The Heavy-Ion Physics Programme with the ATLAS Detector

The CERN LHC will collide lead ions at $\sqrt{s}=5.5$ TeV per nucleon pair and will provide crucial information about the formation of a quark--gluon plasma at the highest temperatures and densities ever created in the laboratory. We report on an updated evaluation of the ATLAS potential to study heavy--ion physics. The ATLAS detector will perform especially well for high $p_T$ phenomena even in the presence of the high--multiplicity soft background expected from lead-lead collisions, and most of the detector subsystems retain their nearly full capability. ATLAS will study a full range of observables which characterize the hot and dense medium formed in heavy--ion collisions. In addition to global measurements such as particle multiplicities and collective flow, heavy--quarkonia suppression, jet quenching and the modification of jets passing in the dense medium will be accessible. ATLAS will also study forward physics and ultraperipheral collisions using Zero Degree Calorimeters

Heavy Quarkonia Perspectives with Heavy-Ions in ATLAS

ATLAS will study a full range of observables and phenomena which characterize the hot dense medium formed in heavy-ion collisions, and in particular heavy quarkonia suppression which provides a handle on deconfinement mechanisms. As each quark-antiquark bound state is predicted to dissociate at a different temperature, the systematic measurement of the suppression of these resonances should provide some sort of thermometer of the early stage of the system evolution. We report on an evaluation of the ATLAS potential to measure resonances of the Upsilon and J/psi families created in Pb+Pb collisions

Quarkonia Physics in Heavy-Ion collisions with the ATLAS Detector

Updated evaluation of the ATLAS capabilities to study heavy quarkonia physics in Pb+Pb collisions

Measuring the quark condensate from the decays tau -> 3 pi + nu(tau)

The possibility of detecting the S-wave of the decays tau -> 3 pi + nu(tau) in the threshold region is explored, with emphasis on the sensitivity to the size of the quark antiquark condensate .Comment: contribution to QCD99, 4 pages, Latex, using espcrc2.sty (included), 2 PS figur

Three channel model of meson-meson scattering and scalar meson spectroscopy

New solutions on the scalar -- isoscalar $\pi\pi$ phase shifts are analysed together with previous $K\bar{K}$ results using a separable potential model of three coupled channels ($\pi\pi$, $K\bar{K}$ and an effective $2\pi 2\pi$ system). Model parameters are fitted to two sets of solutions obtained in a recent analysis of the CERN-Cracow-Munich measurements of the $\pi^- p_{\uparrow} \to \pi^+ \pi^- n$ reaction on a polarized target. A relatively narrow (90 -- 180 MeV) scalar resonance $f_0(1400-1460)$ is found, in contrast to a much broader ($\Gamma \approx 500$ MeV) state emerging from the analysis of previous unpolarized target data.Comment: 10 Latex pages + 6 postscript figure

Heavy Ion Physics at the LHC with the ATLAS Detector

The ATLAS detector at CERN will provide a high-resolution longitudinally-segmented calorimeter and precision tracking for the upcoming study of heavy ion collisions at the LHC (sqrt(s_NN)=5520 GeV). The calorimeter covers |eta|<5 with both electromagnetic and hadronic sections, while the inner detector spectrometer covers |eta|<2.5. ATLAS will study a full range of observables necessary to characterize the hot and dense matter formed at the LHC. Global measurements (particle multiplicities, collective flow) will provide access into its thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties. Measuring complete jets out to 100's of GeV will allow detailed studies of energy loss and its effect on jets. Quarkonia will provide a handle on deconfinement mechanisms. ATLAS will also study the structure of the nucleon and nucleus using forward physics probes and ultraperipheral collisions, both enabled by segmented Zero Degree Calorimeters.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to the Proceedings of Quark Matter 2006, Shanghai, China, November 14-20, 200

Chiral Lagrangians

An overview of the field of Chiral Lagrangians is given. This includes Chiral Perturbation Theory and resummations to extend it to higher energies, applications to the muon anomalous magnetic moment, $\epsilon^\prime/\epsilon$ and others.Comment: Invited talk at the XX International Symposium on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies 23rd-28th July 2001, Rome Italy, 15 pages, uses ws-p10x7.cls Changes: 2 references added, numbers in g-2 hadronic changed slightl

On CP-Odd Effects in K_L \to 2\pi and K^{\pm} \to \pi^{\pm} \pi^{\pm} \pi^{\mp} Decays Generated by Direct CP Violation

The amplitudes of the K^{\pm} \to 3\pi and K \to 2\pi decays are expressed in terms of different combinations of one and the same set of CP-conserving and CP-odd parameters. Extracting the magnitudes of these parameters from the data on K \to 2\pi decays, we estimate an expected CP-odd difference between the values of the slope parameters g^+ and g^- of the energy distributions of "odd" pions in K^+ \to \pi^+\pi^+\pi^- and K^- \to \pi^-\pi^-\pi^+ decays.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

Pion Interactions in Chiral Field Theories

We study in various chiral models the pion charge radius, $\pi_{e3}$ form factor ratio, $\pi^\circ \to \gamma \gamma$ amplitude, charge pion polarizabilities, $\gamma\gamma \to \pi^\circ \pi^\circ$ amplitude at low energies and the $\pi\pi$ s-wave I = 0 scattering length. We find that a quark-level linear sigma-model approach (also being consistent with tree-level vector meson dominance) is quite compatible with all of the above data.Comment: 12 pages, 9 eps figure

T-odd correlations in charged Kl4 decays

We analyse the sensitivity to physics beyond the SM of T-odd correlations in $K_{\ell 4}$ decays, which do not involve the lepton polarization. We show that a combined analysis of $K^+_{\mu 4}$ and $K^-_{\mu 4}$ decays can lead to new constraints about CP violation in $\Delta S=1$ charged-current interactions, complementary to those obtained from the transverse muon polarization in $K_{\mu 3}$ and of comparable accuracy.Comment: 6 pages (LaTeX