No Arabic abstract
The most precise measurement of the weak mixing angle sin^2(theta) at LEP is from the forward-backward asymmetry e+e- --> bbbar at the Z-pole. In this note the QED and electroweak radiative corrections to obtain the pole asymmetry from the measured asymmetry for b- and c-quarks have been calculated using ZFITTER, which has been amended to allow a consistent treatment of partial two-loop corrections for the b-quark final asymmetries. A total correction of dAfbb=0.0019+/-0.0002 and dAfbc=0.0064+/-0.0001 has been found, where the remaining theoretical uncertainty is much too small to explain the apparent discrepancy between sin^2(theta) obtained from Afbb and from the left-right asymmetry at SLD.
The LHCb collaboration has recently performed a first measurement of the angular production asymmetry in the distribution of beauty quarks and anti-quarks at a hadron collider. We calculate the corresponding standard model prediction for this asymmetry at fixed-order in perturbation theory. Our results show good agreement with the data, which is provided differentially for three bins in the invariant mass of the $b bar b$ system. We also present similar predictions for both beauty-quark and charm-quark final states within the LHCb acceptance for a collision energy of $sqrt{s} = 13 , {rm TeV}$. We finally point out that a measurement of the ratio of the $b bar b$ and $c bar c$ cross sections may be useful for experimentally validating charm-tagging efficiencies.
After 10 years of steadily increasing the experimental precision at LEP/SLC, there is a strong demand on an update of existing programs for fermion pair production. We present a rederivation of the O(alpha) Bremsstrahlung corrections to e+e- --> f+f- for the semi-analytic program ZFITTER. We focus on observables like total cross section and forward-backward asymmetry in the leptonic case with combined cuts on acollinearity angle, acceptance angle, and minimal energy of the fermions. The outcome of our analysis is a shift of the predictions by ZFITTER at LEP 1 energies off-resonance of a few per mil while at the Z resonance numerical changes can be neglected. Thus we obtain for cross sections and asymmetries at LEP 1 a level of agreement with other programs of better than per mil, like for the kinematically simpler s cut option. A preliminary analysis of ZFITTER, TOPAZ0, and other codes at LEP 2 energies showing deviations of several per cent with acollinearity cuts enforce a future examination of higher order effects with different cuts. The predictions by LEP/SLC data, however, are not affected within the experimental errors.
In supersymmetric theories, the main decay modes of scalar quarks are decays into quarks plus charginos or neutralinos, if the gluinos are heavy enough. We calculate the O($alpha_s$) QCD corrections to these decay modes in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model. In the case of scalar top and bottom quarks, where mixing effects can be important, these corrections can reach values of the order of a few ten percent. They can be either positive or negative and increase logarithmically with the gluino mass. For the scalar partners of light quarks, the corrections do not exceed in general the level of ten percent for gluino masses less than 1 TeV.
Two measurements are presented of estimators sensitive to the Colour Reconnection effect in WW events at LEP2. The results are compared with various phenomenological Monte Carlo implementations of the effect. A feasibility study is performed to reduce the total uncertainty in the direct W boson mass measurement at LEP2 by use of the inferred information about the Colour Reconnection effect.
Top-quark physics plays an important role at hadron colliders such as the Tevatron at Fermilab or the LHC at CERN. Given the planned precision at these colliders, precise theoretical predictions are required. In this paper we present the complete electroweak corrections to QCD-induced top-quark pair production in quark--antiquark annihilation. In particular we provide compact analytic expressions for the differential partonic cross section, which will be useful for further theoretical investigations.