Study of sequential semileptonic decays of b hadrons produced at the Tevatron

We present a study of rates and kinematical properties of lepton pairs contained in central jets with transverse energy E_T > 15 GeV that are produced at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. We compare the data to a QCD prediction based on the HERWIG and QQ Monte Carlo generator programs.We find that the data are poorly described by the simulation, in which sequential semileptonic decays of single b quarks (b --> l c X with c --> l s X) are the major source of such lepton pairs.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures. Some typos were fixed in the text and bibliography. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Has the anomalous single production of the fourth SM family quarks decaying into light Higgs boson been observed by CDF?

Superjet events observed by the CDF Collaboration are interpreted as anomalous single production of the fourth SM family u_4 quark, decaying into a new light scalar particle. The specific predictions of the proposed mechanism are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 1 tabl

Phenomenological study of the atypical heavy flavor production observed at the Fermilab Tevatron

We address known discrepancies between the heavy flavor properties of jets produced at the Tevatron collider and the prediction of conventional-QCD simulations. In this study, we entertain the possibility that these effects are real and due to new physics. We show that all anomalies can be simultaneously fitted by postulating the additional pair production of light bottom squarks with a 100% semileptonic branching fraction.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Spectator Effects in Inclusive Decays of Beauty Hadrons

We present a model-independent study of spectator effects, which are responsible for the lifetime differences between beauty hadrons. These effects can be parametrized in terms of hadronic matrix elements of four four-quark operators. For $B$ mesons, the coefficients of the non-factorizable operators turn out to be much larger than those of the factorizable ones, limiting considerably the usefulness of the vacuum insertion approximation. Non-factorizable contributions to the lifetime ratio $\tau(B^-)/\tau(B_d)$ could naturally be of order 10--20%, and not even the sign of these contributions can be predicted at present. In the case of the $\Lambda_b$ baryon, heavy-quark symmetry is used to reduce the number of independent matrix elements from four to two. In order to explain the large deviation from unity in the experimental result for $\tau(\Lambda_b)/\tau(B_d)$, it is necessary that these baryon matrix elements be much larger than those estimated in quark models. We have also reexamined the theoretical predictions for the semileptonic branching ratio of $B$ mesons and charm counting, finding that, given the present theoretical and experimental uncertainties, there is no significant discrepancy with experiment.Comment: 32 pages, 5 postscript figures included, revised version to appear in Nuclear Physics

Anomalous single production of the fourth SM family quarks at Tevatron

Possible single productions of fourth family u_{4} and d_{4} quarks via anomalous q_{4}qV interactions at Tevatron are studied. Signature of such processes are discussed and compared with the recent results from Tevatron.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 4 table

Spectator effects in semileptonic decay of charmed baryons

It is shown that the absolute rate of the semileptonic decays of the $\Xi_c$ baryons can be as much as two times higher than the semileptonic decay rate of $\Lambda_c$ due to the Pauli interference of the strange quark. This interference effect is still larger in the semileptonic decay rate of $\Omega_c$. An experimental measurement of the difference of these rates would thus provide an important piece of information on the spectator effects in decays of hadrons containing a heavy quark.Comment: 8 pages in LaTeX. Final journal version. To appear in Phys. Lett.

Present Limits on the Precision of SM Predictions for Jet Energies

We investigate the impact of theoretical uncertainties on the accuracy of measurements involving hadronic jets. The analysis is performed using events with a Z boson and a single jet observed in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 TeV in 4.6 $\mathrm{fb^{-1}}$ of data from the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). The transverse momenta (\pt) of the jet and the boson should balance each other due to momentum conservation in the plane transverse to the direction of the $p$ and $\bar{p}$ beams. We evaluate the dependence of the measured \pt-balance on theoretical uncertainties associated with initial and final state radiation, choice of renormalization and factorization scales, parton distribution functions, jet-parton matching, calculations of matrix elements, and parton showering. We find that the uncertainty caused by parton showering at large angles is the largest amongst the listed uncertainties. The proposed method can be re-applied at the LHC experiments to investigate and evaluate the uncertainties on the predicted jet energies. The distributions produced at the CDF environment are intended for comparison to those from modern event generators and new tunes of parton showering.Comment: Submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Meth.