Towards a Precise Parton Luminosity Determination at the CERN LHC

A new approach to determine the LHC luminosity is investigated. Instead of employing the proton-proton luminosity measurement, we suggest to measure directly the parton-parton luminosity. It is shown that the electron and muon pseudorapidity distributions, originating from the decay of W+, W- and Z0 bosons produced at 14 TeV pp collisions (LHC), constrain the x distributions of sea and valence quarks and antiquarks in the range from about 3 x 10**-4 to about 10**-1 at a Q**2 of about 10**4 GeV**2. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that, once the quark and antiquark structure functions are constrained from the W+,W- and Z0 production dynamics, other quark-antiquark related scattering processes at the LHC like q-qbar --> W+W- can be predicted accurately. Thus, the lepton pseudorapidity distributions provide the key to a precise parton luminosity monitor at the LHC, with accuracies of about +-1% compared to the so far considered goal of +-5%.Comment: plain tex, 14 pages, 5 figure

Hadronic WW production and the Gottfried Sum Rule

The difference in production rate between $W^+$ and $W^-$ at hadron colliders is very sensitive to the the difference between up- and down-quark distributions in the proton. This sensitivity allows for a variety of useful measurements. We consider the difference $d_s(x,Q^2) - u_s(x,Q^2)$ in the sea distributions and the difference $\Delta u(x,Q^2) - \Delta d(x,Q^2)$ in the polarized parton distribution functions. In both cases we construct an asymmetry to reduce systematic uncertainties. Although we discuss measurements at the Tevatron and future hadron colliders, we find that the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is the most appropriate hadron collider for these measurements.Comment: 19 pages (20 figures available from the authors), MAD/PH/74

Enhancing the top signal at Tevatron using Neural Nets

We show that Neural Nets can be useful for top analysis at Tevatron. The main features of $t\bar t$ and background events on a mixed sample are projected in a single output, which controls the efficiency and purity of the $t\bar t$ signal.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures (not included and available from the authors), Latex, UB-ECM-PF 94/1

Multiparton interactions and production of minijets in high energy hadronic collisions

We discuss the inclusive cross section to produce two minijets with a large separation in rapidity in high energy hadronic collisions. The contribution to the inclusive cross section from the exchange of a BFKL Pomeron is compared with the contribution from the exchange of two BFKL Pomerons, which is induced by the unitarization of the semi-hard interaction. The effect of the multiple exchange is studied both as a function of the azimuthal correlation and as a function of the transverse momentum of the observed minijets.Comment: TeX file, 20 pages, 4 figures available on reques

An update on vector boson pair production at hadron colliders

We present numerical results (including full one-loop QCD corrections) for the processes p p-bar and pp -> W+ W-, W+/- Z/gamma* and Z/gamma* Z/gamma* followed by the decay of the massive vector bosons into leptons. In addition to their intrinsic importance as tests of the standard model, these processes are also backgrounds to conjectured non-standard model processes. Because of the small cross sections at the Tevatron, full experimental control of these backgrounds will be hard to achieve. This accentuates the need for up-to-date theoretical information. A comparison is made with earlier work and cross section results are presented for p p-bar collisions at sqrt{s}=2 TeV and pp collisions at sqrt{s}=14 TeV. Practical examples of the use of our calculations are presented.Comment: 18 pages, 5 embedded figures, included extra reference [7

Large Jets at Hadron Colliders at Order αs3\alpha_s^3: A Look Inside

Results from the study of hadronic jets in hadron-hadron collisions at order $\alpha_s^3$ in perturbation theory are presented. The focus is on various features of the internal structure of jets. The numerical results of the calculation are compared with data where possible and exhibit reasonable agreement.Comment: 7 pages, 1 table and 2 figures (appended as postscript files), Late

Transverse Momentum Distributions for Heavy Quark Pairs

We study the transverse momentum distribution for a $pair$ of heavy quarks produced in hadron-hadron interactions. Predictions for the large transverse momentum region are based on exact order $\alpha_s^3$ QCD perturbation theory. For the small transverse momentum region, we use techniques for all orders resummation of leading logarithmic contributions associated with initial state soft gluon radiation. The combination provides the transverse momentum distribution of heavy quark pairs for all transverse momenta. Explicit results are presented for $b\bar b$ pair production at the Fermilab Tevatron collider and for $c\bar c$ pair production at fixed target energies.Comment: LaTeX (27 pages text, 8 figures not included, but available on request