Nucleon form factors, B-meson factories and the radiative return

The feasibility of a measurement of the electric and magnetic nucleon form factors at $B$-meson factories through the radiative return is studied. Angular distributions allow a separation of the contributions from the two form factors. The distributions are presented for the laboratory and the hadronic rest frame, and the advantages of different coordinate systems are investigated. It is demonstrated that $Q^2$ values up to 8 or even 9 GeV$^2$ are within reach. The Monte Carlo event generator PHOKHARA is extended to nucleon final states, and results are presented which include Next-to-Leading Order radiative corrections from initial-state radiation. The impact of angular cuts on rates and distributions is investigated and the relative importance of radiative corrections is analysed.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures. Final version to appear in Eur. Phys. J.

Heart of Darkness: The Significance of the Zeptobarn Scale for Neutralino Direct Detection

The direct detection of dark matter through its elastic scattering off nucleons is among the most promising methods for establishing the particle identity of dark matter. The current bound on the spin-independent scattering cross section is sigma^SI < 10 zb for dark matter masses m_chi ~ 100 GeV, with improved sensitivities expected soon. We examine the implications of this progress for neutralino dark matter. We work in a supersymmetric framework well-suited to dark matter studies that is simple and transparent, with models defined in terms of four weak-scale parameters. We first show that robust constraints on electric dipole moments motivate large sfermion masses mtilde > 1 TeV, effectively decoupling squarks and sleptons from neutralino dark matter phenomenology. In this case, we find characteristic cross sections in the narrow range 1 zb 70 GeV. As sfermion masses are lowered to near their experimental limit mtilde ~ 400 GeV, the upper and lower limits of this range are extended, but only by factors of around two, and the lower limit is not significantly altered by relaxing many particle physics assumptions, varying the strange quark content of the nucleon, including the effects of galactic small-scale structure, or assuming other components of dark matter. Experiments are therefore rapidly entering the heart of dark matter-favored supersymmetry parameter space. If no signal is seen, supersymmetric models must contain some level of fine-tuning, and we identify and analyze several possibilities. Barring large cancellations, however, in a large and generic class of models, if thermal relic neutralinos are a significant component of dark matter, experiments will discover them as they probe down to the zeptobarn scale.Comment: 35 pages, 11 figures; v2: references added, figures extended to 2 TeV neutralino masses, XENON100 results included, published versio

Production of J/psi Mesons at HERA

Inelastic and diffractive production of J/psi mesons at HERA is reviewed. The data on inelastic photoproduction are described well within errors by the Colour Singlet Model in next-to-leading order. A search for colour octet processes predicted within the NRQCD/factorisation approach is conducted in many regions of phase space. No unambiguous evidence has been found to date. Diffractive elastic production of J/psi mesons has been measured in the limit of photoproduction up to the highest photon proton center of mass energies. The increase of the cross section is described by pQCD models. At larger Q^2, the W dependence is found to be similar to that observed in photoproduction. First analyses of data at high t yield a powerlike dependence on |t|. A LO BFKL calculation gives a good description of the data.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, contribution to Ringberg 200

B decays to final states including D_s^{(*)} and D^*

The e^+e^- annihilation data recorded with the BABAR detector has been used to study B decays to D_s^(*) and D^* mesons. The production fraction of inclusive D_s^(*) and the corresponding momentum spectra have been determined. Exclusive decays B^0 --> D^{*-}D_s^{(*)+} have been identified with a partial reconstruction technique and their branching fractions have been measured. We also report branching fraction measurements for the exclusive hadronic modes B^0 --> D^{*-} pi^+ and B^0 --> D^{*-} rho^+.Comment: 5 pages, 4 postscript figures, contributed paper to DPF200

NLO photon parton parametrization using ee and ep data

An NLO photon parton parametrization is presented based on the existing $F_2^\gamma$ measurements from $e^+e^-$ data and the low-$x$ proton structure function from $ep$ interactions. Also included in the extraction of the NLO parton distribution functions are the dijets data coming from $\gamma p \to j_1 + j_2 +X$. The new parametrization is compared to other NLO parametrizations.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, 2 table