The Tau and Beyond: Future Research on Heavy Leptons*

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Tau and Beyond: Future Research on Heavy Leptons* SLAC-PUB-4819 January 1988 Pm) THE TAU AND BEYOND: FUTURE RESEARCH ON HEAVY LEPTONS* MARTIN L. PERL Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Stanford University, Stanford, California 94309 . ABSTRACT: This paper outlines directions for future experimental research on the tau and tau neutrino. Present limits on the existence of heavier charged leptons are re- viewed, with emphasis on the close-mass lepton pair con- cept. *Work supported by the Department of Energy, contract DE-AC03-76SF00515. Presented at the 8th International Conference on Physics in Collision, Capri, Italy, October 19-21, 1988. Table of Contents I. Introduction II. The Tau A. The Decay Mode Problem B. Better Measurements of Conventional Properties C. Tau Lepton Number Conservation D. Deviations From a Dirac Point Particle E. The Concept of Lepton-Specific Forces and the Tau III. The Tau Neutrino A. Tau Neutrino Mass B. Tau Neutrino Mixing C. Interactions of the Tau Neutrino D. Variations on the Tau Neutrino IV. Limits on the Existence of Heavier Charged Leptons A. Present Limits B. Future Searches for Charged Leptons I. Introduction In 1981, at the first Physics In Collision Conference, I reviewed the status of the tau and of the search for heavier leptons. Now, seven years later, I have the pleasure of presenting another such review. Those seven years demonstrate the perversity of nature, or more precisely, demonstrate the obstinacy of nature with respect to the desires and expectations of the physicist. By 1981 the tau was established and the particle physicist looked forward to the discovery of more and heavier leptons. Two new electron-positron colliders PETRA and PEP were in operation, and the CERN pp collider was under construction. Surely we would find another charged sequential lepton, or an excited lepton, or a scalar lepton, as the mass search range extended to tens of GeV/c2 from 4 GeV/c2. That was not to be. (A small region of hope in this mass range is still offered by the close-mass lepton pair concept, - Sec. IV.) In the next seven years, new colliders are in operation or will begin operation: TRISTAN, the pji collider at Fermilab, the SLC, LEP and HERA. Again our hopes are high. The obstinacy of nature may continue-or there may be something new to find in the world of heavy leptons, but not what we expect. Therefore, one purpose of this review is to present a skeptical view of what we think we know about heavy charged leptons, using the tau as a model. The history of the tau in the last seven years may provide another example of how nature does not always obey the wishes of the particle physicist. In 1981 we thought we understood 2 the tau, although there were still some measurements to make. Seven years and many more measurements later (Fig. l), I am not sure the tau is well-understood; there is the problem in the l-charged particle decay modes, Sec. 1I.A. The need to learn more about the tau is relevant to current discussions and proposals for very large luminosity e+e- colliders: Tau-Charm Factoriest’lB Factories and 2’ Factories. II. The Tau A. The Decay Mode Problem In the last year my colleagues and I have written three papers[2-31covering various aspects of the tau decay mode problems, also a general review!’ I’ll summarize what we know, referring the reader to those papers [2-41for the details-or it may be better not to read those papers, because they describe the failed attempts by many physicists to resolve the problem. A fresh view of the problem based only on a data summary may be best. The average measured values of the inclusive branching fractions into 1, 3, 5 or 7-charged particles are[3’5’61 Bl = (86.6 f 0.3)% B3 = (13.3 f 0.3)% (1) B5 = (0.10 f 0.03)% B7 > 0.019% ) 90% CL . The usual laws of the conservation of energy, charge, total angular momentum and lepton number require that Br be the sum of the decay fractions of the modes listed in Table 1. The modes listed in rows A-F have been measured in at least three different experiments. Some branching fractions are based on many measurements; for example, 10 for B(v,e-fi,) and 16 for B(v~~-Y~). Incidentally, Br is based on 11 measurements. Since the energy available in r decay is less than 1.78 GeV, we expect the branching fractions to be small for modes containing more than 3 r’s or the relatively heavy 7. As shown in rows H-L of Table I, this is the case. Published experiments have not been able to directly measure the branching fractions for these higher multiplicity or q-containing modes. The failure comes from one or more of the following problems: great difficulty in working backwards from detected photons to the original r” + y + y or q + y + y or 77---) r” + r” + 7r”, background and false photon signals, and insufficient statistics. Direct studies of the l-charged particle modes in rows H-L yield only upper limits. The sum of the branching fraction measurement and upper limits in Table 1 is 5 (88.2 f .1.5)%, compatible with Br = (86.6 f 0.3)%. The l-charged particle decay mode problem occurs when conventional theoretical consid- erations and other data are used to evaluate or set upper limits on the branching fractions 3 Table 1. Summary of direct measurements of branching fractions of l-charged particle modes using only l-charged particle decays. Type of Row Decay Mode Branching Fraction Information I I Fraction (%) A 17.6 f 0.4 B 17.7 f 0.4 Measured in c 10.8 f 0.6 l-charged particle D 22.5 f 0.9 decays E 7.6 f 0.8 1.7 f 0.4 F Sums of rows A-F 1 G 1 I 77.9 f 1.5 I Upper limit deduced H vr7r-37ro < 2.5 or estimated I v9-47ro + v$r-579 is 4. in l-charged J vrrl < 0.3 particle decays K v,qnr' < 2.1 L 477 < 1.4 Sum of rows H-L I M I I 2 10.3 I Sum or rows N 5 88.2 f 1.5 A-F and H-L 1 I l-charged particle 0 86.6 f 0.3 topological Br I I 4 Table 2. Values and upper limits of branching fractions for l-charged particle modes deduced from theory and other measurements. The sum does not include modes with v7mpro, n > 2. Mode Met hod v,7r-3a0 u,n-4z-s 0.06 lJ,lr-57r” 0.11 VTT-77 0.00 v,a-qa” 0.24 v+r-7727r0 0.40 vr7r-7pp7ro, n 2 0 0.60 sum 2.7 a: use conservation of strong isospin b: use 77+ 7r+ + 7rlr- + 7r” c: use e+e- cross section and conserved vector current d: u,r-q requires a second class current amplitude Table 3. Branching fractions for l-charged particle decays. Source of Branching Fraction Information @) Sum of well measured modes 77.9 f 1.5 from Table 1 Sum of 95% CL upper limits from 5 2.7 Table 2 Sum of above Topological branching fraction Br 5 of the modes in rows H-L of Table 1. This is the work of Truong, [71 of Gilman and Rhier’ and of Gilman! The upper limit for the sum of rows H-L reduces to 2.7%, Table 2. Then the sum of the individual, l-charged particle, branching fraction measurement is 5 (80.6 f 1.5)% which d oes not agree with Br = (86.6f0.3)%, Table 3. There is a missing 6%! There are three general classes of possible errors in the measurements which might lead - to the 6% discrepancy. (i) The measured Br might be too large. This could happen if the detector simulation programs used to correct the observed Br and I33 are wrong. However, this kind of error extending over most of the Br determinations has not been found. In an unpublished work, Dorfan[lO1 has shown that it is very difficult to reduce Br by more than one or two percent. (ii) One or more of the measured individual branching fractions Bri might be too large. Such a possibility is more likely than (i) because the ratio Bri (observed)/&; (corrected) may be very small due to decay mode selection criteria and detector inef- ficiency. No one has been able to find the kind of error that would affect simultaneously most of the individual measurements making up an average value in Table 1. I’m still looking for such an error; I expect it to be cause of the discrepancy if the experiments are at fault. (iii) Perhaps the error assigned to the 77.9% partial sum in Table 1 should be several times larger, destroying the significance of the 6% discrepancy. In two papers,[2’31Hayes, Efron and I have examined this possibility. In the sets of measurements used for the average values of Br, B(v,e-fi,), B(v,p-c,), B(v~x-) and B(v,p-), th ere is no internal evidence that the errors should be enlarged. The errors associated with an individual measurement by the experimenters are either about right or too large, according to this internal evidence. There is, however, evidence for bias in the B(v,p-) measurements and hints of bias in other measurements in the sense that the individual measurements cluster more about their central value than their individual errors would predict.
Recommended publications
  • Probing Light Gauge Bosons in Tau Neutrino Experiments
    Probing Light Gauge Bosons in Tau Neutrino Experiments Felix Kling∗ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA The tau neutrino is probably the least studied particle in the SM, with only a handful of interaction events being identified so far. This can in part be attributed to their small production rate in the SM, which occurs mainly through Ds meson decay. However, this also makes the tau neutrino flux measurement an interesting laboratory for additional new physics production modes. In this study, we investigate the possibility of tau neutrino production in the decay of light vector bosons. We consider four scenarios of anomaly-free U(1) gauge groups corresponding to the B−L, B−Lµ−2Lτ , B − Le − 2Lτ and B − 3Lτ numbers, analyze current constraints on their parameter spaces and explore the sensitivity of DONuT and as well as the future emulsion detector experiments FASERν, SND@LHC and SND@SHiP. We find that these experiments provide the leading direct constraints in parts of the parameter space, especially when the vector boson's mass is close to the mass of the ! meson. I. INTRODUCTION other neutrino flavors. This small SM production rate makes the tau neutrino flux measurement an interesting The standard model (SM) consist of 17 particles, out laboratory for additional beyond the SM (BSM) produc- tion modes. of which the tau neutrino ντ is the least experimentally constrained one. To detect the rare tau neutrino interac- One example of such new physics are light vector tions, an intense neutrino beam with a sufficiently large bosons V associated with additional gauge groups.
    [Show full text]
  • Dstau: Study of Tau Neutrino Production with 400 Gev Protons from the CERN-SPS
    Prepared for submission to JHEP DsTau: Study of tau neutrino production with 400 GeV protons from the CERN-SPS Shigeki Aoki,a Akitaka Ariga,b;1 Tomoko Ariga,b;c Sergey Dmitrievsky,d Elena Firu,e Dean Forshaw,b Tsutomu Fukuda,f Yuri Gornushkin,d Ali Murat Guler,g Maria Haiduc,e Koichi Kodama,h Masahiro Komatsu,f Muhtesem Akif Korkmaz,g Umut Kose,i Madalina Miloi,e Antonio Miucci,b Motoaki Miyanishi,f Mitsuhiro Nakamura,f Toshiyuki Nakano,f Alina Neagu,e Hiroki Rokujo,f Osamu Sato,f Elizaveta Sitnikova,d Yosuke Suzuki,f Tomoki Takao,f Svetlana Vasina,d Mykhailo Vladymyrov,b Thomas Weston,b Junya Yoshida,j Masahiro Yoshimoto.k The DsTau Collaboration aKobe University, Kobe, Japan bAlbert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics, Laboratory for High Energy Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland cKyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan dJoint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia eInstitute of Space Science, Bucharest, Romania f Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan gMiddle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey hAichi University of Education, Kariya, Japan iCERN, Geneva, Switzerland jAdvanced Science Research Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Tokai, Japan kGifu University, Gifu, Japan E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: In the DsTau experiment at the CERN SPS, an independent and direct way to measure tau neutrino production following high energy proton interactions was proposed. As the main source of tau neutrinos is a decay of Ds mesons, produced in proton-nucleus arXiv:1906.03487v1 [hep-ex] 8 Jun 2019 interactions, the project aims at measuring a differential cross section of this reaction. The experimental method is based on a use of high resolution emulsion detectors for effective registration of events with short lived particle decays.
    [Show full text]
  • Detection of the Tau-Neutrino at The
    DETECTION OF THE TAIPNEIITRINO AT me LI·IC* Klaus Winter CERN. Geneva. Switzerland I. Introduction Following the discovery of the tau-lepton in e+e` collisions by M. Perl and collabo rators [1 ], all evidence today favours the hypothesis that it is a sequential heavy lepton belonging to a third lepton Family [2]. From measurements of the forward-bacl< ward angular asymmetry of tau produced in e+e` annihilations [3], [4] e+e* +* ft a value of the axial-vector neutral current coupling constant of ga = — 0.—l5 1 0.05 was deduced in agreement with ga = -1 /2 for the assignment of lel’t—handed tau leptons as the "down" state (I3 = -1 /2) of a weak isospin doublet. Hence, the most natural assignment of the "up" state (I3 = +1/2) would be to a neutrino with the same lepton flavour. the tau-neutrino. Further indirect evidence about the tau—neutrino can be obtained from leptonic tau decays [4]. e.g. 1:- Q u_v,,X. The muon energy spectrum has the familiar [2] Michel shape suggesting that the par ticle X is a spin l /2 particle. Its mass has been constrained to less than 35 MeV by analysing semi-leptonic tau—deca)s with multipion final states [5]. Hence, the particle Xmay be a neutrino. Is it a sequential neutrino, with a flavour property which distin guishes it from the electron- and the muon-neutrino? The possibility of a complete identity with we or uu can indeed be excluded. Searches for charged current neutrino reactions which produce a tau-lepton UN ·=* T_X have given negative results.
    [Show full text]
  • Neutrino Physics
    0 Neutrino Physics Zhi-zhong Xing ★ Neutrino’s history & lepton families (IHEP, Beijing) ★ Dirac & Majorana neutrino masses ★ Lepton flavor mixing & CP violation ★ Neutrino oscillation phenomenology ★ Seesaw & leptogenesis mechanisms ★ Extreme corners in the neutrino sky Lecture A @ the 2nd Asia-Europe-Pacific School of HEP, 11/2014, Puri, India Neutrinos everywhere 1 SM Properties: charge = 0 spin = ½ mass = 0 Big Bang speed = c neutrinos Galaxy Human Supernova Sun Earth Reactor Accelerator Neutrinos: witness and participant 1 in the evolution of the Universe 3 2 < 1% Some open questions 3 . the absolute mass scale? . the mass hierarchy? . the flavor desert? . leptonic CP violation? . the Majorana nature? . How many species? . cosmic background? . supernova & stellar ’s? . UHE cosmic ’s? . warm dark matter? . matter-antimatter asymmetry… Lecture A1 ★ Neutrinos from new physics ★ Interactions and discoveries ★ Flavors / families of leptons Beta decays in 1930 5 2-body Energy crisis = New physics ? decays J. Chadwick 1914/C. Ellis 1920-1927 What to do? Two ways out? 6 . giving up sth . adding in sth Niels Bohr Wolfgang Pauli (1930) Pauli put forward this idea in a letter instead of a paper….. Solvay 1933 7 Pauli gave a talk on his neutrino proposal in this congress. Fermi’s theory 8 Enrico Fermi assumed a new force for I will be remembered decay by combining 3 new concepts: for this paper. ------ Fermi in Italian ★ Pauli’s idea: neutrinos Alps, Christmas 1933 ★ Dirac’s idea: creation of particles ★ Heisenberg’s idea: isospin symmetry Fermi’s paper 9 This is Fermi’s best theoretical work! ---- C.N. Yang Published first in this journal and later in Z.
    [Show full text]
  • Masses of the Sub-Nuclear Particles Fit Into One Equation
    Masses of the Sub-Nuclear Particles Theodore M. Lach The masses of the quarks and leptons are for the most part a mystery to particle physicists. Currently there seems to be no correlation between the masses of the elementary particles. This paper is an attempt to formulate a theory that would begin to explain the relationship between the sub-nuclear particle masses. A key premise of the Standard Model is that there are 3 and only 3 generations of quarks and leptons. The currently accepted masses of these elementary particles are: (1) Table 1. Generation # 1 Generation # 2 Generation # 3 Up quark = 3 MeV, (1-5) Charmed quark = 1.25+0.1 GeV Top quark = 175 +5 GeV Down quark = 6 MeV Strange quark = 100 MeV Bottom quark = 4.2 GeV (3-9 MeV) (75-170 MeV) + 0.2 GeV Electron = 0.5109989MeV Muon = 105.6583 MeV Tau = 1777.1 MeV The neutrino masses in the standard model are still a hotly debated issue, yet arXiv:nucl-th/0008026 14 Aug 2000 most current references put the upper bound of the three neutrinos at: Table 2. Electron neutrino = 10 ev (5 – 17 ev) Muon neutrino = 270 KeV (200 – 270 KeV) Tau neutrino = 31 MeV (20 – 35 MeV) In an attempt to determine why the quark masses predicted in the CBM (2), Checker Board Model of the nucleus, do not fit into the standard model, I will deviate from the S.M. and assume that my quark masses in table 3 are correct and that there are more than 3 generations.
    [Show full text]
  • Discoverers of the Neutrino and Tau Recognised
    RESEARCH I NEWS Discoverers of the Neutrino the turn of two of the six leptons of today's and Tau Recognised particle physics, the electron-neutrino ve and the T lepton, tau, to acquire 'Nobelity'. Particles that Acq ui red 'hlobei ity' K V L Sarma Frederick Reines (University of California, Irvine), now 77,with Clyde L Cowan Jr. (who The 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics is shared by died in 1974) reported the first direct evidence the American physicists Frederick J Reines of the existence of the 'neutrino' in 1956. The and Martin L Perl for their pioneering experi­ neutrino is a tiny neutral particle hypoth­ mental contributions to 'lepton' physics. Lep­ esized by Wolfgang Pauli Jr. in 1930. Twenty tons, such as the electron, do not feel the five years later and with the invention of the nuclear force but only the electromagnetic nuclear reactor it was possible to verify its and the weak beta decay force. This year it is existence. This year's Nobel award in Physics is in recognition belong. A summary of the discoveries made in the of two landmark experiments in elementary par­ world of leptons is given in the table below. The ticle physics. One provided the confirmation of the third generation has now started getting Nobel neutrino, as envisaged by Pauli more than two prizes. It should be noted that v T still needs to be decades earlier. The second discovered the heavy identified experimentally land hence the question charged lepton "t which heralded the third, and marks in the last row of the table!.
    [Show full text]
  • Tau Leptons New Measurements of the Tau Mass
    Tau lineup. At this year's workshop on tau lepton physics, the second in the series, and hosted by Ohio State University, tau pioneer Martin Perl is seen with workshop chairman K.K. Gan (left) and Michel Davier, one of the chairmen of the first workshop, held in Orsay, France, in 1990. At the workshop it also emerged that a large amount of information on the scintillation properties of several materials and ions already has been compiled. In particular, cerium compounds can offer advantages when fast scintillation (some 20 ns) is needed. For ultrafast (nanosecond) scintillation, only crystals exhibiting special 'crossover' transitions can be considered, with the drawback of emitting in the vacuum UV. Similar expertise was gathered from exten­ sive work in solid state chemistry and crystalline defects. The Chamonix meeting was organ­ ized jointly by CERN, the French CNRS and the Italian INFN. The workshop opened with a talk on ment in the precision of the measure­ Tau leptons new measurements of the tau mass. ments, there is still a nagging dis­ At the Beijing electron-positron crepancy. Once an oddity, tau leptons are now collider, seven events were observed Tau decays with one or three being mass produced at electron- in a scan of the tau production charged hadrons in the final states positron colliders, and tau physics is threshold yielding a new measure­ were the subject of two full sessions. becoming daily life. This was re­ ment of the tau mass (July, page 13) New measurements from ARGUS flected at the Second Workshop on an order of magnitude more precise (DESY, Hamburg), CLEO (CESR, Tau Lepton Physics, held at Ohio than the previous measurement by Cornell), and the LEP experiments at State University, September 8-11.
    [Show full text]
  • Feynman Diagrams (Pdf)
    PRIMARY SCHOOL anti-muon (+1) or anti-electron (+1) or electron (-1) anti-tau (+1) photon (0) muon (-1) anti-electron (+1) or electron (-1) or tau (-1) Dr Maria Pavlidou, Prof Cristina Lazzeroni HIGH SCHOOL anti-muon (……...) or anti-electron (……..) or electron (…….) anti-tau (……...) ………...…... (…...) muon (…….) anti-electron (……...) or electron (…….) or tau (……..) Dr Maria Pavlidou, Prof Cristina Lazzeroni PRIMARY SCHOOL anti-up (-2/3) or anti-down (+1/3) or anti-strange (+1/3) or anti-beauty (+1/3) or anti-top (-2/3) or charm quark (+2/3) anti-charm (-2/3) gluon (0) up (+2/3) or down (-1/3) anti-charm quark (-2/3) or strange (-1/3) or beauty (-1/3) or top (+2/3) or charm (+2/3) Dr Maria Pavlidou, Prof Cristina Lazzeroni HIGH SCHOOL anti-up (……….) or anti-down (……...) or anti-strange (……...) or anti-beauty (……...) or anti-top (……...) or charm quark (……...) anti-charm (……...) ………...…... (…...) up (……...) or down (……...) or anti-charm quark (……..) strange (……...) or beauty (……...) or top (……...) or charm (……...) Dr Maria Pavlidou, Prof Cristina Lazzeroni PRIMARY SCHOOL anti-up (-2/3) or anti-charm (-2/3) muon (-1) W minus (-1) down (-1/3) muon neutrino (0) or strange (-1/3) or beauty (-1/3) Dr Maria Pavlidou, Prof Cristina Lazzeroni HIGH SCHOOL anti-up (……...) or anti-charm (……...) muon (……...) ………...…... (…...) down (……...) muon neutrino (……...) or strange (……...) or beauty (……...) Dr Maria Pavlidou, Prof Cristina Lazzeroni PRIMARY SCHOOL electron neutrino (0) or muon neutrino (0) or tau neutrino (0) tau (-1) Z (0) electron anti-neutrino (0) anti-tau (+1) or muon anti-neutrino (0) or tau anti-neutrino (0) Dr Maria Pavlidou, Prof Cristina Lazzeroni HIGH SCHOOL electron neutrino (……...) or muon neutrino (……...) or tau neutrino (……...) tau (……...) ………….
    [Show full text]
  • ELEMENTARY PARTICLES in PHYSICS 1 Elementary Particles in Physics S
    ELEMENTARY PARTICLES IN PHYSICS 1 Elementary Particles in Physics S. Gasiorowicz and P. Langacker Elementary-particle physics deals with the fundamental constituents of mat- ter and their interactions. In the past several decades an enormous amount of experimental information has been accumulated, and many patterns and sys- tematic features have been observed. Highly successful mathematical theories of the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions have been devised and tested. These theories, which are collectively known as the standard model, are almost certainly the correct description of Nature, to first approximation, down to a distance scale 1/1000th the size of the atomic nucleus. There are also spec- ulative but encouraging developments in the attempt to unify these interactions into a simple underlying framework, and even to incorporate quantum gravity in a parameter-free “theory of everything.” In this article we shall attempt to highlight the ways in which information has been organized, and to sketch the outlines of the standard model and its possible extensions. Classification of Particles The particles that have been identified in high-energy experiments fall into dis- tinct classes. There are the leptons (see Electron, Leptons, Neutrino, Muonium), 1 all of which have spin 2 . They may be charged or neutral. The charged lep- tons have electromagnetic as well as weak interactions; the neutral ones only interact weakly. There are three well-defined lepton pairs, the electron (e−) and − the electron neutrino (νe), the muon (µ ) and the muon neutrino (νµ), and the (much heavier) charged lepton, the tau (τ), and its tau neutrino (ντ ). These particles all have antiparticles, in accordance with the predictions of relativistic quantum mechanics (see CPT Theorem).
    [Show full text]
  • Prompt Neutrinos and Intrinsic Charm at Ship
    Prepared for submission to JHEP Prompt neutrinos and intrinsic charm at SHiP Weidong Bai and Mary Hall Reno Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Abstract: We present a new evaluation of the far-forward neutrino plus antineutrino flux and number of events from charm hadron decays in a 400 GeV proton beam dump experiment like the Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP). Using next-to-leading order perturbative QCD and a model for intrinsic charm, we include intrinsic transverse momentum effects and other kinematic angular corrections. We compare this flux to a far-forward flux evaluated with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD, without intrinsic transverse momentum, that used the angular distribution of charm quarks rather than the neutrinos from their decays. The tau neutrino plus antineutrino number of events in the perturbative QCD evaluation is reduced by a factor of about three when intrinsic transverse momentum and the full decay kinematics are included. We show that intrinsic charm contributions can significantly enhance the number of events from neutrinos from charm hadron decays. Measurements of the number of events from tau neutrino plus antineutrino interactions and of the muon charge asymmetry as a function of energy can be used to constrain intrinsic charm models. arXiv:1807.02746v2 [hep-ph] 15 Feb 2019 Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Production of charm quarks and hadrons3 2.1 Perturbative charm3 2.2 Intrinsic transverse momentum and
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 16-17 Notes: 07 / 27 and 07 / 28
    Lecture 16-17 Notes: 07 / 27 and 07 / 28 Particle physics Quantum electrodynamics On a microscopic level, electromagnetic interactions between electrons can be viewed as the electrons exchanging photons. One electron emits a photon, and another absorbs it: A drawing like this is called a Feynman diagram . It corresponds to a well-defined mathematical expression that can be used to determine the probability of the electrons interacting in a particular way. Note that this is somewhat similar to a diagram for a chemical reaction that has two electrons in the initial and final state, and two electrons and a photon in the intermediate state: The photon allows for transfer of energy and momentum between the two electrons. We label the electrons' initial 4-momenta P1 and P2, the final 4-momenta Q1 and Q2, and the 4-momentum of the photon K: The 4-momentum is conserved at every vertex (point of interaction between a photon and an electron): if an electron emits a photon with 4-momentum K, its own 4- momentum decreases by K, while the 4-momentum of the electron that absorbs the photon is increased by K. This ensures that the 4-momentum for the overall process is conserved: Q1 + Q 2 = P 1 + P 2. The photon appears as an intermediate in the process, but not in the initial or the final state. Intermediate particles like this are known as virtual particles . Particles that are actually observed either in the initial or in the final state are known as real particles . Real particles obey the energy-momentum relationship E2 = p 2c2 + m 2c4 ( E = pc for the massless photon), but the energy and momentum of virtual particles can deviate from this relationship.
    [Show full text]
  • Neutrino Oscillations and the MINOS Experiment
    An Introduction to Modern Particle Physics Mark Thomson University of Cambridge DALI Run=56698 Evt=7455 ALEPH 3 Gev EC 6 Gev HC Y" 1cm 0 −1cm −1cm 0 1cm X" Filename: DC056698_007455_000830_1723.PS Made on30-Aug-200017:24:02bykonstantwithDALI_F1. Z0<5 D0<2 RO TPC (φ −175)*SIN(θ) x xo o o−xo−oxx−− o x o x o o − − o x − −− o xo−x x xoo− − x x o − o x o x x o − − x o − − x − o xo − o − − oo− o − x o o x − x − x o x ox − x −−o − x 15 GeV θ=180 θ=0 Science Summer School: 30th July - 1st August 2007 1 Course Synopsis Introduction : Particles and Forces - what are the fundamental particles -what is a force The Electromagnetic Interaction -QED and e+e- annihilation - the Large Electron-Positron collider The Crazy world of the Strong Interaction - QCD, colour and gluons -the quarks The Weak interaction - W bosons - Neutrinos and Neutrino Oscillations -The MINOS Experiment The Standard Model (what we know) and beyond - Electroweak Unification - the Z boson - the Higgs Boson - Dark matter and supersymmetry - Unanswered questions 2 Format and goals Each Session : ~30 minute mini-lecture ~15 discussion ~30 minute mini-lecture ~15 discussion The discussion is important some of the ideas will be very new to you … there are no foolish questions ! COURSE GOALS: develop a good qualitative understanding of the main ideas in MODERN particle physics. A few words about me: D.Phil Oxford in 1991 : particle-astrophysics CERN 1992-2000 : working on the LEP accelerator studying the Z and W bosons Cambridge 2000- : mainly working on the MINOS neutrino experiment and the ILC 3 Introduction to the Standard Model of Particle Physics Particle Physics is the study of MATTER : the fundamental constituents which make up the universe FORCE : the basic forces in nature, i.e.
    [Show full text]