A Note on W Production at HERA

We discuss W boson production at HERA including NLO QCD corrections.Comment: 2 pages, latex, 2 figures, Contribution to the 3rd UK Phenomenology Workshop on HERA Physics, Durham, 20-25 Sep. 199

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

Numerical Implementation of lepton-nucleus interactions and its effect on neutrino oscillation analysis

We discuss the implementation of the nuclear model based on realistic nuclear spectral functions in the GENIE neutrino interaction generator. Besides improving on the Fermi gas description of the nuclear ground state, our scheme involves a new prescription for $Q^2$ selection, meant to efficiently enforce energy momentum conservation. The results of our simulations, validated through comparison to electron scattering data, have been obtained for a variety of target nuclei, ranging from carbon to argon, and cover the kinematical region in which quasi elastic scattering is the dominant reaction mechanism. We also analyse the influence of the adopted nuclear model on the determination of neutrino oscillation parameters.Comment: 19 pages, 35 figures, version accepted by Phys. Rev.

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

O(\alpha^2 \ln(m_\mu/m_e)) Corrections to Electron Energy Spectrum in Muon Decay

O(\alpha^2 \ln(m_\mu/m_e)) corrections to electron energy spectrum in muon decay are computed using perturbative fragmentation function approach. The magnitude of these corrections is comparable to anticipated precision of the TWIST experiment at TRIUMF where Michel parameters will be extracted from the measurement of the electron energy spectrum in muon decay.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, revtex4.cls, 1 PostScript figur

Pion and Kaon Production in e+e−e^+e^- and epep Collisions at Next-to-Leading Order

We present new sets of fragmentation functions for charged pions and kaons, both at leading and next-to-leading order. They are fitted to data on inclusive charged-hadron production in $e^+e^-$ annihilation taken by TPC at PEP ($\sqrt s=29$~GeV) and to similar data by ALEPH at LEP, who discriminated between events with charm, bottom, and light- flavour fragmentation in their charged-hadron sample. We treat all partons independently and to properly incorporate the charm and bottom thresholds. Due to the sizeable energy gap between PEP and LEP, we are sensitive to the scaling violation in the fragmentation process, which allows us to extract a value for the asymptotic scale parameter of QCD, $\Lambda$. Recent data on inclusive charged-hadron production in tagged three-jet events by OPAL and similar data for longitudinal electron polarization by ALEPH allow us to pin down the gluon fragmentation functions. Our new fragmentation functions lead to an excellent description of a multitude of other $e^+e^-$ data on inclusive charged-hadron production, ranging from $\sqrt s=5.2$~GeV to LEP energy. In addition, they agree nicely with the transverse-momentum spectra of single charged hadrons measured by H1 and ZEUS in photoproduction at the $ep$ collider HERA, which represents a nontrivial check of the factorization theorem of the QCD-improved parton model.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 13 compressed ps figures in separate fil

Renormalization scale uncertainty in tne DIS 2+1 jet cross-section

The deep inelastic scattering 2+1 jet cross- section is a useful observable for precision tests of QCD, e.g. measuring the strong coupling constant alpha(s). A consistent analysis requires a good understanding of the theoretical uncertainties and one of the most fundamental ones in QCD is due to the renormalization scheme and scale ambiguity. Different methods, which have been proposed to resolve the scale ambiguity, are applied to the 2+1 jet cross-section and the uncertainty is estimated. It is shown that the uncertainty can be made smaller by choosing the jet definition in a suitable way.Comment: 24 pages, uuencoded compressed tar file, DESY 94-082, TSL-ISV-94-009

Order \alpha_s^2 Contributions to charm production in charged-current deep-inelastic lepton-hadron scattering

The most important part of the order $\alpha_s^2$ corrections to the charm component of the charged-current structure functions $F_2(x,Q^2)$ and $F_3(x,Q^2)$ have been calculated. This calculation is based on the asymptotic form of the heavy-quark coefficient functions corresponding to the higher order corrections to the W-boson-gluon fusion process. These coefficient functions which are in principle only valid for $Q^2 \gg m^2$ can be also used to estimate the order $\alpha_s^2$ contributions at lower $Q^2$ values provided $x < 0.1$. It turns out that the above corrections are appreciable in the large $Q^2$-region and they explain the discrepancy found for the structure functions between the fixed-flavour scheme (FFS) and the variable-flavour-number scheme (VFNS). These corrections also hamper the extraction of the strange-quark density from the data obtained for the charged-current and the electromagnetic-current processes.Comment: 45 pages LaTeX, 17 Postscript Figure

Soffer's inequality and the transversely polarized Drell-Yan process at next-to-leading order

We check numerically if Soffer's inequality for quark distributions is preserved by next-to-leading order QCD evolution. Assuming that the inequality is saturated at a low hadronic scale we estimate the maximal transverse double spin asymmetry for Drell-Yan muon pair production to next-to-leading order accuracy.Comment: 20 Pages, LaTeX, 7 figures as eps file

Statistical approach for unpolarized fragmentation functions for the octet baryons

A statistical model for the parton distributions in the nucleon has proven its efficiency in the analysis of deep inelastic scattering data, so we propose to extend this approach to the description of unpolarized fragmentation functions for the octet baryons. The characteristics of the model are determined by using some data on the inclusive production of proton and $\Lambda$ in unpolarized deep inelastic scattering and a next-to-leading analysis of the available experimental data on the production of unpolarized octet baryons in $e^+e^-$ annihilation. Our results show that both parton distributions and fragmentation functions are compatible with the statistical approach, in terms of a few free parameters, whose interpretation will be discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 7 eps figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.