We report measurements of the inclusive transverse momentum pT distribution of centrally produced kshort, kstar(892), and phi(1020) mesons up to pT = 10 GeV/c in minimum-bias events, and kshort and lambda particles up to pT = 20 GeV/c in jets with transverse energy between 25 GeV and 160 GeV in pbar p collisions. The data were taken with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. We find that as pT increases, the pT slopes of the three mesons (kshort, kstar, and phi) are similar, and the ratio of lambda to kshort as a function of pT in minimum-bias events becomes similar to the fairly constant ratio in jets at pT ~ 5 GeV/c. This suggests that the particles with pT >~ 5 GeV/c in minimum-bias events are from soft jets, and that the pT slope of particles in jets is insensitive to light quark flavor (u, d, or s) and to the number of valence quarks. We also find that for pT <~ 4 GeV relatively more lambda baryons are produced in minimum-bias events than in jets.
We study charged particle production in proton-antiproton collisions at 300 GeV, 900 GeV, and 1.96 TeV. We use the direction of the charged particle with the largest transverse momentum in each event to define three regions of eta-phi space; toward, away, and transverse. The average number and the average scalar pT sum of charged particles in the transverse region are sensitive to the modeling of the underlying event. The transverse region is divided into a MAX and MIN transverse region, which helps separate the hard component (initial and final-state radiation) from the beam-beam remnant and multiple parton interaction components of the scattering. The center-of-mass energy dependence of the various components of the event are studied in detail. The data presented here can be used to constrain and improve QCD Monte Carlo models, resulting in more precise predictions at the LHC energies of 13 and 14 TeV.
Samples of inclusive photon+2 jet and photon+3 jet events collected by the D0 experiment with an integrated luminosity of about 1fb^-1 in ppbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV are used to measure cross sections as a function of the angle in the plane transverse to the beam direction between the transverse momentum (pT) of the photon+leading jet system (jets are ordered in pT) and pT of the other jet for photon+2 jet, or pT sum of the two other jets for photon+3 jet events. The results are compared to different models of multiple parton interactions (MPI) in the PYTHIA and SHERPA Monte Carlo (MC) generators. The data indicate a contribution from events with double parton (DP) interactions and are well described by predictions provided by the PYTHIA MPI models with pT-ordered showers and by SHERPA with the default MPI model. The photon+2 jet data are also used to determine the fraction of events with DP interactions as a function of the azimuthal angle and as a function of the second jet pT.
We present the first model-independent measurement of the helicity of $W$ bosons produced in top quark decays, based on a 1 fb$^{-1}$ sample of candidate $t\bar{t}$ events in the dilepton and lepton plus jets channels collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron $p\bar{p}$ Collider. We reconstruct the angle $\theta^*$ between the momenta of the down-type fermion and the top quark in the $W$ boson rest frame for each top quark decay. A fit of the resulting \costheta distribution finds that the fraction of longitudinal $W$ bosons $f_0 = 0.425 \pm 0.166 \hbox{(stat.)} \pm 0.102 \hbox{(syst.)}$ and the fraction of right-handed $W$ bosons $f_+ = 0.119 \pm 0.090 \hbox{(stat.)} \pm 0.053 \hbox{(syst.)}$, which is consistent at the 30% C.L. with the standard model.
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