Signals from R-parity violating top quark decays at LHC

We evaluate the potential of the CERN LHC collider to observe rare decays of the top quark in channels involving R-parity violating (RPV) interactions. We stress the importance of calculating top quark production and decay simultaneously as a true 2->4 process. The process of tt-bar pair production followed by RPV decay of one of the top quarks is analyzed with fast detector simulation. We show that intermediate supersymmetric particles can be observed as resonances even if they are heavier than the top quark due to the significant off-shell top-quark mass effects. The approach where the top quark is produced on-mass-shell and then decays into 2- or 3-body final state would in general lead to incorrect kinematical distributions and rates. The rates of the 2 -> 4 process with top quark production and RPV 3-body decay depend on the total width of the heavy intermediate sfermion which could,therefore, be measured indirectly. We find that the LHC collider offers a unique potential to study rare top quark decays in the framework of supersymmetry with broken R-parity for branching fractions of RPV top decays as low as 10^{-6}Comment: 23 pages, 22 figure

The Distribution of Constituent Charm Quarks in the Hadron

Using a statistical approach in the framework of non-covariant perturbation theory the distributions for light and charmed quarks in the hadron have been derived, taking into account the mass of the charmed quark. The parameters of the model have been extracted from the comparison with NA3 data on hadroproduction of J/psi particles. A reanalysis of the EMC data on charm production in muon-nucleon scattering has been performed. It has been found in comparison with the conventional source of charmed quarks from photon-gluon fusion, that the EMC data indicate the presence of an additional contribution from deep-inelastic scattering on charmed quarks at large x. The resulting admixture of the Fock states, containing charmed quarks in the decomposition of the proton wave function is of the order of 1%. The approach presented for the excitation of the Fock states with charmed quarks can also be applied to states with beauty quarks as well as to the hadronic component of the virtual photon (resolved photon component).Comment: 23 pages, 4 PostScript figures, Latex2e. In revised version in comparison with the original one all (?) mistypings have been corrected, one more thank has been added and the comparison of the pion and the proton J/psi production is described in more detai

Rate Measurement of D0→K+π−π0D^{0}\to K^{+}\pi^{-}\pi^{0} and Constraints on D0−D0‾D^{0} - \overline{D^{0}} Mixing

We present an observation and rate measurement of the decay D0 -> K+pi-pi0 produced in 9/fb of e+e- collisions near the Upsilon(4S) resonance. The signal is inconsistent with an upward fluctuation of the background by 4.9 standard deviations. We measured the rate of D0 -> K+pi-pi0 normalized to the rate of D0bar -> K+pi-pi0 to be 0.0043 +0.0011 -0.0010 (stat) +/- 0.0007 (syst). This decay can be produced by doubly-Cabibbo-suppressed decays or by the D0 evolving into a D0bar through mixing, followed by a Cabibbo-favored decay to K+pi-pi0. We also found the CP asymmetry A=(8 +25 -22)% to be consistent with zero.Comment: 10 pages postscript, also available through http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN

A simple event weighting technique for optimizing the measurement of the forward-backward asymmetry of Drell-Yan dilepton pairs at hadron colliders

We describe a simple technique for optimizing the extraction of the forward-backward asymmetry ($A_{fb}$) of Drell-Yan lepton pairs ($e^+e^-$,$\mu^+\mu^-$) produced in $\bar{p}p$ and $pp$ collisions at hadron colliders. The method employs simple event weights which are functions of the rapidity and $cos\theta$ decay angle of the lepton pair. It yields the best estimate of the acceptance corrected parton level ($\bar{q}q$) forward backward asymmetry as a function of final state dilepton mass ($M_{\ell\ell}$). Typically, when compared to the simple count method, the technique reduces the statistical errors by 20% for $\bar{p}p$, and 40% for $pp$ collisions, respectively. The technique can be used to search for new high mass and large width Z' bosons which may be best detected through the observation of deviations from the Standard Model expectation for the forward-backward asymmetry. In addition, we derive expressions for the QCD angular coefficients for Drell-Yan events.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in EPJ