Delineating the polarized and unpolarized photon distributions of the nucleon in eN collisions

The production rates of lepton-photon and dimuon pairs at the HERA collider and the HERMES experiment are evaluated in the leading order equivalent photon approximation. It is shown that the production rates are sufficient to facilitate the extraction of the polarized and unpolarized equivalent photon distributions of the proton and neutron in the available kinematical regions. It is pointed out that these results indicate the possibility of additional, independent, tests concerning the unpolarized and polarized structure functions F_{1,2}^N and g_{1,2}^N, respectively, of the nucleon.Comment: Final version, to appear in Eur. Phys.

Can new heavy gauge bosons be observed in ultra-high energy cosmic neutrino events?

A wide range of models beyond the Standard Model predict charged and neutral resonances, generically called $W'$- and $Z'$-bosons, respectively. In this paper we study the impact of such resonances on the deep inelastic scattering of ultra-high energy neutrinos as well as on the resonant charged current $\bar\nu_e e^-$ scattering (Glashow resonance). We find that the effects of such resonances can not be observed with the Pierre Auger Observatory or any foreseeable upgrade of it.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Electroweak top-quark pair production at the LHC with Z′Z' bosons to NLO QCD in POWHEG

We present the calculation of the NLO QCD corrections to the electroweak production of top-antitop pairs at the CERN LHC in the presence of a new neutral gauge boson. The corrections are implemented in the parton shower Monte Carlo program POWHEG. Standard Model (SM) and new physics interference effects are properly taken into account. QED singularities, first appearing at this order, are consistently subtracted. Numerical results are presented for SM and $Z'$ total cross sections and distributions in invariant mass, transverse momentum, azimuthal angle and rapidity of the top-quark pair. The remaining theoretical uncertainty from scale and PDF variations is estimated, and the potential of the charge asymmetry to distinguish between new physics models is investigated for the Sequential SM and a leptophobic topcolor model.Comment: 33 pages, 15 figures, 1 table. Discussion added on uncertainties from parton showers and NLL contribution

Heavy quark effects on parton distribution functions in the unpolarized virtual photon up to the next-to-leading order in QCD

We investigate the heavy quark mass effects on the parton distribution functions in the unpolarized virtual photon up to the next-to-leading order in QCD. Our formalism is based on the QCD-improved parton model described by the DGLAP evolution equation as well as on the operator product expansion supplemented by the mass-independent renormalization group method. We evaluate the various components of the parton distributions inside the virtual photon with the massive quark effects, which are included through the initial condition for the heavy quark distributions, or equivalently from the matrix element of the heavy quark operators. We discuss some features of our results for the heavy quark effects and their factorization-scheme dependence.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Pionic Parton Distributions Revisited

Using constituent quark model constraints we calculate the gluon and sea-quark content of pions solely in terms of their valence density (fixed by \pi N Drell-Yan data) and the known sea and gluon distributions of the nucleon, using the most recent updated valence-like input parton densities of the nucleon. The resulting small-x dynamical QCD predictions for g^{\pi}(x,Q^2) and \bar{q}^{\pi}(x,Q^2) are unique and parameter free. Simple analytic parametrizations of the resulting parton distributions of the pion are presented in LO and NLO. These results and parametrizations will be important, among other things, for updated formulations of the parton distributions of real and virtual photons.Comment: 14 pages incl. 3 figures, LaTe

Target Mass Corrections for the Virtual Photon Structure Functions to the Next-to-next-to-leading Order in QCD

We investigate target mass effects in the unpolarized virtual photon structure functions $F_2^\gamma(x,Q^2,P^2)$ and $F_L^\gamma(x,Q^2,P^2)$ in perturbative QCD for the kinematical region $\Lambda^2 \ll P^2 \ll Q^2$, where $-Q^2(-P^2)$ is the mass squared of the probe (target) photon and $\Lambda$ is the QCD scale parameter. We obtain the Nachtmann moments for the structure functions and then, by inverting the moments, we get the expressions in closed form for $F_2^\gamma(x,Q^2,P^2)$ up to the next-to-next-to-leading order and for $F_L^\gamma(x,Q^2,P^2)$ up to the next-to-leading order, both of which include the target mass corrections. Numerical analysis exhibits that target mass effects appear at large $x$ and become sizable near $x_{\rm max}(=1/(1+\frac{P^2}{Q^2}))$, the maximal value of $x$, as the ratio $P^2/Q^2$ increases.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, 7 eps figures, REVTeX

Active Brownian particles with velocity-alignment and active fluctuations

We consider a model of active Brownian particles with velocity-alignment in two spatial dimensions with passive and active fluctuations. Hereby, active fluctuations refers to purely non-equilibrium stochastic forces correlated with the heading of an individual active particle. In the simplest case studied here, they are assumed as independent stochastic forces parallel (speed noise) and perpendicular (angular noise) to the velocity of the particle. On the other hand, passive fluctuations are defined by a noise vector independent of the direction of motion of a particle, and may account for example for thermal fluctuations. We derive a macroscopic description of the active Brownian particle gas with velocity-alignment interaction. Hereby, we start from the individual based description in terms of stochastic differential equations (Langevin equations) and derive equations of motion for the coarse grained kinetic variables (density, velocity and temperature) via a moment expansion of the corresponding probability density function. We focus here in particular on the different impact of active and passive fluctuations on the onset of collective motion and show how active fluctuations in the active Brownian dynamics can change the phase-transition behaviour of the system. In particular, we show that active angular fluctuation lead to an earlier breakdown of collective motion and to emergence of a new bistable regime in the mean-field case.Comment: 5 figures, 22 pages, submitted to New Journal of Physic

Nuclear medium modification of the F2 structure function

We study the nuclear effects in the electromagnetic structure function F2(x,Q^2) in nuclei in the deep inelastic lepton nucleus scattering process by taking into account Fermi motion, binding, pion and rho meson cloud contributions. Calculations have been done in a local density approximation using relativistic nuclear spectral functions which include nucleon correlations for nuclear matter. The ratios over deuteron structure function are obtained and compared with the recent JLAB results for light nuclei with special attention to the slope of the x distributions. This magnitude shows a non trivial A dependence and it is insensitive to possible normalization uncertainties. The results have also been compared with some of the older experiments using intermediate mass nuclei.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures. This version matches accepted version to be published in Nuclear Physics

NLO+NLL limits on W' and Z' gauge boson masses in general extensions of the Standard Model

QCD resummation predictions for the production of charged (W') and neutral (Z') heavy gauge bosons decaying leptonically are presented. The results of our resummation code at next-to-leading order and next-to-leading logarithmic (NLO+NLL) accuracy are compared to Monte Carlo predictions obtained with PYTHIA at leading order (LO) supplemented with parton showers (PS) and FEWZ at NLO and next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) for the $p_T$-differential and total cross sections in the Sequential Standard Model (SSM) and general SU(2)xSU(2)xU(1) models. The LO+PS Monte Carlo and NNLO fixed-order predictions are shown to agree approximately with those at NLO+NLL at small and intermediate $p_T$, respectively, and the importance of resummation for total cross sections is shown to increase with the gauge boson mass. The theoretical uncertainties are estimated by variations of the renormalisation/factorisation scales and of the parton densities, the former being significantly reduced by the resummation procedure. New limits at NLO+NLL on W' and Z' boson masses are obtained by reinterpreting the latest ATLAS and CMS results in general extensions of the Standard Model.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures, 6 table