A Mercury Lander Mission Concept Study for the Next Decadal Survey

Mariner 10 provided our first closeup reconnaissance of Mercury during its three flybys in 1974 and 1975. MESSENGERs 20112015 orbital investigation enabled numerous discoveries, several of which led to substantial or complete changes in our fundamental understanding of the planet. Among these were the unanticipated, widespread presence of volatile elements (e.g., Na, K, S); a surface with extremely low Fe abundance whose darkening agent is likely C; a previously unknown landformhollows that may form by volatile sublimation from within rocks exposed to the harsh conditions on the surface; a history of expansive effusive and explosive volcanism; substantial radial contraction of the planet from interior cooling; offset of the dipole moment of the internal magnetic field northward from the geographic equator by ~20% of the planets radius; crustal magnetization, attributed at least in part to an ancient field; unexpected seasonal variability and relationships among exospheric species and processes; and the presence in permanently shadowed polar terrain of water ice and other volatile materials, likely to include complex organic compounds. Mercurys highly chemically reduced and unexpectedly volatile-rich composition is unique among the terrestrial planets and was not predicted by earlier hypotheses for the planets origin. As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of the Solar System and how planets (and exoplanets) form and evolve in close proximity to their host stars. The BepiColombo mission promises to expand our knowledge of this planet and to shed light on some of the mysteries revealed by the MESSENGER mission. However, several fundamental science questions raised by MESSENGERs pioneering exploration of Mercury can only be answered with in situ measurements from the planets surface

Search for Electroweak Production of Single Top Quarks in ppbar Collisions

We present a search for electroweak production of single top quarks in the electron+jets and muon+jets decay channels. The measurements use ~90 pb^-1 of data from Run 1 of the Fermilab Tevatron collider, collected at 1.8 TeV with the DZero detector between 1992 and 1995. We use events that include a tagging muon, implying the presence of a b jet, to set an upper limit at the 95% confidence level on the cross section for the s-channel process ppbar->tb+X of 39 pb. The upper limit for the t-channel process ppbar->tqb+X is 58 pb.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. This is the published versio

Probing BFKL Dynamics in the Dijet Cross Section at Large Rapidity Intervals in ppbar Collisions at sqrt{s}=1800 and 630 GeV

Inclusive dijet production at large pseudorapidity intervals (delta_eta) between the two jets has been suggested as a regime for observing BFKL dynamics. We have measured the dijet cross section for large delta_eta in ppbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1800 and 630 GeV using the DO detector. The partonic cross section increases strongly with the size of delta_eta. The observed growth is even stronger than expected on the basis of BFKL resummation in the leading logarithmic approximation. The growth of the partonic cross section can be accommodated with an effective BFKL intercept of a_{BFKL}(20GeV)=1.65+/-0.07.Comment: Published in Physical Review Letter

Search for Charged Higgs Bosons in Decays of Top Quark Pairs

We present a search for charged Higgs bosons in decays of pair-produced top quarks using 109.2 +- 5.8 pb^-1 of data recorded from ppbar collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.8 TeV by the D0 detector during 1992-96 at the Fermilab Tevatron. No evidence is found for charged Higgs production, and most parts of the [m(H+),tan(beta)] parameter space where the decay t -> bH+ has a branching fraction close to or larger than that for t -> bW+ are excluded at 95% confidence level. Assuming m(t) = 175 GeV and sigma(ppbar -> ttbar) = 5.5 pb, for m(H+) = 60 GeV, we exclude tan(beta) 40.9.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR

Search for Squarks and Gluinos in Events Containing Jets and a Large Imbalance in Transverse Energy

Using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 79 pb-1, D0 has searched for events containing multiple jets and large missing transverse energy in pbar-p collisions at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. Observing no significant excess beyond what is expected from the standard model, we set limits on the masses of squarks and gluinos and on the model parameters m_0 and m_1/2, in the framework of the minimal low-energy supergravity models of supersymmetry. For tan(beta) = 2 and A_0 = 0, with mu < 0, we exclude all models with m_squark < 250 GeV/c^2. For models with equal squark and gluino masses, we exclude m < 260 GeV/c^2.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to PRL, Fixed typo on page bottom of p. 6 (QCD multijet background is 35.4 events

Search for Large Extra Dimensions in Dielectron and Diphoton Production

We report a search for effects of large extra spatial dimensions in ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.8 TeV with the DZero detector, using events containing a pair of electrons or photons. The data are in good agreement with the expected background and do not exhibit evidence for large extra dimensions. We set the most restrictive lower limits to date, at the 95% confidence level, on the effective Planck scale between 1.0 TeV and 1.4 TeV for several formalisms and numbers of extra dimensions.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Measurement of the Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section in the All-jets Decay Channel

We present a measurement of tbar-t production using multijet final states in pbar-p collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.8 TeV, with an integrated luminosity of 110.3 pb(-1). The analysis has been optimized using neural networks to achieve the smallest expected fractional uncertainty on the tbar-t production cross section, and yields a cross section of 7.1 +/- 2.8(stat.) +/- 1.5(syst.) pb, assuming a top quark mass of 172.1 GeV/c^(2). Combining this result with previous D0 measurements, where one or both of the W bosons decay leptonically, gives a tbar-t production cross section of 5.9 +/- 1.2(stat) +/- 1.1(syst) pb.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; no substative change in revisio

Search for R-parity Violating Supersymmetry in Dimuon and Four-Jets Channel

We present results of a search for R-parity-violating decay of the neutralino chi_1^0, taken to be the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle. It is assumed that this decay proceeds through one of the lepton-number violating couplings lambda-prime_2jk (j=1,2; k=1,2,3). This search is based on 77.5 pb-1 of data, collected by the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron in ppbar collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.8 TeV in 1992-1995.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure