Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities

A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in 2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the $B$-factories and CLEO-c flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality, precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b}, and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K. Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D. Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A. Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair

Dilepton mass spectra in p+p collisions at sqrt(s)= 200 GeV and the contribution from open charm

The PHENIX experiement has measured the electron-positron pair mass spectrum from 0 to 8 GeV/c^2 in p+p collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV. The contributions from light meson decays to e^+e^- pairs have been determined based on measurements of hadron production cross sections by PHENIX. They account for nearly all e^+e^- pairs in the mass region below 1 GeV/c^2. The e^+e^- pair yield remaining after subtracting these contributions is dominated by semileptonic decays of charmed hadrons correlated through flavor conservation. Using the spectral shape predicted by PYTHIA, we estimate the charm production cross section to be 544 +/- 39(stat) +/- 142(syst) +/- 200(model) \mu b, which is consistent with QCD calculations and measurements of single leptons by PHENIX.Comment: 375 authors from 57 institutions, 18 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to Physics Letters B. v2 fixes technical errors in matching authors to institutions. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm

Properties of the Top Quark

The top quark was discoverd at the CDF and D0 experiments in 1995. As the partner of the bottom quark its properties within the Standard Model are fully defined. Only the mass is a free parameter. The measurement of the top quark mass and the verification of the expected properties have been an important topic of experimental top quark physics since. In this review the recent results on top quark properties obtained by the Tevatron experiments CDF and D0 are summarised. At the advent of the LHC special emphasis is given to the basic measurement methods and the dominating systematic uncertainties.Comment: Habilitation thesis, revised and updated for publication in EPJ

Transitions of cardio-metabolic risk factors in the Americas between 1980 and 2014

Describing the prevalence and trends of cardiometabolic risk factors that are associated with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is crucial for monitoring progress, planning prevention, and providing evidence to support policy efforts. We aimed to analyse the transition in body-mass index (BMI), obesity, blood pressure, raised blood pressure, and diabetes in the Americas, between 1980 and 2014

Heavy flavor properties of jets produced in ppˉp\bar{p} interactions at sqrts=sqrt{s}= 1.8 TeV

We present a detailed examination of the heavy flavor properties of jets produced at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data set, collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab, consists of events with two or more jets with transverse energy $E_T \geq 15$ GeV and pseudo-rapidity $|\eta| \leq 1.5$. The heavy flavor content of the data set is enriched by requiring that at least one of the jets (lepton-jet) contains a lepton with transverse momentum larger than 8 GeV/c. Jets containing hadrons with heavy flavor are selected via the identification of secondary vertices. The parton-level cross sections predicted by the {\sc herwig} Monte Carlo generator program are tuned within theoretical and experimental uncertainties to reproduce the secondary-vertex rates in the data. The tuned simulation provides new information on the origin of the discrepancy between the $b\bar{b}$ cross section measurements at the Tevatron and the next-to-leading order QCD prediction. We also compare the rate of away-jets (jets recoiling against the lepton-jet) containing a soft lepton ($p_T \geq 2$ GeV/c) in the data to that in the tuned simulation. We find that this rate is larger than what is expected for the conventional production and semileptonic decay of pairs of hadrons with heavy flavor.Comment: 65 pages, 14 tables, 14 figures. To be submitted to Phys. Rev.

Prompt charm production in pp collisions at &#8730;<span style="text-decoration:overline">s</span>=7 TeV

Charm production at the LHC in pp collisions at s√=7 TeV is studied with the LHCb detector. The decays D0→K−π+, D+→K−π+π+, D⁎+→D0(K−π+)π+, D+s→ϕ(K−K+)π+, Λ+c→pK−π+, and their charge conjugates are analysed in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 15 nb−1. Differential cross-sections dσ/dpT are measured for prompt production of the five charmed hadron species in bins of transverse momentum and rapidity in the region 0&#60;pT&#60;8 GeV/c and 2.0&#60;y&#60;4.5. Theoretical predictions are compared to the measured differential cross-sections. The integrated cross-sections of the charm hadrons are computed in the above pT-y range, and their ratios are reported. A combination of the five integrated cross-section measurements gives σ(cc¯)pT&#60;8 GeV/c,2.0&#60;y&#60;4.5=1419±12(stat)±116(syst)±65(frag) μb, where the uncertainties are statistical, systematic, and due to the fragmentation functions

Measurements of differential production cross sections for a Z boson in association with jets in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Prompt K_short production in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=0.9 TeV

The production of K_short mesons in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 0.9 TeV is studied with the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The luminosity of the analysed sample is determined using a novel technique, involving measurements of the beam currents, sizes and positions, and is found to be 6.8 +/- 1.0 microbarn^-1. The differential prompt K_short production cross-section is measured as a function of the K_short transverse momentum and rapidity in the region 0 < pT < 1.6 GeV/c and 2.5 < y < 4.0. The data are found to be in reasonable agreement with previous measurements and generator expectations.Comment: 6+18 pages, 6 figures, updated author lis

Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale

Search for the associated production of the Higgs boson with a top-quark pair

A search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair t t ¯ H (tt¯H) is presented, using data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 fb &#8722;1 and 19.7 fb &#8722;1 collected in pp collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 TeV and 8 TeV respectively. The search is based on the following signatures of the Higgs boson decay: H &#8594; hadrons, H &#8594; photons, and H &#8594; leptons. The results are characterized by an observed t t ¯ H tt¯H signal strength relative to the standard model cross section, &#956; = &#963;/&#963; SM ,under the assumption that the Higgs boson decays as expected in the standard model. The best fit value is &#956; = 2.8 ± 1.0 for a Higgs boson mass of 125.6 GeV