Rates, polarizations, and asymmetries in charmless vector-vector B meson decays

With a sample of approximately 89 million BBbar pairs collected with the BABAR detector, we perform a search for B meson decays into pairs of charmless vector mesons (phi, rho, and K*). We measure the branching fractions, determine the degree of longitudinal polarization, and search for CP violation asymmetries in the processes B->phiK*+, B->phiK*0, B->rho0K*+, and B->rho0rho+. We also set an upper limit on the branching fraction for the decay B->rho0rho0.

Improved limits on the lepton-flavor violating decays tau(-) -> l(-)l(+)l(-)

A search for the neutrinoless, lepton-flavor violating decay of the tau lepton into three charged leptons has been performed using 376fb-1 of data collected at an e+e- center-of-mass energy around 10.58 GeV with the BABAR detector at the SLAC PEP-II storage rings. In all six decay modes considered, the numbers of events found in data are compatible with the background expectations. Upper limits on the branching fractions are set in the range (4-8)×10-8 at 90% confidence level. © 2007 The American Physical Society.

Search for scalar leptons in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies up to 209 GeV

A search for selectron, smuon and stau pair production is performed with the data collected by the ALEPH detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies up to 209 GeV. The numbers of candidate events are consistent with the background predicted by the Standard Model. Final mass limits from ALEPH are reported.

Test of Colour Reconnection Models using Three-Jet Events in Hadronic Z Decays

Hadronic Z decays into three jets are used to test QCD models of colour reconnection (CR). A sensitive quantity is the rate of gluon jets with a gap in the particle rapidity distribution and zero jet charge. Gluon jets are identified by either energy-ordering or by tagging two b-jets. The rates predicted by two string-based tunable CR models, one implemented in JETSET (the GAL model), the other in ARIADNE, are too high and disfavoured by the data, whereas the rates from the corresponding non-CR standard versions of these generators are too low. The data can be described by the GAL model assuming a small value for the R_0 parameter in the range 0.01-0.02.

Measurement of the W boson Mass and Width in $e^{+}e^{-}$ Collisions at LEP

The mass of the W boson is determined from the direct reconstruction of W decays in WW→qq̄qq̄ and WW→ℓνqq̄ events in e+e- collisions at LEP. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 683 pb-1 collected with the ALEPH detector at centre-of-mass energies up to 209 GeV. To minimise any effect from colour reconnection a new procedure is adopted in which low energy particles are not considered in the mass determination from the qq̄qq̄ channel. The combined result from all channels is mW=80.440±0.043(stat.)±0.024(syst.)±0.009(FSI)±0.009(LEP)GeV/c2,where FSI represents the possible effects of final state interactions in the qq̄qq̄ channel and LEP indicates the uncertainty in the b…

Searches for B0 decays to combinations of charmless isoscalar mesons

We search for B meson decays into two-body combinations of eta, eta', omega, and phi mesons from 89 million B B-bar pairs collected with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at SLAC. We find the branching fraction BF(B0 -> eta omega) = (4.0^{+1.3}_{-1.2} +- 0.4) x 10^-6 with a significance of 4.3 sigma. For all the other decay modes we set the following 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions, in units of 10^-6 : BF(B0 -> eta eta)<2.8, BF(B0 -> eta eta')<4.6, BF(B0 -> eta' eta')<10, BF(B0 -> eta'omega)<2.8, BF(B0 -> eta phi)<1.0, BF(B0 -> eta' phi)<4.5, BF(B0 -> phi phi)<1.5.

40(th) EASD Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes : Munich, Germany, 5-9 September 2004

Absolute mass lower limit for the lightest neutralino of the MSSM from $e^{+}e^{-}$ data at $\sqrt{s}$ up to 209 GeV

Charginos and neutralinos are searched for in the data collected by the ALEPH experiment at LEP for centre-of-mass energies up to 209 GeV. The negative result of these searches is combined with those from searches for sleptons and Higgs bosons to derive an absolute lower limit of 43.1 GeV/c(2) on the mass of the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP), assumed to be the,lightest neutralino. This limit is obtained in the framework of the MSSM with R-parity conservation and with gaugino and sfermion mass unification at the GUT scale and assuming no mixing in the stau sector. The LSP limit degrades only slightly to 42.4 GeV/c(2) if stau mixing is considered. Within the more constrained framewor…

Precision electroweak measurements on the Z resonance

We report on the final electroweak measurements performed with data taken at the Z resonance by the experiments operating at the electron-positron colliders SLC and LEP. The data consist of 17 million Z decays accumulated by the ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL experiments at LEP, and 600 thousand Z decays by the SLD experiment using a polarised beam at SLC. The measurements include cross-sections, forward-backward asymmetries and polarised asymmetries. The mass and width of the Z boson, $\MZ$ and $\GZ$, and its couplings to fermions, for example the $\rho$ parameter and the effective electroweak mixing angle, are precisely measured. The number of light neutrino species is determined to be 2.9840…

Measurements of the Absolute Branching Fractions of B± →k±Xc c

A study of the two-body decays B±→XccK±, where Xcc refers to one charmonium state, is reported by the BABAR Collaboration using a data sample of 424 fb-1. The absolute determination of branching fractions for these decays are significantly improved compared to previous BABAR measurements. Evidence is found for the decay B+→X(3872)K+ at the 3σ level. The absolute branching fraction B[B+→X(3872)K+]=[2.1±0.6(stat)±0.3(syst)]×10-4 is measured for the first time. It follows that B[X(3872)→J/ψπ+π-]=(4.1±1.3)%, supporting the hypothesis of a molecular component for this resonance.