NA49 Energy Scan Results for Central Lead-Lead Collisions at the CERN SPS

The energy dependence of hadron production in central Pb-Pb collisions at SPS energies is presented and compared with data at lower and higher energies and with results from p-p interactions. It is observed that there is little change in transverse activity in the SPS energy range, that there is a steepening rate of increase of pion production and that the K+/pi+ ratio exhibits a sharp peak located at about 30 AGeV. The Lambda/pi ratio also shows a pronounced maximum which is weaker in Ksi/pi and absent in Omega/pi.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the 39th Rencontres de Moriond on QCD and High-Energy Hadronic Interactions, La Thuile, March 28 - April 4, 200

Future measurements of alpha_s and xg from scaling violations at HERA

Results are presented of a study of the experimental and theoretical accuracy one may achieve at HERA in measuring the strong coupling constant alpha_s and the gluon distribution from scaling violations of F2 structure functions.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Latex source file and 2 separate .ps files. Talk presented at the DIS97 workshop, Chicago, April 14-18 199

Error Estimates on Parton Density Distributions

Error estimates on parton density distributions are presently based on the traditional method of least squares minimisation and linear error propagation in global QCD fits. We review the underlying assumptions and the various mathematical representations of the method and address some technical issues encountered in such a global analysis. Parton distribution sets which contain error information are described.Comment: Latex, 12 pages, 5 figures. Needs iopart.cls and iopart12.clo. Presented at New Trends in HERA Physics 2001, Ringberg Castle, Tegernsee, Germany, June 17-22, 200

The t-tbar cross-section at 1.8 and 1.96 TeV: a study of the systematics due to parton densities and scale dependence

We update the theoretical predictions for the t-tbar production cross-section at the Tevatron, taking into account the most recent determinations of systematic uncertainties in the extraction of the proton parton densities.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, Late

NNLO Logarithmic Expansions and Precise Determinations of the Neutral Currents near the Z Resonance at the LHC: The Drell-Yan case

We present a comparative study of the invariant mass and rapidity distributions in Drell-Yan lepton pair production, with particular emphasis on the role played by the QCD evolution. We focus our study around the Z resonance ($50 <Q < 200$ GeV) and perform a general analysis of the factorization/renormalization scale dependence of the cross sections, with the two scales included both in the evolution and in the hard scatterings. We also present the variations of the cross sections due to the errors on the parton distributions (pdf's) and an analysis of the corresponding $K$-factors. Predictions from several sets of pdf's, evolved by MRST and Alekhin are compared with those generated using \textsc{Candia}, a NNLO evolution program that implements the theory of the logarithmic expansions, developed in a previous work. These expansions allow to select truncated solutions of varying accuracy using the method of the $x$-space iterates. The evolved parton distributions are in good agreement with other approaches. The study can be generalized for high precision searches of extra neutral gauge interactions at the LHC.Comment: 75 pages,30 figures, 30 table

A QCD analysis of HERA and fixed target structure function data

The parton momentum densities in the proton are obtained from a NLO QCD analysis of structure functions measured by HERA and fixed target experiments. The uncertainties in these parton densities, the structure functions and related cross sections are estimated from the experimental errors, taking into account all correlations. Standard Model predictions for the charged current Born cross sections at large x and Q2 are calculated and compared with recent data from ZEUS.Comment: 4 pages LaTeX, 5 eps figures, uses npb.sty. Presented at DIS99, Zeuthen, Germany, April 19-23, 199