A combination is presented of all inclusive deep inelastic cross sections previously published by the H1 and ZEUS collaborations at HERA for neutral and charged current $e^{\pm}p$ scattering for zero beam polarisation. The data were taken at proton beam energies of 920, 820, 575 and 460 GeV and an electron beam energy of 27.5 GeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 1 fb$^{-1}$ and span six orders of magnitude in negative four-momentum-transfer squared, $Q^2$, and Bjorken $x$. The correlations of the systematic uncertainties were evaluated and taken into account for the combination. The combined cross sections were input to QCD analyses at leading order, next-to-leading order and at next-to-next-to-leading order, providing a new set of parton distribution functions, called HERAPDF2.0. In addition to the experimental uncertainties, model and parameterisation uncertainties were assessed for these parton distribution functions. Variants of HERAPDF2.0 with an alternative gluon parameterisation, HERAPDF2.0AG, and using fixed-flavour-number schemes, HERAPDF2.0FF, are presented. The analysis was extended by including HERA data on charm and jet production, resulting in the variant HERAPDF2.0Jets. The inclusion of jet-production cross sections made a simultaneous determination of these parton distributions and the strong coupling constant possible, resulting in $\alpha_s(M_Z)=0.1183 \pm 0.0009 {\rm(exp)} \pm 0.0005{\rm (model/parameterisation)} \pm 0.0012{\rm (hadronisation)} ^{+0.0037}_{-0.0030}{\rm (scale)}$. An extraction of $xF_3^{\gamma Z}$ and results on electroweak unification and scaling violations are also presented.
HERA combined reduced cross sections $\sigma_{r,\rm NC}^{+}$ for NC $e^{+}p$ scattering at $\sqrt{s} = 318$ GeV; $\delta_{\rm stat}$, $\delta_{\rm uncor}$ and $\delta_{\rm cor}$ represent the statistical, uncorrelated systematic and correlated systematic uncertainties, respectively; $\delta_{\rm rel}$, $\delta_{\gamma p}$, $\delta_{\rm had}$ and $\delta_{1}$ to $\delta_{4}$ are the correlated sources of uncertainties arising from the combination procedure. The uncertainties are quoted in percent relative to $\sigma_{r,\rm NC}^{+}$.
HERA combined reduced cross sections $\sigma_{r,\rm NC}^{+}$ for NC $e^{+}p$ scattering at $\sqrt{s} = 300$ GeV; $\delta_{\rm stat}$, $\delta_{\rm uncor}$ and $\delta_{\rm cor}$ represent the statistical, uncorrelated systematic and correlated systematic uncertainties, respectively; $\delta_{\rm rel}$, $\delta_{\gamma p}$, $\delta_{\rm had}$ and $\delta_{1}$ to $\delta_{4}$ are the correlated sources of uncertainties arising from the combination procedure. The uncertainties are quoted in percent relative to $\sigma_{r,\rm NC}^{+}$.
HERA combined reduced cross sections $\sigma_{r,\rm NC}^{+}$ for NC $e^{+}p$ scattering at $\sqrt{s} = 251$ GeV; $\delta_{\rm stat}$, $\delta_{\rm uncor}$ and $\delta_{\rm cor}$ represent the statistical, uncorrelated systematic and correlated systematic uncertainties, respectively; $\delta_{\rm rel}$, $\delta_{\gamma p}$, $\delta_{\rm had}$ and $\delta_{1}$ to $\delta_{4}$ are the correlated sources of uncertainties arising from the combination procedure. The uncertainties are quoted in percent relative to $\sigma_{r,\rm NC}^{+}$.
In particle collider experiments, elementary particle interactions with large momentum transfer produce quarks and gluons (known as partons) whose evolution is governed by the strong force, as described by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). These partons subsequently emit further partons in a process that can be described as a parton shower which culminates in the formation of detectable hadrons. Studying the pattern of the parton shower is one of the key experimental tools for testing QCD. This pattern is expected to depend on the mass of the initiating parton, through a phenomenon known as the dead-cone effect, which predicts a suppression of the gluon spectrum emitted by a heavy quark of mass $m_{\rm{Q}}$ and energy $E$, within a cone of angular size $m_{\rm{Q}}$/$E$ around the emitter. Previously, a direct observation of the dead-cone effect in QCD had not been possible, owing to the challenge of reconstructing the cascading quarks and gluons from the experimentally accessible hadrons. We report the direct observation of the QCD dead cone by using new iterative declustering techniques to reconstruct the parton shower of charm quarks. This result confirms a fundamental feature of QCD. Furthermore, the measurement of a dead-cone angle constitutes a direct experimental observation of the non-zero mass of the charm quark, which is a fundamental constant in the standard model of particle physics.
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