Space charge in drift chambers operated with the Xe,CO2(15%) mixture

Using prototype modules of the ALICE Transition Radiation Detector we investigate space charge effects and the dependence of the pion rejection performance on the incident angle of the ionizing particle. The average pulse height distributions in the drift chambers operated with the Xe,CO2(15%) mixture provide quantitative information on the gas gain reduction due to space charge accumulating during the drift of the primary ionization. Our results demonstrate that the pion rejection performance of a TRD is better for tracks which are not at normal incidence to the anode wires. We present detailed simulations of detector signals, which reproduce the measurements and lend strong support to our interpretation of the measurements in terms of space charge effects.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A. Data files available at http://www-alice.gsi.de/tr

Energy loss of pions and electrons of 1 to 6 GeV/c in drift chambers operated with Xe,CO2(15%)

We present measurements of the energy loss of pions and electrons in drift chambers operated with a Xe,CO2(15%) mixture. The measurements are carried out for particle momenta from 1 to 6 GeV/c using prototype drift chambers for the ALICE TRD. Microscopic calculations are performed using input parameters calculated with GEANT3. These calculations reproduce well the measured average and most probable values for pions, but a higher Fermi plateau is required in order to reproduce our electron data. The widths of the measured distributions are smaller for data compared to the calculations. The electron/pion identification performance using the energy loss is also presented.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Nucl.Instrum.Meth.

Energy Flow in the Hadronic Final State of Diffractive and Non-Diffractive Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA

An investigation of the hadronic final state in diffractive and non--diffractive deep--inelastic electron--proton scattering at HERA is presented, where diffractive data are selected experimentally by demanding a large gap in pseudo --rapidity around the proton remnant direction. The transverse energy flow in the hadronic final state is evaluated using a set of estimators which quantify topological properties. Using available Monte Carlo QCD calculations, it is demonstrated that the final state in diffractive DIS exhibits the features expected if the interaction is interpreted as the scattering of an electron off a current quark with associated effects of perturbative QCD. A model in which deep--inelastic diffraction is taken to be the exchange of a pomeron with partonic structure is found to reproduce the measurements well. Models for deep--inelastic $ep$ scattering, in which a sizeable diffractive contribution is present because of non--perturbative effects in the production of the hadronic final state, reproduce the general tendencies of the data but in all give a worse description.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 6 Figures appended as uuencoded fil

A Search for Selectrons and Squarks at HERA

Data from electron-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 300 GeV are used for a search for selectrons and squarks within the framework of the minimal supersymmetric model. The decays of selectrons and squarks into the lightest supersymmetric particle lead to final states with an electron and hadrons accompanied by large missing energy and transverse momentum. No signal is found and new bounds on the existence of these particles are derived. At 95% confidence level the excluded region extends to 65 GeV for selectron and squark masses, and to 40 GeV for the mass of the lightest supersymmetric particle.Comment: 13 pages, latex, 6 Figure

Search for Doubly-Charged Higgs Boson Production at HERA

A search for the single production of doubly-charged Higgs bosons H^{\pm \pm} in ep collisions is presented. The signal is searched for via the Higgs decays into a high mass pair of same charge leptons, one of them being an electron. The analysis uses up to 118 pb^{-1} of ep data collected by the H1 experiment at HERA. No evidence for doubly-charged Higgs production is observed and mass dependent upper limits are derived on the Yukawa couplings h_{el} of the Higgs boson to an electron-lepton pair. Assuming that the doubly-charged Higgs only decays into an electron and a muon via a coupling of electromagnetic strength h_{e \mu} = \sqrt{4 \pi \alpha_{em}} = 0.3, a lower limit of 141 GeV on the H^{\pm\pm} mass is obtained at the 95% confidence level. For a doubly-charged Higgs decaying only into an electron and a tau and a coupling h_{e\tau} = 0.3, masses below 112 GeV are ruled out.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Measurement of D* Meson Cross Sections at HERA and Determination of the Gluon Density in the Proton using NLO QCD

With the H1 detector at the ep collider HERA, D* meson production cross sections have been measured in deep inelastic scattering with four-momentum transfers Q^2>2 GeV2 and in photoproduction at energies around W(gamma p)~ 88 GeV and 194 GeV. Next-to-Leading Order QCD calculations are found to describe the differential cross sections within theoretical and experimental uncertainties. Using these calculations, the NLO gluon momentum distribution in the proton, x_g g(x_g), has been extracted in the momentum fraction range 7.5x10^{-4}< x_g <4x10^{-2} at average scales mu^2 =25 to 50 GeV2. The gluon momentum fraction x_g has been obtained from the measured kinematics of the scattered electron and the D* meson in the final state. The results compare well with the gluon distribution obtained from the analysis of scaling violations of the proton structure function F_2.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Nucl. Phys.

Jets and energy flow in photon-proton collisions at HERA

Properties of the hadronic final state in photoproduction events with large transverse energy are studied at the electron-proton collider HERA. Distributions of the transverse energy, jets and underlying event energy are compared to \overline{p}p data and QCD calculations. The comparisons show that the \gamma p events can be consistently described by QCD models including -- in addition to the primary hard scattering process -- interactions between the two beam remnants. The differential jet cross sections d\sigma/dE_T^{jet} and d\sigma/d\eta^{jet} are measured