Measurement of the weak mixing angle with the Drell-Yan process in proton-proton collisions at the LHC

This is the Pre-Print version of the Article - Copyright @ 2011 APSA multivariate likelihood method to measure electroweak couplings with the Drell-Yan process at the LHC is presented. The process is described by the dilepton rapidity, invariant mass, and decay angle distributions. The decay angle ambiguity due to the unknown assignment of the scattered constituent quark and antiquark to the two protons in a collision is resolved statistically using correlations between the observables. The method is applied to a sample of dimuon events from proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.1 inverse femtobarns. From the dominant u-ubar, d-dbar to gamma*/Z to opposite sign dimuons process, the effective weak mixing angle parameter is measured to be sin^2(theta[eff]) = 0.2287 +/- 0.0020 (stat.) +/- 0.0025 (syst.). This result is consistent with measurements from other processes, as expected within the standard model

Measurement of the B0 production cross section in pp collisions at √s=7TeV

Measurements of the differential production cross sections d sigma/dp(T)(B) and d sigma/dy(B) for B-0 mesons produced in pp collisions at root s = 7 TeV are presented. The data set used was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 40 pb(-1). The production cross section is measured from B-0 meson decays reconstructed in the exclusive final state J/psi K-S(0), with the subsequent decays J psi -> mu(+)mu(-) and K-S(0) -> pi(+)pi(-). The total cross section for p(T)(B) > 5 GeV and |y(B)| < 2: 2 is measured to be 33.2 +/- 2.5 +/- 3.5 mu b, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic

Understanding adults’ transitions to Higher Education through a university access course: community, practice and participation.

This paper presents new data from an ongoing empirical research project exploring adults’ transitions to Higher Education through an access programme, from a Communities of Practice perspective. The paper is focused on the conference’s theme of inter-institutional transitions, but is also relevant to the theme of intra-institutional transition

Search for signatures of extra dimensions in the diphoton mass spectrum at the Large Hadron Collider

see paper for full list authorsA search for signatures of extra dimensions in the diphoton invariant-mass spectrum has been performed with the CMS detector at the LHC. No excess of events above the standard model expectation is observed using a data sample collected in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.2 inverse femtobarns. In the context of the large-extra-dimensions model, lower limits are set on the effective Planck scale in the range of 2.3-3.8 TeV at the 95% confidence level. These limits are the most restrictive bounds on virtual-graviton exchange to date. The most restrictive lower limits to date are also set on the mass of the first graviton excitation in the Randall-Sundrum model in the range of 0.86-1.84 TeV, for values of the associated coupling parameter between 0.01 and 0.10