For the first time a principle-component analysis is used to separate out different orthogonal modes of the two-particle correlation matrix from heavy ion collisions. The analysis uses data from sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV PbPb and sqrt(s[NN]) = 5.02 TeV pPb collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Two-particle azimuthal correlations have been extensively used to study hydrodynamic flow in heavy ion collisions. Recently it has been shown that the expected factorization of two-particle results into a product of the constituent single-particle anisotropies is broken. The new information provided by these modes may shed light on the breakdown of flow factorization in heavy ion collisions. The first two modes ("leading" and "subleading") of two-particle correlations are presented for elliptical and triangular anisotropies in PbPb and pPb collisions as a function of pt over a wide range of event activity. The leading mode is found to be essentially equivalent to the anisotropy harmonic previously extracted from two-particle correlation methods. The subleading mode represents a new experimental observable and is shown to account for a large fraction of the factorization breaking recently observed at high transverse momentum. The principle-component analysis technique has also been applied to multiplicity fluctuations. These also show a subleading mode. The connection of these new results to previous studies of factorization is discussed.
A search is presented for the decays of heavy exotic long-lived particles (LLPs) that are produced in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC and come to rest in the CMS detector. Their decays would be visible during periods of time well separated from proton-proton collisions. Two decay scenarios of stopped LLPs are explored: a hadronic decay detected in the calorimeter and a decay into muons detected in the muon system. The calorimeter (muon) search covers a period of sensitivity totaling 721 (744) hours in 38.6 (39.0) fb$^{-1}$ of data collected by the CMS detector in 2015 and 2016. The results are interpreted in several scenarios that predict LLPs. Production cross section limits are set as a function of the mean proper lifetime and the mass of the LLPs, for lifetimes between 100 ns and 10 days. These are the most stringent limits to date on the mass of hadronically decaying stopped LLPs, and this is the first search at the LHC for stopped LLPs that decay to muons.
A search is presented for long-lived particles produced in pairs in proton-proton collisions at the LHC operating at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data were collected with the CMS detector during the period from 2015 through 2018, and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 140 fb$^{-1}$. This search targets pairs of long-lived particles with mean proper decay lengths between 0.1 and 100 mm, each of which decays into at least two quarks that hadronize to jets, resulting in a final state with two displaced vertices. No significant excess of events with two displaced vertices is observed. In the context of $R$-parity violating supersymmetry models, the pair production of long-lived neutralinos, gluinos, and top squarks is excluded at 95% confidence level for cross sections larger than 0.08 fb, masses between 800 and 3000 GeV, and mean proper decay lengths between 1 and 25 mm.
We have studied D* production mechanisms using data from a photoproduction experiment at the Fermilab Tagged Photon Spectrometer. A large sample of charged D*’s was selected via the clean signature of the cascade decay D*→D0π+ and subsequently D0→K−π+ or D0→K−π+π0. The cross section for the process γp→(D*++anything)p at an average energy of 105 GeV was measured to be 88±32 nb. Only (11±7)% of D*’s were found to be consistent with being accompanied solely by a D¯* or a D¯; the remaining events contain additional particles. The distribution of the production angle of the D* in the photon-fragmentation-system center of mass is strongly anisotropic and consistent with the form f(θ*)=cos4θ*. We set a limit on the associated-production-process cross section σ(γp→(D¯*−+anything)Λc) x)<60 nb (90% C.L.).
The ArgoNeuT collaboration presents measurements of inclusive muon neutrino and antineutrino charged current differential cross sections on argon in the Fermilab NuMI beam operating in the low energy antineutrino mode. The results are reported in terms of outgoing muon angle and momentum at a mean neutrino energy of 9.6 GeV (neutrinos) and 3.6 GeV (antineutrinos), in the range $0^\circ < \theta_\mu < 36^\circ$ and $0 < p_\mu < 25$ GeV/$c$, for both neutrinos and antineutrinos.
Inelastic and elastic $J/\psi$ photoproduction on hydrogen are investigated at a mean energy of 105 GeV. The inelastic cross section with $E_{\psi} / E_{\gamma}$ < 0.9 is significantly lower than the corresponding result for muoproduction on iron targets, but is consistent with a second-order perturbative QCD calculation.
We report results from a search for neutrino-induced neutral current (NC) resonant $\Delta$(1232) baryon production followed by $\Delta$ radiative decay, with a $\langle0.8\rangle$~GeV neutrino beam. Data corresponding to MicroBooNE's first three years of operations (6.80$\times$10$^{20}$ protons on target) are used to select single-photon events with one or zero protons and without charged leptons in the final state ($1\gamma1p$ and $1\gamma0p$, respectively). The background is constrained via an in-situ high-purity measurement of NC $\pi^0$ events, made possible via dedicated $2\gamma1p$ and $2\gamma0p$ selections. A total of 16 and 153 events are observed for the $1\gamma1p$ and $1\gamma0p$ selections, respectively, compared to a constrained background prediction of $20.5 \pm 3.65 \text{(sys.)} $ and $145.1 \pm 13.8 \text{(sys.)} $ events. The data lead to a bound on an anomalous enhancement of the normalization of NC $\Delta$ radiative decay of less than $2.3$ times the predicted nominal rate for this process at the 90% confidence level (CL). The measurement disfavors a candidate photon interpretation of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess as a factor of $3.18$ times the nominal NC $\Delta$ radiative decay rate at the 94.8% CL, in favor of the nominal prediction, and represents a greater than $50$-fold improvement over the world's best limit on single-photon production in NC interactions in the sub-GeV neutrino energy range
Results of high-transverse-momentum charged-hadron production in 400-GeV/c proton-proton and proton-deuteron collisions and 800-GeV/c proton-proton collisions are presented. The transverse-momentum range of the data is from 5.2 to 9.0 GeV/c for the 400-GeV/c collisions and from 3.6 to 11.0 GeV/c for the 800-GeV/c collisions; the data are centered around 90° in the proton-nucleon center-of-momentum system. Single-pion invariant cross sections and particle ratios were measured at both energies. The results are compared to previous experiments and the Lund model.
We present a measurement of the $\nu_e$-interaction rate in the MicroBooNE detector that addresses the observed MiniBooNE anomalous low-energy excess (LEE). The approach taken isolates neutrino interactions consistent with the kinematics of charged-current quasi-elastic (CCQE) events. The topology of such signal events has a final state with 1 electron, 1 proton, and 0 mesons ($1e1p$). Multiple novel techniques are employed to identify a $1e1p$ final state, including particle identification that use two methods of deep-learning-based image identification, and event isolation using a boosted decision-tree ensemble trained to recognize two-body scattering kinematics. This analysis selects 25 $\nu_e$-candidate events in the reconstructed neutrino energy range of 200--1200 MeV, while $29.0 \pm 1.9_\text{(sys)} \pm 5.4_\text{(stat)}$ are predicted when using $\nu_\mu$ CCQE interactions as a constraint. We use a simplified model to translate the MiniBooNE LEE observation into a prediction for a $\nu_e$ signal in MicroBooNE. A $\Delta \chi^2$ test statistic, based on the combined Neyman--Pearson $\chi^2$ formalism, is used to define frequentist confidence intervals for the LEE signal strength. Using this technique, in the case of no LEE signal, we expect this analysis to exclude a normalization factor of 0.75 (0.98) times the median MiniBooNE LEE signal strength at 90% ($2\sigma$) confidence level, while the MicroBooNE data yield an exclusion of 0.25 (0.38) times the median MiniBooNE LEE signal strength at 90% ($2\sigma$) confidence
We report a measurement of the energy-dependent total charged-current cross section $\sigma\left(E_\nu\right)$ for inclusive muon neutrinos scattering on argon, as well as measurements of flux-averaged differential cross sections as a function of muon energy and hadronic energy transfer ($\nu$). Data corresponding to 5.3$\times$10$^{19}$ protons on target of exposure were collected using the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber located in the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam with a mean neutrino energy of approximately 0.8~GeV. The mapping between the true neutrino energy $E_\nu$ and reconstructed neutrino energy $E^{rec}_\nu$ and between the energy transfer $\nu$ and reconstructed hadronic energy $E^{rec}_{had}$ are validated by comparing the data and Monte Carlo (MC) predictions. In particular, the modeling of the missing hadronic energy and its associated uncertainties are verified by a new method that compares the $E^{rec}_{had}$ distributions between data and an MC prediction after constraining the reconstructed muon kinematic distributions, energy and polar angle, to those of data. The success of this validation gives confidence that the missing energy in the MicroBooNE detector is well-modeled and underpins first-time measurements of both the total cross section $\sigma\left(E_\nu\right)$ and the differential cross section $d\sigma/d\nu$ on argon.