DIRC, the Particle Identification System for BABAR

The DIRC, a novel type of Cherenkov ring imaging device, is the primary hadronic particle identification system for the BABAR detector at the asymmetric B-factory, PEP-II at SLAC. BABAR began taking data with colliding beams mode in late spring 1999. This paper describes the performance of the DIRC during the first 16 months of operation

The DIRC Particle Identification System for the BABAR Experiment

A new type of ring-imaging Cherenkov detector is being used for hadronic particle identification in the BABAR experiment at the SLAC B Factory (PEP-II). This detector is called DIRC, an acronym for Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov (Light). This paper will discuss the construction, operation and performance of the BABAR DIRC in detail

The Physics of the B Factories

This work is on the Physics of the B Factories. Part A of this book contains a brief description of the SLAC and KEK B Factories as well as their detectors, BaBar and Belle, and data taking related issues. Part B discusses tools and methods used by the experiments in order to obtain results. The results themselves can be found in Part C

Measurement of the Ratio of b Quark Production Cross Sections in Antiproton-Proton Collisions at 630 GeV and 1800 GeV

We report a measurement of the ratio of the bottom quark production cross section in antiproton-proton collisions at 630 GeV to 1800 GeV using bottom quarks with transverse momenta greater than 10.75 GeV identified through their semileptonic decays and long lifetimes. The measured ratio sigma(630)/sigma(1800) = 0.171 +/- .024 +/- .012 is in good agreement with next-to-leading order (NLO) quantum chromodynamics (QCD)

Measurement of the B0^0 and B+^+ meson lifetimes with fully reconstructed hadronic final states

The B0 and B+ meson lifetimes have been measured in e+e- annihilation data collected in 1999 and 2000 with the BABAR detector at center-of-mass energies near the Upsilon(4S) resonance. Events are selected in which one B meson is fully reconstructed in a hadronic final state while the second B meson is reconstructed inclusively. A combined fit to the B0 and the B+ decay time difference distributions yields tau_{B0} = 1.546 +/- 0.032 (stat) +/- 0.022(syst) ps, tau_{B+} = 1.673 +/- 0.032 (stat) +/- 0.023 (syst) ps and tau_{B+} / tau_{B0} = 1.082 +/- 0.026 (stat) +/- 0.012 (syst