product of the cross-section for and its branching ratio to jets. R-parity conservation is assumed throughout this paper. When these results are interpreted in the context of the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, limits are also set on the masses of the and , and regions of the parameter space of the model are ruled out. Nearly model-independent limits are also set at the 95% confidence level on with the assumption that each chargino decays via a W boson, and on with the assumed to decay via a Z⁰.Received: 15 December 2003, Revised: 16 February 2004, Published online: 23 April 2004     

Small-<Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis> phenomenology - summary and status 2002

A second workshop on small-x physics, within the Small-x Collaboration, was held in Lund in June 2002 with the aim of over-viewing recent theoretical progress in this area and summarizing the experimental status.Received: 23 December 2003, Published online: 30 April 2004This paper is dedicated to the memory of Jan Kwieciski, who died unexpectedly on August 29, 2003.     

Tests of the standard model and constraints on new physics from measurements of fermion-pair production at 189-209 GeV at LEP

Cross-sections and angular distributions for hadronic and lepton-pair final states in e ⁺ e^- collisions at centre-of-mass energies between 189 GeV and 209 GeV, measured with the OPAL detector at LEP, are presented and compared with the predictions of the Standard Model. The measurements are used to determine the electromagnetic coupling constant at LEP 2 energies. In addition, the results are used together with OPAL measurements at 91-183 GeV within the S-matrix formalism to determine the -Z interference term and to make an almost model-independent measurement of the Z mass. Limits on extensions to the Standard Model described by effective four-fermion contact interactions or the addition of a heavy Z boson are also presented.Received: 28 August 2003, Published online: 18 February 2004     

Search for a narrow charmed baryonic state decaying to $D^{\ast \pm} p^\mp$in ep collisions at HERA

A resonance search has been made in the invariant-mass spectrum with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of . The decay channels and (and the corresponding antiparticle decays) were used to identify mesons. No resonance structure was observed in the mass spectrum from more than 60 000 reconstructed mesons. The results are not compatible with a report of the H1 Collaboration of a charmed pentaquark, .Received: 14 September 2004, Revised: 29 September 2004, Published online: 9 November 2004     

MINIBALL: The first gamma-ray spectrometer using segmented,encapsulated germanium detectors for studies with radioactive beams

MINIBALL is a new spectrometer of position-sensitive Ge detectors designed for nuclear-structure studies at the REX-ISOLDE (D. Habs et al. , Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 38, 111 (1997)) radioactive-beam facility at CERN. It combines high efficiency and high granularity, using pulse-shape analysis and 6-fold segmented Ge detectors.Received: 24 October 2002, Published online: 17 February 2004PACS: 29.30.-h Spectrometers and spectroscopic techniques     

Measurement of high-<Emphasis Type="Italic">Q</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript> charged current cross sections in <Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis><Superscript> + </Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis> deep inelastic scattering at HERA

Cross sections for e ⁺ p charged current deep inelastic scattering at a centre-of-mass energy of have been determined with an integrated luminosity of collected with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The differential cross sections , and for are presented. In addition, has been measured in the kinematic range and . The predictions of the Standard Model agree well with the measured cross sections. The mass of the W boson propagator is determined to be from a fit to . The chiral structure of the Standard Model is also investigated in terms of the (1-y)² dependence of the double-differential cross section. The structure-function has been extracted by combining the measurements presented here with previous ZEUS results from e ^- p scattering, extending the measurement obtained in a neutrino-nucleus scattering experiment to a significantly higher Q ² region.Received: 17 July 2003, Published online: 12 November 2003 ^a supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) ^b supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), under contract numbers HZ1GUA 2, HZ1GUB 0, HZ1PDA 5, HZ1VFA 5 ^c supported by the MINERVA Gesellschaft für Forschung GmbH, the Israel Science Foundation, the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation and the Benozyio Center for High Energy Physics ^d supported by the German-Israeli Foundation and the Israel Science Foundation ^e supported by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) ^f supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and its grants for Scientific Research ^g supported by the Korean Ministry of Education and Korea Science and Engineering Foundation ^h supported by the Netherlands Foundation for Research on Matter (FOM) ⁱ supported by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research, grant no. 620/E-77/SPUB-M/DESY/P-03/DZ 247/2000-2002 ^j partially supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) ^k supported by the Fund for Fundamental Research of Russian Ministry for Science and Education and by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) ^l supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science through funds provided by CICYT ^m supported by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, UK ⁿ supported by the US Department of Energy ^o supported by the US National Science Foundation ^p supported by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research, grant no. 112/E-356/SPUB-M/DESY/P-03/DZ 301/2000-2002, 2 P03B 13922 ^q supported by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research, grant no. 115/E-343/SPUB-M/DESY/P-03/DZ 121/2001-2002, 2 P03B 07022     

Di-jet production in photon-photon collisionsat $\sqrt{s_{\protect\bf\mathrm{ee}}}$ from 189 to 209 GeV

Di-jet production is studied in collisions of quasi-real photons at e ⁺ e^- centre-of-mass energies from 189 to 209 GeV at LEP. The data were collected with the OPAL detector. Jets are reconstructed using an inclusive -clustering algorithm for all cross-section measurements presented. A cone jet algorithm is used in addition to study the different structure of the jets resulting from either of the algorithms. The inclusive di-jet cross-section is measured as a function of the mean transverse energy of the two leading jets, and as a function of the estimated fraction of the photon momentum carried by the parton entering the hard sub-process, , for different regions of . Angular distributions in di-jet events are measured and used to demonstrate the dominance of quark and gluon initiated processes in different regions of phase space. Furthermore the inclusive di-jet cross-section as a function of and is presented, where is the jet pseudo-rapidity. Different regions of the - -space are explored to study and control the influence of an underlying event. The results are compared to next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations and to the predictions of the leading order Monte Carlo generator PYTHIA.Received: 20 December 2002, Published online: 17 October 2003     

A measurement of semileptonic B decaysto narrow orbitally-excited charm mesons

The decay chain is identified in a sample of 3.9 million hadronic Z decays collected with the OPAL detector at LEP. The branching ratio BR is measured to be for the J ^P =1⁺ (D⁰ ₁) state. For decays into the J ^P =2⁺ (D₂ ^*0) state, an upper limit of 1.4 x 10^-3 is placed on the branching ratio at the 95% confidence level.Received: 20 December 2002, Revised: 15 April 2003, Published online: 12 September 2003