Summary of the laser working group

The laser working group considered several options to deliver synchronized laser pulses of the required energy to the photocathode and laser triggered switches. These requirements actually decreased during the course of the workshop, and the values finally settled upon (<10 {mu}J in 100 fs at {approximately}250 nm for the photocathode and {approximately}20 mJ in 2 ps near either 250 nm or 1 {mu}m for the switches) were considered to be well within the state of the art. Some development work may be required, however, to provide a system that has the desirable characteristics of stability, ease of use and low maintenance. The baseline concept, which is similar to a number of existing systems, utilizes doubled Nd:YAG-pumped dye oscillator/amplifiers to produce an upconverted picosecond pulse that can be amplified to tens of mJ in a KrF excimer laser. A fraction of the dye oscillator output is also compressed by means of a fiber-grating compressor and further amplified in a dye amplifier before being upconverted to produce the synchronized pulse for the photocathode. 9 refs., 1 fig

Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events

The $B^0$-$\bar B^0$ oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of 23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives $\Delta m_d = 0.493 \pm 0.012{(stat)}\pm 0.009{(syst)}$ ps$^{-1}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter

The contributions of nitrogen-fixing crop legumes to the productivity of agricultural systems

Abstract Data collated from around the world indicate that, for every tonne of shoot dry matter produced by crop legumes, the symbiotic relationship with rhizobia is responsible for fixing, on average on a whole plant basis (shoots and nodulated roots), the equivalent of 30-40 kg of nitrogen (N). Consequently, factors that directly influence legume growth (e.g. water and nutrient availability, disease incidence and pests) tend to be the main determinants of the amounts of N2 fixed. However, practices that either limit the presence of effective rhizobia in the soil (no inoculation, poor inoculant quality), increase soil concentrations of nitrate (excessive tillage, extended fallows, fertilizer N), or enhance competition for soil mineralN (intercropping legumes with cereals) can also be critical. Much of the N2 fixed by the legume is usually removed at harvest in high-protein seed so that the net residual contributions of fixed N to agricultural soils after the harvest of legume grain may be relatively small. Nonetheless, the inclusion of legumes in a cropping sequence generally improves the productivity of following crops. Whilesome of these rotational effects may be associated with improvements in availability ofN in soils, factors unrelated to N also play an important role. Recent results suggest that one such non-N benefit may be due to the impact on soil biology of hydrogen emitted from nodules as a by-product of'N, fixation

Search for the rare decays B→Kl+l−B \to Kl^+l^- and B→K∗l+l−B \to K^*l^+l^-

We present results from a search for the flavor-changing neutral current decays $B\to K\ell^+\ell^-$ and $B\to K^*\ell^+\ell^-$, where $\ell^+\ell^-$ is either an $e^+e^-$ or $\mu^+\mu^-$ pair. The data sample comprises $22.7\times 10^6$ $\Upsilon(4S)\to B\bar B$ decays collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II $B$ Factory. We obtain the 90% C.L. upper limits ${\mathcal B}(B\to K\ell^+\ell^-)< 0.50\times 10^{-6}$ and ${\mathcal B}(B\to K^*\ell^+\ell^-)<2.9\times 10^{-6}$, close to Standard Model predictions for these branching fractions. We have also obtained limits on the lepton-family-violating decays $B\to Ke^{\pm}\mu^{\mp}$ and $B\to K^{*}e^{\pm}\mu^{\mp}$