P. Abreu

Measurement of the depth of maximum of extensive air showers above 10(18) eV

We describe the measurement of the depth of maximum, Xmax, of the longitudinal development of air showers induced by cosmic rays. Almost four thousand events above 10^18 eV observed by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory in coincidence with at least one surface detector station are selected for the analysis. The average shower maximum was found to evolve with energy at a rate of (106 +35/-21) g/cm^2/decade below 10^(18.24 +/- 0.05) eV and (24 +/- 3) g/cm^2/decade above this energy. The measured shower-to-shower fluctuations decrease from about 55 to 26 g/cm^2. The interpretation of these results in terms of the cosmic ray mass composition is briefly discussed.

Trigger and aperture of the surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory consists of 1600 water-Cherenkov detectors, for the study of extensive air showers (EAS) generated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. We describe the trigger hierarchy, from the identification of candidate showers at the level of a single detector, amongst a large background (mainly random single cosmic ray muons), up to the selection of real events and the rejection of random coincidences. Such trigger makes the surface detector array fully efficient for the detection of EAS with energy above 3 x 10(18) eV, for all zenith angles between 0 degrees and 60 degrees, independently of the position of the impact point and of the mass of the primary particle. In these range of energies and angles, the exposure of the surface array can be determined purely on the basis of the geometrical acceptance

Search for neutral heavy leptons produced in

Weak isosinglet Neutral Heavy Leptons (vm) have been searched for using data collected by the DELPHI detector corresponding to 3.3 × 106 hadronic Z0 decays at LEP1. Four separate searches have been performed, for short-lived vm production giving monojet or acollinear jet topologies, and for long-lived vm giving detectable secondary vertices or calorimeter clusters. No indication of the existence of these particles has been found, leading to an upper limit for the branching ratio BR(Z0 → vm?) of about 1.3 × 10−6 at 95% confidence level for vm masses between 3.5 and 50 GeV/c2. Outside this range the limit weakens rapidly with the vm mass. The results are also interpreted in terms of limits for the single production of excited neutrinos.

Z

We report the observation of two narrow resonances consistent with states of orbitally excited (L=1) B_(s) mesons using 1 fb;(-1) of pp[over ] collisions at sqrt[s]=1.96 TeV collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. We use two-body decays into K- and B+ mesons reconstructed as B(+)-->J/psiK(+), J/psi-->mu(+)mu(-) or B(+)-->D[over ](0)pi(+), D[over ](0)-->K(+)pi(-). We deduce the masses of the two states to be m(B_(s1))=5829.4+/-0.7 MeV/c(2) and m(B_(s2);(*))=5839.6+/-0.7 MeV/c;(2).

decays

Searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson have been performed in the data collected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP in the year 2000 at centre-of-mass energies between 200 and 209 GeV corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 224 pb−1. No evidence for a Higgs signal is observed in the kinematically accessible mass range, and a 95% CL lower mass limit of 114.3 GeV/c2 is set, to be compared with an expected median limit of 113.5 GeV/c2 for these data.

Observation of orbitally excited B mesons

The air fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is designed to perform calorimetric measurements of extensive air showers created by cosmic rays of above 10 eV. To correct these measurements for the effects introduced by atmospheric fluctuations, the Observatory contains a group of monitoring instruments to record atmospheric conditions across the detector site, an area exceeding 3000 km. The atmospheric data are used extensively in the reconstruction of air showers, and are particularly important for the correct determination of shower energies and the depths of shower maxima. This paper contains a summary of the molecular and aerosol conditions measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory since the start of regular operations in 2004, and includes a discussion of the impact of these measurements on air shower reconstructions. Between 10 and 10 eV, the systematic uncertainties due to all atmospheric effects increase from 4% to 8% in measurements of shower energy, and 4 g cm 2 to 8 g cm 2 in measurements of the shower maximum. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson at LEP in the year 2000

Abstract Bose-Einstein correlation between pairs of like-sign charged particles produced in e + e − annihilations near the Z 0 peak have been studied using data taken with the DELPHI detector at LEP. An enhancement is found in the production of pairs of identical pions of similar moments, with respect to a reference sample. Under the hypothesis that the pions are emitted by a spherically symmetrical source with gaussian density, the data indicate a radius of the source of r = 0.62±0.04(stat.)±0.20(syst.) fm. The large systematic uncertainty reflects the sensitivity of r to the choice of the reference sample.

A study of the effect of molecular and aerosol conditions in the atmosphere on air fluorescence measurements at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Infrared and collinear safe event shape distributions and their mean values are determined using the data taken at five different centre of mass energies above MZ with the DELPHI detector at LEP. From the event shapes, the strong coupling αs is extracted in View the MathML source(αs2), NLLA and a combined scheme using hadronisation corrections evaluated with fragmentation model generators as well as using an analytical power ansatz. Comparing these measurements to those obtained at MZ, the energy dependence (running) of αs is accessible. The logarithmic energy slope of the inverse strong coupling is measured to be View the MathML source in good agreement with the QCD expectation of 1.27.

Bose-Einstein correlations in the hadronic decays of the Z0

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy density is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.

Energy dependence of event shapes and of alpha(s) at LEP-2

A search for lepton flavour number violating Z0 decays in the channels Z0 → μτ, Z0 → eτ, Z0 → eμ, using the DELPHI detector with data collected during the 1991–94 LEP runs, is described. No signal was found. Upper limits at 95% confidence level for the respective branching fractions of 1.2 × 10−5, 2.2 × 10−5, and 0.25 × 10−5, were obtained.