Isolated-photon production in polarized hadronic collisions

After a short discussion on the definition of isolated-photon cross sections in perturbative QCD, I present phenomenological predictions relevant for polarized hadron-hadron collisions in the RHIC energy range. The possibility of measuring $\Delta g$ is investigated.Comment: 3 pages Latex; npb.sty and 2 ps figures included. Talk given at DIS99, 19 - 23 April 1999, Zeuthen, D

Isolated photons in perturbative QCD

I present a definition of the cross section for the production of an isolated photon plus $n$ jets which only depends upon direct photon production, and it is independent of the parton-to-photon fragmentation contribution. This prescription, based on a modified cone approach which implements the isolation condition in a smooth way, treats in the same way quarks and gluons and can be directly applied to experimental data in hadron-hadron, photon-hadron and \epem collisions. The case of several, isolated photons in the final state can also be dealt with in the very same way.Comment: 10 pages Late

Determination of the top quark mass from leptonic observables

We present a procedure for the determination of the mass of the top quark at the LHC based on leptonic observables in dilepton $t\bar{t}$ events. Our approach utilises the shapes of kinematic distributions through their few lowest Mellin moments; it is notable for its minimal sensitivity to the modelling of long-distance effects, for not requiring the reconstruction of top quarks, and for having a competitive precision, with theory errors on the extracted top mass of the order of 0.8 GeV. A novel aspect of our work is the study of theoretical biases that might influence in a dramatic way the determination of the top mass, and which are potentially relevant to all template-based methods. We propose a comprehensive strategy that helps minimise the impact of such biases, and leads to a reliable top mass extraction at hadron colliders.Comment: 29 pages, 3 figure

The MC@NLO 2.2 Event Generator

This is the user's manual of MC@NLO 2.2. This package is a practical implementation, based upon the HERWIG event generator, of the MC@NLO formalism, which allows one to incorporate NLO QCD matrix elements consistently into a parton shower framework. Processes available in this version include the hadroproduction of Higgs bosons, single vector bosons, vector boson pairs, and heavy quark-antiquark pairs. This document is self-contained, but we emphasise the main differences with respect to previous versions.Comment: 17 pages, no figures. Version 2 has more details on some features. Program available at http://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/theory/webber/MCatNLO

The MC@NLO 3.4 Event Generator

This is the user's manual of MC@NLO 3.4. This package is a practical implementation, based upon the HERWIG event generator, of the MC@NLO formalism, which allows one to incorporate NLO QCD matrix elements consistently into a parton shower framework. Processes available in this version include the hadroproduction of single vector and Higgs bosons, vector boson pairs, heavy quark pairs, single top, single top in association with a W, lepton pairs, and Higgs bosons in association with a W or Z. Spin correlations are included for all processes except ZZ and WZ production. This document is self-contained, but we emphasise the main differences with respect to previous versions.Comment: 30 page

D* Production in Two-Photon Collisions

We calculate total and differential production rates of D* mesons in two-photon collisions at LEP2. We include full next-to-leading order QCD corrections, and perform an extensive study of the sensitivity of our predictions to variations of the renormalization scale, charm mass, photonic parton distribution set and fragmentation function. The results are compared with recent data from LEP2.Comment: Latex, 19 pages, 9 figure