W physics at LEP

A summary of the W-boson properties measured by the four LEP collaborations is presented here. These properties are updated to take into account the most recent results presented at the ICHEP98 conference

Preliminary Results on Z Production Cross-Sections and Lepton Forward-Backward Asymmetries using the 1994 Data

Preliminary values of the Z resonance parameters and lepton pair forward-backward asymmetries are measured from a sample of about 3.7 million Z decays into hadrons and charged leptons accumulated with the Aleph detector at LEP between 1989 and 1994

Finite-size scaling of interface free energies in the 3d Ising model

We perform a study of the universality of the finite size scaling functions of interface free energies in the 3d Ising model. Close to the hot/cold phase transition, we observe very good agreement with the same scaling functions of the 4d SU(2) Yang--Mills theory at the deconfinement phase transition

Laplacian gauge and instantons

We exhibit the connection between local gauge singularities in the Laplacian gauge and topological charge, which opens the possibility of studying instanton excitations without cooling. We describe our version of Laplacian gauge-fixing for SU(N)

Center Vortices and Monopoles without lattice Gribov copies

We construct a smooth gauge for the adjoint field which is free of ambiguities on the lattice. In this Laplacian Center Gauge, center vortices and monopoles appear together as local gauge defects. A numerical study of center vortices in SU(2) and SU(3) shows equality of the $Z_N$ and SU(N) string tensions in the continuum limit, and only then

Searches for Scalar Top and Scalar Bottom Quarks at LEP2

Searches for scalar top and bottom quarks have been performed with data collected by the ALEPH detector at LEP. The data sample consists of 21.7 pb^-1 taken at sqrt{s} = 161, 170, and 172~GeV and 5.7 pb^-1 taken at sqrt{s} = 130 and 136~GeV. No evidence for scalar top quarks or scalar bottom quarks was found in the channels stop --> c chi, stop --> b l snu, and sbottom --> b chi. For the channel stop --> c chi a limit of 67 GeV/c^2 has been set on the scalar top quark mass, independent of the mixing angle between the supersymmetric partners of the left and right-handed states of the top quark. This limit assumes a mass difference between the stop and the chi of at least 10 GeV/c^2. For the channel stop --> b l snu the mixing-angle independent scalar top limit is 70 GeV/c^2, assuming a mass difference between the stop and the snu of at least 10 GeV/c^2. For the channel sbottom --> b chi, a limit of 73 GeV/c^2 has been set on the mass of the supersymmetric partner of the left-handed state of the bottom quark. This limit is valid if the mass difference between the sbottom and the chi is at least 10 GeV/c^2

Search for CP Violation in the Decay Z -> b (b bar) g

About three million hadronic decays of the Z collected by ALEPH in the years 1991-1994 are used to search for anomalous CP violation beyond the Standard Model in the decay Z -> b \bar{b} g. The study is performed by analyzing angular correlations between the two quarks and the gluon in three-jet events and by measuring the differential two-jet rate. No signal of CP violation is found. For the combinations of anomalous CP violating couplings, ${\hat{h}}_b = {\hat{h}}_{Ab}g_{Vb}-{\hat{h}}_{Vb}g_{Ab}$ and $h^{\ast}_b = \sqrt{\hat{h}_{Vb}^{2}+\hat{h}_{Ab}^{2}}$, limits of \hat{h}_b < 0.59$and$h^{\ast}_{b} < 3.02$ are given at 95\% CL.Comment: 8 pages, 1 postscript figure, uses here.sty, epsfig.st