Early Electroweak and Top Quark Physics with CMS

The Large Hadron Collider is an ideal place for precision measurements of the properties of the electroweak gauge bosons W^\pm, Z^0, as well as of the top quark. In this article, a few highlights of the prospects for performing such measurements with the CMS detector are summarized, with an emphasis on the first few 1/fb of data.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in the proceedings of DIS 2007, Munich, April 200

Diffractive DIS Cross Sections and Parton Distributions

Highlights are presented mainly from two recent measurements of the diffractive Deep Inelastic Scattering cross section at HERA. In the first, the process $ep\to eXp$ is studied by tagging the leading final state proton. In the second, events of this type are selected by requiring a large rapidity gap devoid of hadronic activity in the proton direction. The two measurements are compared in detail and the kinematic dependences are interpreted within the framework of a factorisable diffractive exchange. Diffractive parton distributions are determined from a next-to-leading order QCD analysis of the large rapidity gap data, which can be applied to the prediction of diffractive processes, also at the TEVATRON and the LHC.Comment: to appear in the proceedings of the 33rd Intl. Conference on High Energy Physics, ICHEP 2006 (Moscow, July 2006

Status and Commissioning of the CMS Experiment

After a brief overview of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, the status of construction and installation is described in the first part of the note. The second part of the document is devoted to a discussion of the general commissioning strategy of the CMS experiment, with a particular emphasis on trigger, calibration and alignment. Aspects of b-physics, as well as examples for early physics with CMS are also presented. CMS will be ready for data taking in time for the first collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in late 2007.Comment: Talks given at the 11th Intl. Conference on B-Physics at Hadron Machines BEAUTY 2006, Oxford (UK), September 200

Inclusive Diffraction at HERA

New precision measurements of inclusive diffractive deep-inelastic ep scattering interactions, performed by the H1 and ZEUS collaborations at the HERA collider, are discussed. A new set of diffractive parton distributions, determined from recent high precision H1 data, is presented.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in the proceedings of the 31st Intl. Conference on High Energy Physics ICHEP 2002, Amsterdam, July 200

Microscopic theory of glassy dynamics and glass transition for molecular crystals

We derive a microscopic equation of motion for the dynamical orientational correlators of molecular crystals. Our approach is based upon mode coupling theory. Compared to liquids we find four main differences: (i) the memory kernel contains Umklapp processes, (ii) besides the static two-molecule orientational correlators one also needs the static one-molecule orientational density as an input, where the latter is nontrivial, (iii) the static orientational current density correlator does contribute an anisotropic, inertia-independent part to the memory kernel, (iv) if the molecules are assumed to be fixed on a rigid lattice, the tensorial orientational correlators and the memory kernel have vanishing l,l'=0 components. The resulting mode coupling equations are solved for hard ellipsoids of revolution on a rigid sc-lattice. Using the static orientational correlators from Percus-Yevick theory we find an ideal glass transition generated due to precursors of orientational order which depend on X and p, the aspect ratio and packing fraction of the ellipsoids. The glass formation of oblate ellipsoids is enhanced compared to that for prolate ones. For oblate ellipsoids with X <~ 0.7 and prolate ellipsoids with X >~ 4, the critical diagonal nonergodicity parameters in reciprocal space exhibit more or less sharp maxima at the zone center with very small values elsewhere, while for prolate ellipsoids with 2 <~ X <~ 2.5 we have maxima at the zone edge. The off-diagonal nonergodicity parameters are not restricted to positive values and show similar behavior. For 0.7 <~ X <~ 2, no glass transition is found. In the glass phase, the nonergodicity parameters show a pronounced q-dependence.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, accepted at Phys. Rev. E. v4 is almost identical to the final paper version. It includes, compared to former versions v2/v3, no new physical content, but only some corrected formulas in the appendices and corrected typos in text. In comparison to version v1, in v2-v4 some new results have been included and text has been change

Track Based Alignment of Composite Detector Structures

An iterative algorithm for track based alignment is presented. The algorithm can be applied to rigid composite detector structures or to individual modules. The iterative process involves track reconstruction and alignment, in which the chi-2 function of the hit residuals of each alignable object is minimized. Six alignment parameters per structure or per module, three for location and three for orientation, can be computed. The method is computationally light and easily parallelizable. The performance of the method is demonstrated with simulated tracks in the CMS pixel detector and tracks reconstructed from experimental data recorded with a test beam setup

Osmotic compression of droplets of hard rods: A computer simulation study

By means of computer simulations we study how droplets of hard, rod-like particles optimize their shape and internal structure under the influence of the osmotic compression caused by the presence of spherical particles that act as depletion agents. At sufficiently high osmotic pressures the rods that make up the drops spontaneously align to turn them into uniaxial nematic liquid crystalline droplets. The nematic droplets or "tactoids" that are formed this way are not spherical but elongated, resulting from the competition between the anisotropic surface tension and the elastic deformation of the director field. In agreement with recent theoretical predictions we find that sufficiently small tactoids have a uniform director field, whilst large ones are characterized by a bipolar director field. From the shape and director-field transformation of the droplets we are able to estimate the surface anchoring strength and an average of the elastic constants of the hard-rod nematic

Depletion induced isotropic-isotropic phase separation in suspensions of rod-like colloids

When non-adsorbing polymers are added to an isotropic suspension of rod-like colloids, the colloids effectively attract each other via depletion forces. We performed Monte Carlo simulations to study the phase diagram of such rod-polymer mixture. The colloidal rods were modelled as hard spherocylinders; the polymers were described as spheres of the same diameter as the rods. The polymers may overlap with no energy cost, while overlap of polymers and rods is forbidden. Large amounts of depletant cause phase separation of the mixture. We estimated the phase boundaries of isotropic-isotropic coexistence both, in the bulk and in confinement. To determine the phase boundaries we applied the grand canonical ensemble using successive umbrella sampling [J. Chem. Phys. 120, 10925 (2004)], and we performed a finite-size scaling analysis to estimate the location of the critical point. The results are compared with predictions of the free volume theory developed by Lekkerkerker and Stroobants [Nuovo Cimento D 16, 949 (1994)]. We also give estimates for the interfacial tension between the coexisting isotropic phases and analyse its power-law behaviour on approach of the critical point