About 4.4 million hadronic decays of Z bosons, recorded by the OPAL detector at LEP at a centre-of-mass energy of around sqrt(s) = 91.2 GeV, are used to determine the mean charged particle multiplicities for the three light quark flavours. Events from primary u, d, and s quarks are tagged by selecting characteristic particles which carry a large fraction of the beam energy. The charged particle multiplicities are measured in the hemispheres opposite to these particles. An unfolding procedure is applied to obtain these multiplicities for each primary light quark flavour. This yields <n_u> = 17.77 +- 0.51 +0.86 -1.20, <n_d> = 21.44 +- 0.63 +1.46 -1.17, <n_s> = 20.02 +- 0.13 +0.39 -0.37, where statistical and systematic errors are given. The results for <n_u> and <n_d> are almost fully statistically anti-correlated. Within the errors the result is consistent with the flavour independence of the strong interaction for the particle multiplicities in events from the light up, down, and strange quarks.
Using a data sample with a total integrated luminosity of 10.0 pb$^{-1}$ collected at center-of-mass energies of 2.6, 3.07 and 3.65 GeV with BESII, cross sections for $e^+e^-$ annihilation into hadronic final states ($R$ values) are measured with statistical errors that are smaller than 1%, and systematic errors that are about 3.5%. The running strong interaction coupling constants $\alpha_s^{(3)}(s)$ and $\alpha_s^{(5)}(M_Z^2)$ are determined from the $R$ values.
We study the processes $e^+ e^-\to 2(\pi^+\pi^-)\pi^0\gamma$, $2(\pi^+\pi^-)\eta\gamma$, $K^+ K^-\pi^+\pi^-\pi^0\gamma$ and $K^+ K^-\pi^+\pi^-\eta\gamma$ with the hard photon radiated from the initial state. About 20000, 4300, 5500 and 375 fully reconstructed events, respectively, are selected from 232 fb$^{-1}$ of BaBar data. The invariant mass of the hadronic final state defines the effective $e^+ e^-$ center-of-mass energy, so that the obtained cross sections from the threshold to about 5 GeV can be compared with corresponding direct \epem measurements, currently available only for the $\eta\pi^+\pi^-$ and $\omega\pi^+\pi^-$ submodes of the $e^+ e^-\to 2(\pi^+\pi^-)\pi^0$ channel. Studying the structure of these events, we find contributions from a number of intermediate states, and we extract their cross sections where possible. In particular, we isolate the contribution from $e^+ e^-\to\omega(782)\pi^+\pi^-$ and study the $\omega(1420)$ and $\omega(1650)$ resonances. In the charmonium region, we observe the $J/\psi$ in all these final states and several intermediate states, as well as the $\psi(2S)$ in some modes, and we measure the corresponding branching fractions.
We report on a high statistics measurement of the total and differential cross sections of the process gamma gamma -> pi^+ pi^- in the pi^+ pi^- invariant mass range 0.8 GeV/c^2 < W < 1.5 GeV/c^2 with 85.9 fb^{-1} of data collected at sqrt{s}=10.58 GeV and 10.52 GeV with the Belle detector. A clear signal of the f_0(980) resonance is observed in addition to the f_2(1270) resonance. An improved 90% confidence level upper limit Br.(eta'(958) -> pi^+ pi^-) < 2.9 x 10^{-3} is obtained for P- and CP-violating decay of the eta'(958) meson using the most conservative assumption about the interference with the background.
The cross section for the process $e^+e^- \to K^+K^-$ was measured in the energy range $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.04--1.38 GeV in the SND experiment at VEPP-2M $e^+e^-$ collider. The measured cross section is described by the Vector Meson Dominance model with contributions from the light vector mesons $\rho$, $\omega$, $\phi$ and their lowest excitations. The mean statistical accuracy of the measurement is 4.4 %, and the systematic uncertainty is 5.2 %.
The cross section for e^+e^- to pi^+pi^-J/psi between 3.8 and 5.5 GeV/c^2 is measured using a 548 fb^{-1} data sample collected on or near the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at KEKB. A peak near 4.25 GeV/c^2, corresponding to the so called Y(4260), is observed. In addition, there is another cluster of events at around 4.05 GeV/c^2. A fit using two interfering Breit-Wigner shapes describes the data better than one that uses only the Y(4260), especially for the lower mass side of the 4.25 GeV enhancement.
The cross section for e+e- to pi+ pi- psi(2S) between threshold and \sqrt{s}=5.5 GeV is measured using 673 fb^{-1} of data on and off the \Upsilon(4S) resonance collected with the Belle detector at KEKB. Two resonant structures are observed in the pi+ pi- psi(2S) invariant mass distribution, one at 4361\pm 9\pm 9 MeV/c2 with a width of 74\pm 15\pm 10 MeV/c2, and another at 4664\pm 11\pm 5 MeV/c2 with a width of 48\pm 15\pm 3 MeV/c2, if the mass spectrum is parameterized with the coherent sum of two Breit-Wigner functions. These values do not match those of any of the known charmonium states.
First results of the study of the process e+e- \to 4\pi by the CMD-2 collaboration at VEPP-2M are presented for the energy range 1.05--1.38 GeV. Using an integrated luminosity of 5.8 pb^{-1}, energy dependence of the processes e+e- \to \pi^+\pi^- 2\pi^0 and e+e- \to 2\pi^+ 2\pi^- has been measured. Analysis of the differential distributions demonstrates the dominance of the a_1\pi and \omega\pi intermediate states. Upper limits for the contributions of other alternative mechanisms are also placed.
In experiments with the CMD-2 detector at the VEPP-2M electron-positron collider at Novosibirsk about 150000 $e^+e^-\to\pi^+\pi^-$ events were recorded in the center-of-mass energy range from 0.61 up to 0.96 GeV. The result of the pion form factor measurement with a 1.4% systematic error is presented. The following values of the $\rho$-meson and $\rho-\omega$ interference parameters were found: $M_\rho=(775.28\pm 0.61\pm 0.20) MeV, \Gamma_\rho=(147.70\pm 1.29 \pm 0.40) MeV, \Gamma(\rho\to e^+e^-)=(6.93\pm 0.11\pm 0.10) keV, Br(\omega\to\pi^+\pi^-) = (1.32\pm 0.23)%$.
Production of Sigma- and Lambda(1520) in hadronic Z decays has been measured using the DELPHI detector at LEP. The Sigma- is directly reconstructed as a charged track in the DELPHI microvertex detector and is identified by its Sigma -> n pi decay leading to a kink between the Sigma- and pi-track. The reconstruction of the Lambda(1520) resonance relies strongly on the particle identification capabilities of the barrel Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector and on the ionisation loss measurement of the TPC. Inclusive production spectra are measured for both particles. The production rates are measured to be <N_{Sigma-}/N_{Z}^{had}> = 0.081 +/- 0.002 +/- 0.010, <N_{Lambda(1520)}/N_{Z}^{had}> = 0.029 +/- 0.005 +/- 0.005. The production rate of the Lambda(1520) suggests that a large fraction of the stable baryons descend from orbitally excited baryonic states. It is shown that the baryon production rates in Z decays follow a universal phenomenological law related to isospin, strangeness and mass of the particles.
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