Xi- and Xi+ production in central Pb+Pb collisions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon

Results of the production of Xi and Xi-bar hyperons in central Pb+Pb interactions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon are presented. This analysis utilises a global reconstruction procedure, which allows a measurement of 4pi integrated yields to be made for the first time. Inverse slope paramters, which are determined from an exponential fit to the transverse mass spectra, are shown. Central rapidity densities are found to be 1.49 +- 0.08 and 0.33 +- 0.04 per event per unit of rapidity for Xi and Xi-bar respectively. Yields integrated to full phase space are 4.12 +- 0.02 and 0.77 +- 0.04 for Xi and Xi-bar. The ratio of Xi-bar/Xi at mid-rapidity is 0.22 +- 0.03

The Impact of BeamCal Performance at Different ILC Beam Parameters and Crossing Angles on \tilde{tau} searches

The ILC accelerator parameters and detector concepts are still under discussion in the world-wide community. As will be shown, the performance of the BeamCal, the calorimeter in the very forward area of the ILC detector, is very sensitive to the beam parameter and crossing angle choices. We propose here BeamCal designs for a small (0 or 2 mrad) and large (20 mrad) crossing angles and report about the veto performance study done. As illustration, the influence of several proposed beam parameter sets and crossing-angles on the signal to background ratio in the stau search is estimated for a particular realization of the super-symmetric model.Comment: Talk given by V. Drugakov at the Linear Collider Workshop "LCWS06'', 9-13 March 2006, I.I.Sc Bangalore, Indi

Bose-Einstein correlations of charged kaons in central Pb+Pb collisions at E_beam = 158 AGeV

Bose-Einstein correlations of charged kaons were measured near mid-rapidity in central Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A GeV by the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS. Source radii were extracted using the Yano-Koonin-Podgoretsky and Bertsch-Pratt parameterizations. The results are compared to published pion data. The measured m_perp dependence for kaons and pions is consistent with collective transverse expansion of the source and a freeze-out time of about 9.5 fm

New developments in the statistical approach of parton distributions

We recall how parton distributions are constructed in a statistical physical picture of the nucleon. The chiral properties of QCD lead to strong relations between quarks and antiquarks distributions and the importance of the Pauli exclusion principle is also emphasized. A global next-to-leading order QCD analysis of unpolarized and polarized deep-inelastic scattering data allows to determine a small number of free parameters. Some predictions are compared to recent experimental results and we discuss the prospects of this physical framework.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures. Invited talk presented at the " Corfu Summer Institute on EPP,CORFU2005, Corfu, Greece, September 4-26, 2005. To be published in Journal of Physics, Conference Series (2006

Heavy flavor physics with the CMS experiment

Thanks to the excellent tracking and muon identification performance, combined with a flexible trigger system, the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is conducting a rich and competitive program of measurements in the field of heavy flavor physics. We review the status of b-quark production cross section measurements in inclusive and exclusive final states, the measurement of B hadron angular correlations, the search for rare $B^0_s$ and $B^0$ decays to dimuons, and the observation of the X(3872) resonance.Comment: Presented at the 2011 Hadron Collider Physics symposium (HCP-2011), Paris, France, November 14-18 2011, 4 pages, 4 figure