Using proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV in 2016$-$2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb$^{-1}$, the first full reconstruction of the three vector B meson states, B$^{*+}$, B$^{*0}$, and B$^{*0}_\text{s}$, is performed. The mass differences between the excited mesons and their corresponding ground states are measured to be $m(\text{B}^{*+})-m(\text{B}^+)$ = 45.277 $\pm$ 0.039 $\pm$ 0.027 MeV, $m(\text{B}^{*0})- m(\text{B}^0)$ = 45.471 $\pm$ 0.056 $\pm$ 0.028 MeV, and $m(\text{B}^{*0}_\text{s})-m(\text{B}_\text{s})$ = 49.407 $\pm$ 0.132 $\pm$ 0.041 MeV, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second are systematic. These results improve on the precision of previous measurements by an order of magnitude.
The measured mass differences between vector and ground B meson states.
Extracted masses of $\mathrm{B}^{*+}$, $\mathrm{B}^{*0}$, and $\mathrm{B}^{*0}_{\mathrm{s}}$ mesons. The values are obtained using the measurements in Table 1 and the ground state masses from PDG 2024 (S. Navas et al. (Particle Data Group), Phys. Rev. D 110, 030001 (2024)), which are the source of the last uncertainties.
Extracted mass differences between vector B meson states of different flavour. The values are obtained using the measurements in Table 4 and the ground state mass differences from PDG 2024 (S. Navas et al. (Particle Data Group), Phys. Rev. D 110, 030001 (2024)), which are the source of the last uncertainties.
Protons consist of three valence quarks, two up-quarks and one down-quark, held together by gluons and a sea of quark-antiquark pairs. Collectively, quarks and gluons are referred to as partons. In a proton-proton collision, typically only one parton of each proton undergoes a hard scattering - referred to as single-parton scattering - leaving the remainder of each proton only slightly disturbed. Here, we report the study of double- and triple-parton scatterings through the simultaneous production of three J/$\psi$ mesons, which consist of a charm quark-antiquark pair, in proton-proton collisions recorded with the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. We observed this process - reconstructed through the decays of J/$\psi$ mesons into pairs of oppositely charged muons - with a statistical significance above five standard deviations. We measured the inclusive fiducial cross section to be 272 $^{+141}_{-104}$ (stat) $\pm$ 17 (syst) fb, and compared it to theoretical expectations for triple-J/$\psi$ meson production in single-, double- and triple-parton scattering scenarios. Assuming factorization of multiple hard-scattering probabilities in terms of single-parton scattering cross sections, double- and triple-parton scattering are the dominant contributions for the measured process.
Dimuon invariant mass ($m$), proper decay-length ($L$), transverse momentum ($p_{T}$), rapidity ($y$), and azimuthal angle ($\phi$) of each of the three $J/\psi$ candidates measured in the six triple-$J/\psi$ events passing our selection criteria.
Measured DPS effective cross section
$pp \rightarrow J/\psi J/\psi J/\psi X~$ fiducial cross section