A structure has been observed at 2220 MeV in the mass spectrum of ηη ′ systems produced by 38GeV/ c and 100 GeV/ c ′ negative pions on protons. The angular distribution of the decay products shows that this structure is presumably a spin J ⩾ 2 meson.

We report on measurements of low-mass electron pairs in 450 GeV p-Be, p-Au, and 200 GeV/nucleon S-Au collisions at central rapidities. For the proton induced interactions, the low-mass spectra are, within the systematic errors, satisfactorily explained by electron pairs from hadron decays, whereas in the S-Au system an enhancement over the hadronic contributions by a factor of 5.0±0.7(stat)±2.0(syst) in the invariant mass range 0.2<m<1.5GeV/c2 is observed. The properties of the excess suggest that it arises from two-pion annihilation ππ→e+e−.

The reaction pp -> pp eta was measured at excess energies of 15 and 41 MeV at an external target of the Juelich Cooler Synchrotron COSY with the Time of Flight Spectrometer. About 25000 events were measured for the excess energy of 15 MeV and about 8000 for 41 MeV. Both protons of the process pp eta were detected with an acceptance of nearly 100% and the eta was reconstructed by the missing mass technique. For both excess energies the angular distributions are found to be nearly isotropic. In the invariant mass distributions strong deviations from the pure phase space distributions are seen.

Measurements are presented of single and double-differential dijet cross sections in diffractive photoproduction based on a data sample with an integrated luminosity of 47 pb^-1. The events are of the type ep -> eXY, where the hadronic system X contains at least two jets and is separated by a large rapidity gap from the system Y, which consists of a leading proton or low-mass proton excitation. The dijet cross sections are compared with QCD calculations at next-to-leading order and with a Monte Carlo model based on leading order matrix elements with parton showers. The measured cross sections are smaller than those obtained from the next-to-leading order calculations by a factor of about 0.6. This suppression factor has no significant dependence on the fraction x_gamma of the photon four-momentum entering the hard subprocess. Ratios of the diffractive to the inclusive dijet cross sections are measured for the first time and are compared with Monte Carlo models.

The production of jets is studied in deep-inelastic e+p scattering at low negative four momentum transfer squared 5<Q^2<100 GeV^2 and at inelasticity 0.2<y<0.7 using data recorded by the H1 detector at HERA in the years 1999 and 2000, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 43.5 pb^-1. Inclusive jet, 2-jet and 3-jet cross sections as well as the ratio of 3-jet to 2-jet cross sections are measured as a function of Q^2 and jet transverse momentum. The 2-jet cross section is also measured as a function of the proton momentum fraction xi. The measurements are well described by perturbative quantum chromodynamics at next-to-leading order corrected for hadronisation effects and are subsequently used to extract the strong coupling alpha_s.

The production of jets is studied in deep-inelastic ep scattering at large negative four momentum transfer squared 150&lt;Q^2&lt;15000 GeV^2 using HERA data taken in 1999-2007, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 395 pb^-1. Inclusive jet, 2-jet and 3-jet cross sections, normalised to the neutral current deep-inelastic scattering cross sections, are measured as functions of Q^2, jet transverse momentum and proton momentum fraction. The measurements are well described by perturbative QCD calculations at next-to-leading order corrected for hadronisation effects. The strong coupling as determined from these measurements is alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1168 +/-0.0007 (exp.) +0.0046/-0.0030 (th.) +/-0.0016(pdf).

Inclusive jet, dijet and trijet differential cross sections are measured in neutral current deep-inelastic scattering for exchanged boson virtualities 150 < Q^2 < 15000 GeV^2 using the H1 detector at HERA. The data were taken in the years 2003 to 2007 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 351 pb^{-1}. Double differential Jet cross sections are obtained using a regularised unfolding procedure. They are presented as a function of Q^2 and the transverse momentum of the jet, P_T^jet, and as a function of Q^2 and the proton's longitudinal momentum fraction, Xi, carried by the parton participating in the hard interaction. In addition normalised double differential jet cross sections are measured as the ratio of the jet cross sections to the inclusive neutral current cross sections in the respective Q^2 bins of the jet measurements. Compared to earlier work, the measurements benefit from an improved reconstruction and calibration of the hadronic final state. The cross sections are compared to perturbative QCD calculations in next-to-leading order and are used to determine the running coupling and the value of the strong coupling constant as alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1165 (8)_exp (38)_{pdf,theo}.

A measurement of elastic deeply virtual Compton scattering gamma* p -> gamma p using e^+ p and e^- p collision data recorded with the H1 detector at HERA is presented. The analysed data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 306 pb^-1, almost equally shared between both beam charges. The cross section is measured as a function of the virtuality Q^2 of the exchanged photon and the centre-of-mass energy W of the gamma* p system in the kinematic domain 6.5 &lt; Q^2 &lt; 80 GeV^2, 30 &lt; W &lt; 140 GeV and |t| &lt; 1 GeV^2, where t denotes the squared momentum transfer at the proton vertex. The cross section is determined differentially in t for different Q^2 and W values and exponential t-slope parameters are derived. Using e^+ p and e^- p data samples, a beam charge asymmetry is extracted for the first time in the low Bjorken x kinematic domain. The observed asymmetry is attributed to the interference between Bethe-Heitler and deeply virtual Compton scattering processes. Experimental results are discussed in the context of two different models, one based on generalised parton distributions and one based on the dipole approach.

Diffractive photoproduction of dijets was measured with the ZEUS detector at the ep collider HERA using an integrated luminosity of 77.2 pb-1. The measurements were made in the kinematic range Q^2 < 1 GeV^2, 0.20 < y < 0.85 and x_pom < 0.025, where Q^2 is the photon virtuality, y is the inelasticity and x_pom is the fraction of the proton momentum taken by the diffractive exchange. The two jets with the highest transverse energy, E_T^jet, were required to satisfy E_T^jet > 7.5 and 6.5 GeV, respectively, and to lie in the pseudorapidity range -1.5 < eta^jet < 1.5. Differential cross sections were compared to perturbative QCD calculations using available parameterisations of diffractive parton distributions of the proton.

We present the first observation of exclusive $e^+e^-$ production in hadron-hadron collisions, using $p\bar{p}$ collision data at \mbox{$\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV} taken by the Run II Collider Detector at Fermilab, and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of \mbox{532 pb$^{-1}$}. We require the absence of any particle signatures in the detector except for an electron and a positron candidate, each with transverse energy {$E_T>5$ GeV} and pseudorapidity {$|\eta|<2$}. With these criteria, 16 events are observed compared to a background expectation of {$1.9\pm0.3$} events. These events are consistent in cross section and properties with the QED process \mbox{$p\bar{p} \to p + e^+e^- + \bar{p}$} through two-photon exchange. The measured cross section is \mbox{$1.6^{+0.5}_{-0.3}\mathrm{(stat)}\pm0.3\mathrm{(syst)}$ pb}. This agrees with the theoretical prediction of {$1.71 \pm 0.01$ pb}.