Top Spin and Experimental Tests

We examine pair mass dependence near threshold as a means to measure the spin of the top quark in hadron collisions, and we discuss the possibility that a top squark signal could be hidden among the top events.Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX, 3 figures. Contribution to the Thinkshop on Top-Quark Physics for the Tevatron Run II, Fermilab, October 16 - 18, 199

Analytic Calculation of Prompt Photon plus Associated Heavy Flavor at Next-to-Leading Order in QCD

Contributions through second order, $O(\alpha ^2_s)$, in perturbative quantum chromodynamics are calculated analytically for inclusive associated production of a prompt photon and a charm quark at large values of transverse momentum in high energy hadron-hadron collisions. Seven partonic subprocesses contribute at order $\alpha^2_s$. We find important corrections to the lowest order, $O(\alpha_s)$, subprocess $c g \rightarrow \gamma c$. We demonstrate to what extent data from $p +\bar{p}\rightarrow \gamma + c + X$ may serve to measure the charm quark density in the nucleon.Comment: 34 pages RevTex plus 9 figures submitted as uuencoded ps files; figures replaced and text revised to include one additional referenc

Production of a Prompt Photon in Association with Charm at Next-to-Leading Order in QCD

A second order, $O(\alpha ^2_s)$, calculation in perturbative quantum chromodynamics of the two particle inclusive cross section is presented for the reaction $p +\bar{p}\rightarrow \gamma + c + X$ for large values of the transverse momentum of the prompt photon and charm quark. The combination of analytic and Monte Carlo integration methods used here to perform phase-space integrations facilitates imposition of photon isolation restrictions and other selections of relevance in experiments. Differential distributions are provided for various observables. Positive correlations in rapidity are predicted.Comment: 27 pages in RevTex plus 14 figures in one compressed PS fil

Predictions for associated production of gauginos and gluinos at NLO in SUSY-QCD

NLO SUSY-QCD contributions to associated production of gluinos and gauginos are shown to enhance the cross sections by about 10% at the Tevatron and by as much as a factor of two at the LHC. They shift the mass determinations or discovery limits, soften the $p_T$ spectra, and stabilize the predictions against variations of the renormalization and factorization scales.Comment: 4 pages, Latex (uses Moriond style file), 8 eps-figures. Talk presented at the XXXVth Rencontres de Moriond, QCD and High Energy Hadronic Interactions, Les Arcs, France, March 18-25, 200

Missing heavy flavor backgrounds to Higgs boson production

We investigate characteristics of the signal and backgrounds for Higgs boson decay into WW at the Fermilab Tevatron and CERN Large Hadron Collider. In the the lepton-pair-plus-missing-energy final state, we show that the background receives an important contribution from semileptonic decays of heavy flavors. Lepton isolation cuts provide too little suppression of these heavy flavor contributions, and an additional 4 to 8 orders-of-magnitude suppression must come from physics cuts. We demonstrate that an increase of the minimum transverse momentum of nonleading leptons in multilepton events is one effective way to achieve the needed suppression, without appreciable loss of the Higgs boson signal. Such a cut would impact the efficiency of searches for supersymmetry as well. We emphasize the importance of direct measurement of the lepton background from heavy flavor production.Comment: 23 pgs., 10 figs, revtex4, 1 Ref. added, minor typos corrected, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Spitzer Observations of Gamma-Ray Burst Host Galaxies: A Unique Window into High Redshift Chemical Evolution and Star-formation

We present deep Spitzer 3.6 micron observations of three z~5 GRB host galaxies. Our observations reveal that z~5 GRB hosts are a factor of 3 less luminous than the median rest-frame V-band luminosity of spectroscopically confirmed z~5 galaxies in the GOODS fields and the UDF. The strong connection between GRBs and massive star formation implies that not all star-forming galaxies at these redshifts are currently being accounted for in deep surveys and GRBs provide a unique way to measure the contribution to the star-formation rate density from galaxies at the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function. By correlating the co-moving star-formation rate density with co-moving GRB rates at lower redshifts, we estimate a lower limit to the star-formation rate density of 0.12+/-0.09 and 0.09+/-0.05 M_sun/yr/Mpc^3 at z~4.5 and z~6, respectively. Finally, we provide evidence that the average metallicity of star-forming galaxies evolves as (stellar mass density)^(0.69+/-0.17) between $z\sim5$ and $z\sim0$, probably indicative of the loss of a significant fraction of metals to the intergalactic medium, particularly in low-mass galaxies.Comment: ApJ, in pres

Next-to-leading Order SUSY-QCD Calculation of Associated Production of Gauginos and Gluinos

Results are presented of a next-to-leading order calculation in perturbative QCD of the production of charginos and neutralinos in association with gluinos at hadron colliders. Predictions for cross sections are shown at the energies of the Fermilab Tevatron and CERN Large Hadron Collider for a typical supergravity (SUGRA) model of the sparticle mass spectrum and for a light gluino model.Comment: 3 pages, latex, 4 figures, paper presented by E. L. Berger at ICHEP 2000, the XXXth International Conference on High Energy Physics July 27 - August 2, 2000, Osaka, Japa

Erratum: Next-to-leading order supersymmetric QCD predictions for associated production of gauginos and gluinos [Phys. Rev. D 62, 095014 (2000)]

Errors in the published version of the paper are corrected, and new figures are provided.Comment: 3 pages, latex, 4 figure

Isolated Prompt Photon Production in Hadronic Final States of e+e−e^+e^- Annihilation

We provide complete analytic expressions for the isolated prompt photon production cross section in $e^+e^-$ annihilation reactions through one-loop order in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) perturbation theory. Functional dependences on the isolation cone size $\delta$ and isolation energy parameter $\epsilon$ are derived. The energy dependence as well as the full angular dependence of the cross section on $\theta_\gamma$ are displayed, where $\theta_\gamma$ specifies the direction of the photon with respect to the $e^+e^-$ collision axis. We point out that conventional perturbative QCD factorization breaks down for isolated photon production in $e^+e^-$ annihilation reactions in a specific region of phase space. We discuss the implications of this breakdown for the extraction of fragmentation functions from $e^+e^-$ annihilation data and for computations of prompt photon production in hadron-hadron reactions.Comment: 54 pages RevTeX plus 19 postscript figures submitted together in one compressed fil

Next-to-Leading Order SUSY-QCD Predictions for Associated Production of Gauginos and Gluinos

We present complete results of a next-to-leading order calculation of the production of gaugino-like charginos (\chargino) and neutralinos (\neutralino) in association with gluinos (\gluino) at hadron colliders, including the strong corrections from the exchange of colored particles and sparticles. Adopting a variety of models for the sparticle mass spectrum, including typical supergravity (SUGRA) models and a light gluino model, we provide predictions for total and differential cross sections at the energies of the Fermilab Tevatron and CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC).Comment: 91 pages, Latex, including 26 figure