Novel Method of Measuring Electron Positron Colliding Beam Parameters

Through the simultaneous measurement of the transverse size as a function of longitudinal position, and the longitudinal distribution of luminosity, we are able to measure the $\beta_y^\ast$ (vertical envelope function at the collision point), vertical emittance, and bunch length of colliding beams at the Cornell Electron-positron Storage Ring (CESR). This measurement is possible due to the significant ``hourglass'' effect at CESR and the excellent tracking resolution of the CLEO detector.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to NIM

Measurement of the τ-lepton Lifetime at Belle

The lifetime of the τ lepton is measured using the process e+e−→τ+τ−, where both τ leptons decay to 3πντ. The result for the mean lifetime, based on 711  fb−1 of data collected with the Belle detector at the ϒ(4S) resonance and 60  MeV below, is τ=(290.17±0.53(stat)±0.33(syst))×10−15  s. The first measurement of the lifetime difference betweenτ+ and τ− is performed. The upper limit on the relative lifetime difference between positive and negative τ leptons is |Δτ|/τ\u3c7.0×10−3 at 90% C.L

Improving the LSST dithering pattern and cadence for dark energy studies

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will explore the entire southern sky over 10 years starting in 2022 with unprecedented depth and time sampling in six filters, $ugrizy$. Artificial power on the scale of the 3.5 deg LSST field-of-view will contaminate measurements of baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO), which fall at the same angular scale at redshift $z \sim 1$. Using the HEALPix framework, we demonstrate the impact of an "un-dithered" survey, in which $17\%$ of each LSST field-of-view is overlapped by neighboring observations, generating a honeycomb pattern of strongly varying survey depth and significant artificial power on BAO angular scales. We find that adopting large dithers (i.e., telescope pointing offsets) of amplitude close to the LSST field-of-view radius reduces artificial structure in the galaxy distribution by a factor of $\sim$10. We propose an observing strategy utilizing large dithers within the main survey and minimal dithers for the LSST Deep Drilling Fields. We show that applying various magnitude cutoffs can further increase survey uniformity. We find that a magnitude cut of $r < 27.3$ removes significant spurious power from the angular power spectrum with a minimal reduction in the total number of observed galaxies over the ten-year LSST run. We also determine the effectiveness of the observing strategy for Type Ia SNe and predict that the main survey will contribute $\sim$100,000 Type Ia SNe. We propose a concentrated survey where LSST observes one-third of its main survey area each year, increasing the number of main survey Type Ia SNe by a factor of $\sim$1.5, while still enabling the successful pursuit of other science drivers.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, published in SPIE proceedings; corrected typo in equation

Active cooling control of the CLEO detector using a hydrocarbon coolant farm

We describe a novel approach to particle-detector cooling in which a modular farm of active coolant-control platforms provides independent and regulated heat removal from four recently upgraded subsystems of the CLEO detector: the ring-imaging Cherenkov detector, the drift chamber, the silicon vertex detector, and the beryllium beam pipe. We report on several aspects of the system: the suitability of using the aliphatic-hydrocarbon solvent PF(TM)-200IG as a heat-transfer fluid, the sensor elements and the mechanical design of the farm platforms, a control system that is founded upon a commercial programmable logic controller employed in industrial process-control applications, and a diagnostic system based on virtual instrumentation. We summarize the system's performance and point out the potential application of the design to future high-energy physics apparatus.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX, 5 PostScript figures; version accepted for publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research

Studies of the decays D^0 \rightarrow K_S^0K^-\pi^+ and D^0 \rightarrow K_S^0K^+\pi^-

The first measurements of the coherence factor R_{K_S^0K\pi} and the average strong--phase difference \delta^{K_S^0K\pi} in D^0 \to K_S^0 K^\mp\pi^\pm decays are reported. These parameters can be used to improve the determination of the unitary triangle angle \gamma\ in B^- \rightarrow $\widetilde{D}K^-$ decays, where $\widetilde{D}$ is either a D^0 or a D^0-bar meson decaying to the same final state, and also in studies of charm mixing. The measurements of the coherence factor and strong-phase difference are made using quantum-correlated, fully-reconstructed D^0D^0-bar pairs produced in e^+e^- collisions at the \psi(3770) resonance. The measured values are R_{K_S^0K\pi} = 0.70 \pm 0.08 and \delta^{K_S^0K\pi} = (0.1 \pm 15.7)$^\circ$ for an unrestricted kinematic region and R_{K*K} = 0.94 \pm 0.12 and \delta^{K*K} = (-16.6 \pm 18.4)$^\circ$ for a region where the combined K_S^0 \pi^\pm invariant mass is within 100 MeV/c^2 of the K^{*}(892)^\pm mass. These results indicate a significant level of coherence in the decay. In addition, isobar models are presented for the two decays, which show the dominance of the K^*(892)^\pm resonance. The branching ratio {B}(D^0 \rightarrow K_S^0K^+\pi^-)/{B}(D^0 \rightarrow K_S^0K^-\pi^+) is determined to be 0.592 \pm 0.044 (stat.) \pm 0.018 (syst.), which is more precise than previous measurements.Comment: 38 pages. Version 3 updated to include the erratum information. Errors corrected in Eqs (25), (26), 28). Fit results updated accordingly, and external inputs updated to latest best known values. Typo corrected in Eq(3)- no other consequence