745 research outputs found
Charm lifetime
A review of the charmed meson and baryon lifetimes is presented. Our
knowledge of charmed particle lifetimes has greatly improved over the past two
years, a crucial r\^ole having been played by the E687 experiment at Fermilab,
which has almost quadrupled the samples of mesons. The lifetime ratios
and are now known with an
accuracy of 1.7\% and 3.7\% respectively. In the baryon sector the statistics
is still limited, but the experimental results on , and
exhibit a clear pattern of lifetime hierarchy, as expected from
simple theoretical arguments. The first measurement of from
E687 is also presented to complete the charmed baryon lifetime picture. The
more accurate experimental scenario can provide information on non-perturbative
QCD effects and the hadronic matrix elements.Comment: 10 pages, latex, 3 figures. Talk presented at the 6th. International
Symposium on Heavy Flavour Physics (Pisa, June 1995
Light quark and charm interplay in the Dalitz-plot analysis of hadronic decays in FOCUS
The potentiality of interpreting the D-meson decay-dynamics has revealed
itself to be strongly dependent on our understanding of the light-meson sector.
The statistics collected by FOCUS is already at a level that manifests
parametrization problems for scalar particles. In this paper the first
application of the K-matrix approach in the charm sector is illustrated and
preliminary results on the D+ and Ds decays to three pions are shown.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, Invited talk at the Scalar Meson Worksho
Corrections to the generalized vector dominance due to diffractive rho_3 production
The idea of the vector dominance is still in use in various analyses of
experimental data of photon-hadron reactions. It makes sense, therefore, to
recast results of microscopic calculations of such reactions in this language.
Here we present the diffractive DIS production as a specific
correction to the generalized vector dominance. We perform a coupled channel
analysis of spin-orbital excitations in diffractive photoproduction and
reiterate the point that rho_3 in diffractive DIS will be sensitive to a novel
aspect of diffraction.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure
Lessons from CLEO and FOCUS Measurements of D0-anti-D0 Mixing Parameters
If the true values of the D0-anti-D0 mixing parameters lie within the one
sigma ranges of recent measurements, then there is strong evidence for a large
width difference, y > 0.01, and large SU(3) breaking effects in strong phases,
\delta > pi/4. These constraints are model independent, and would become
stronger if M_{12}/Gamma_{12} << 1 in the D0-anti-D0 system. The interesting
fact that the FOCUS result cannot be explained by a large mass difference is
not trivial and depends on the small D0-anti-D0 production asymmetry in FOCUS
and the bounds on CP violating effects from CLEO. The large value of \delta
might help explain why y ~ sin^2(theta_c).Comment: 15 pages, harvma
Nonresonant Three-body Decays of D and B Mesons
Nonresonant three-body decays of D and B mesons are studied. It is pointed
out that if heavy meson chiral perturbation theory (HMChPT) is applied to the
heavy-light strong and weak vertices and assumed to be valid over the whole
kinematic region, then the predicted decay rates for nonresonant charmless
3-body B decays will be too large and especially B^- --> pi^- K^+ K^- greatly
exceeds the current experimental limit. This can be understood as chiral
symmetry has been applied there twice beyond its region of validity. If HMChPT
is applied only to the strong vertex and the weak transition is accounted for
by the form factors, the dominant B^* pole contribution to the tree-dominated
direct three-body B decays will become small and the branching ratio will be of
order 10^{-6}. The decay modes B^- --> (K^- h^+ h^-)_{NR} and bar{B}^0 -->
(bar{K}^0 h^+h^-)_{NR} for h = pi, K are penguin dominated. We apply HMChPT in
two different cases to study the direct 3-body D decays and compare the results
with experiment. Theoretical uncertainties are discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures. New experimental results of direct 3-body D
decays as Reported at ICHEP2002 are included. To appear in Phys. Re
Hadronic Charmed Meson Decays Involving Tensor Mesons
Charmed meson decays into a pseudoscalar meson P and a tensor meson T are
studied. The charm to tensor meson transition form factors are evaluated in the
Isgur-Scora-Grinstein-Wise (ISGW) quark model. It is shown that the
Cabibbo-allowed decay is dominated by the
W-annihilation contribution and has the largest branching ratio in
decays. We argue that the Cabibbo-suppressed mode
should be suppressed by one order of magnitude relative to . When the finite width effect of the tensor resonances is taken
into account, the decay rate of is generally enhanced by a factor of
. Except for , the predicted branching ratios
of decays are in general too small by one to two orders of magnitude
compared to experiment. However, it is very unlikely that the
transition form factors can be enhanced by a factor of within the
ISGW quark model to account for the discrepancy between theory and experiment.
As many of the current data are still preliminary and lack sufficient statistic
significance, more accurate measurements are needed to pin down the issue.Comment: 11 page
Measurement of the Omega_c Lifetime
We present the measurement of the lifetime of the Omega_c we have performed
using three independent data samples from two different decay modes. Using a
Sigma- beam of 340 GeV/c we have obtained clean signals for the Omega_c
decaying into Xi- K- pi+ pi+ and Omega- pi+ pi- pi+, avoiding topological cuts
normally used in charm analysis. The short but measurable lifetime of the
Omega_c is demonstrated by a clear enhancement of the signals at short but
finite decay lengths. Using a continuous maximum likelihood method we
determined the lifetime to be tau(Omega_c) = 55 +13-11(stat) +18-23(syst) fs.
This makes the Omega_c the shortest living weakly decaying particle observed so
far. The short value of the lifetime confirms the predicted pattern of the
charmed baryon lifetimes and demonstrates that the strong interaction plays a
vital role in the lifetimes of charmed hadrons.Comment: 15 pages, including 7 figures; gzipped, uuencoded postscrip
Discrete Ambiguities in the Measurement of the Weak Phase Gamma
Several time-independent methods have been devised for measuring the phase
gamma of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa unitarity triangle. It is shown that
such measurements generally suffer from discrete ambiguity which is at least
8-fold, not 4-fold as commonly stated. This has serious experimental
implications, which are explored in methods involving B->DK decays. The
measurement sensitivity and new physics discovery potential are estimated using
a full Monte Carlo detector simulation with realistic background estimates.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, fixed typ
A Novel Three-Dimensional Culture Device Favors a Myelinating Morphology of Neural Stem Cell-Derived Oligodendrocytes
The complexity of the central nervous system (CNS) requires researchers to consider all the variables linked to the interaction between the different cell inhabitants. On this basis, any in vitro study of the physiological and pathological processes regarding the CNS should consider the balance between the standardization of the assay and the complexity of the cellular system which mimics the in vivo microenvironment. One of the main structural and functional components of the CNS is the oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC), responsible for developmental myelination and myelin turnover and repair during adulthood following differentiation into mature oligodendrocytes. In the present brief research report, we describe a 3D culture tool (VITVO) based on an inert and biocompatible synthetic polymer material scaffold, functionalized with laminin coating, and tested as a new culture microenvironment for neural stem/precursor cell (NSPC) differentiation compared to standard 2D cultures. NSPCs spontaneously differentiate in the three neural lineages (neurons, astrocytes and OPCs), identified by specific markers, along the fibers in the 3D structure. Analysis of the mRNA levels for lineage differentiation markers reveals a higher expression compared to those seeded on a 2D surface, suggesting an acceleration of the differentiation process. We then focused on the oligodendroglial lineage, showing that in VITVO, mature oligodendrocytes exhibit a myelinating morphology, proven by 3D image elaboration, linked to a higher expression of mature oligodendrocyte markers. This preliminary study on an innovative 3D culture system is the first robust step in producing new microenvironment-based strategies to investigate in vitro OPC and oligodendrocyte biology
- …