Crustal thickness anomalies in the North Atlantic Ocean basin from gravity analysis

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 12 (2011): Q0AE02, doi:10.1029/2010GC003402.Gravity-derived crustal thickness models were calculated for the North Atlantic Ocean between 76°N and the Chain Fracture Zone and calibrated using seismically determined crustal thickness. About 7% of the ocean crust is 7 km thick and is interpreted to have been affected by excess magmatism. Thin crust probably reflects reduced melt production from relatively cold or refractory mantle at scales of up to hundreds of kilometers along the spreading axis. By far the most prominent thick crust anomaly is associated with Iceland and adjacent areas, which accounts for 57% of total crustal volume in excess of 7 km. Much smaller anomalies include the Azores (8%), Cape Verde Islands (6%), Canary Islands (5%), Madeira (<4%), and New England–Great Meteor Seamount chain (2%), all of which appear to be associated with hot spots. Hot spot–related crustal thickening is largely intermittent, suggesting that melt production is episodic on time scales of tens of millions of years. Thickened crust shows both symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns about the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) axis, reflecting whether melt anomalies were or were not centered on the MAR axis, respectively. Thickened crust at the Bermuda and Cape Verde rises appears to have been formed by isolated melt anomalies over periods of only ∼20–25 Myr. Crustal thickness anomalies on the African plate generally are larger than those on the North American plate; this most likely results from slower absolute plate speed of the African plate over relatively fixed hot spots.Supported by a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council. Additional support for this research was provided by the Charles D. Hollister Endowed Fund for Support of Innovative Research at WHOI (JL) and NSF China grants 40676023 and 40821062 (YJC)

Model-independent search for CP violation in D0→K−K+π−π+ and D0→π−π+π+π− decays

A search for CP violation in the phase-space structures of D0 and View the MathML source decays to the final states K−K+π−π+ and π−π+π+π− is presented. The search is carried out with a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1 collected in 2011 by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For the K−K+π−π+ final state, the four-body phase space is divided into 32 bins, each bin with approximately 1800 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 9.1%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 6.5% observed. The phase space of the π−π+π+π− final state is partitioned into 128 bins, each bin with approximately 2500 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 41%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 5.5% observed. All results are consistent with the hypothesis of no CP violation at the current sensitivity

Study of B0(s)→K0Sh+h′− decays with first observation of B0s→K0SK±π∓ and B0s→K0Sπ+π−

A search for charmless three-body decays of B 0 and B0s mesons with a K0S meson in the final state is performed using the pp collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1, collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded by the LHCb experiment. Branching fractions of the B0(s)→K0Sh+h′− decay modes (h (′) = π, K), relative to the well measured B0→K0Sπ+π− decay, are obtained. First observation of the decay modes B0s→K0SK±π∓ and B0s→K0Sπ+π− and confirmation of the decay B0→K0SK±π∓ are reported. The following relative branching fraction measurements or limits are obtained B(B0→K0SK±π∓)B(B0→K0Sπ+π−)=0.128±0.017(stat.)±0.009(syst.), B(B0→K0SK+K−)B(B0→K0Sπ+π−)=0.385±0.031(stat.)±0.023(syst.), B(B0s→K0Sπ+π−)B(B0→K0Sπ+π−)=0.29±0.06(stat.)±0.03(syst.)±0.02(fs/fd), B(B0s→K0SK±π∓)B(B0→K0Sπ+π−)=1.48±0.12(stat.)±0.08(syst.)±0.12(fs/fd)B(B0s→K0SK+K−)B(B0→K0Sπ+π−)∈[0.004;0.068]at90%CL

First evidence for the two-body charmless baryonic decay B0→pp−

The results of a search for the rare two-body charmless baryonic decays B0→pp− and B0s→pp− are reported. The analysis uses a data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.9 fb−1, of pp collision data collected by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. An excess of B0→pp− candidates with respect to background expectations is seen with a statistical significance of 3.3 standard deviations. This is the first evidence for a two-body charmless baryonic B 0 decay. No significant B0s→pp− signal is observed, leading to an improvement of three orders of magnitude over previous bounds. If the excess events are interpreted as signal, the 68.3% confidence level intervals on the branching fractions are B(B0→pp−)=1.47+0.62+0.35−0.51−0.14×10−8,\hfillB(Bs→pp−)=2.84+2.03+0.85−1.68−0.18×10−8,\hfill where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic

First measurement of time-dependent CP violation in B0s→K+K− decays

Direct and mixing-induced CP-violating asymmetries in B0s→K+K− decays are measured for the first time using a data sample of pp collisions, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1, collected with the LHCb detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The results are C KK  = 0.14 ± 0.11 ± 0.03 and S KK  = 0.30 ± 0.12 ± 0.04, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The corresponding quantities are also determined for B 0 → π + π − decays to be C ππ  = −0.38 ± 0.15 ± 0.02 and S ππ  = −0.71 ± 0.13 ± 0.02, in good agreement with existing measurements