Central collisions of 800-GeV protons with the heavy components of nuclear emulsion, Ag107 and Br80, have been investigated to determine the characteristics of small-impact-parameter collisions and, by comparison with the analysis of inclusive proton-emulsion inelastic interactions and inelastic proton-nucleon collisions, to study the dependence of the interaction process on the mean number of intranuclear collisions 〈ν〉. The data are also compared with the results obtained in proton-emulsion collisions, both central and inclusive, at 200 GeV. The variations in the secondary-particle multiplicities and the normalized pseudorapidity density correlate with 〈ν〉 and demonstrate that proton-nucleus interactions, both central and inclusive, can be described adequately by the incoherent superposition of proton-nucleon collisions.
We present the first measurement of pseudorapidity densities of primary charged particles near mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 56 and 130 AGeV. For the most central collisions, we find the charged particle pseudorapidity density to be $dN/d\eta |_{|\eta|<1} = 408 \pm 12 {(stat)} \pm 30 {(syst)}$ at 56 AGeV and $555 \pm 12 {(stat)} \pm 35 {(syst)}$ at 130 AGeV, values that are higher than any previously observed in nuclear collisions. Compared to proton-antiproton collisions, our data show an increase in the pseudorapidity density per participant by more than 40% at the higher energy.
A measurement of single top-quark production in the s-channel is performed in proton$-$proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb$^{-1}$. The analysis is performed on events with an electron or muon, missing transverse momentum and exactly two $b$-tagged jets in the final state. A discriminant based on matrix element calculations is used to separate single-top-quark s-channel events from the main background contributions, which are top-quark pair production and $W$-boson production in association with jets. The observed (expected) signal significance over the background-only hypothesis is 3.3 (3.9) standard deviations, and the measured cross-section is $\sigma=8.2^{+3.5}_{-2.9}$ pb, consistent with the Standard Model prediction of $\sigma^{\mathrm{SM}}=10.32^{+0.40}_{-0.36}$ pb.