Low-mass vector-meson production at forward rapidity in $p$$+$$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV
The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has measured low mass vector meson, $\omega$, $\rho$, and $\phi$, production through the dimuon decay channel at forward rapidity ($1.2<|y|<2.2$) in $p$$+$$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV. The differential cross sections for these mesons are measured as a function of both $p_T$ and rapidity. We also report the integrated differential cross sections over $1<p_T<7$ GeV/$c$ and $1.2<|y|<2.2$: $d\sigma/dy(\omega+\rho\rightarrow\mu\mu) = 80 \pm 6 \mbox{(stat)} \pm 12 \mbox{(syst)}$ nb and $d\sigma/dy(\phi\rightarrow\mu\mu) = 27 \pm 3 \mbox{(stat)} \pm 4 \mbox{(syst)}$ nb. These results are compared with midrapidity measurements and calculations.

title: Direct photons in Au+Au collisions measured with the PHENIX detector at RHIC
abstract: A major goal of experiments in heavy-ion physics is the characterization of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) produced in the collision of heavy ions at high energy. Direct photons are a particularly good probe of the produced medium because they do not interact strongly and so can escape the medium unmodified, carrying information about when the photon was produced. It is expected that direct photon contributions from different sources (QGP radiation, hard scattering, hadron gas radiation) dominate at different transverse momentum ranges. Low momentum direct photons are dominated by thermal radiation (both from the QGP and hadron gas), while high momentum direct photons dominantly come from hard parton scatterings in the initial collision. We present a summary of techniques to measure direct photons with the PHENIX detector, with a focus on low momentum direct photons through their external conversion to dilepton pairs.

title: Cross section for $b\bar{b}$ production via dielectrons in d$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV
abstract: We report a measurement of $e^+e^-$ pairs from semileptonic heavy-flavor decays in $d$$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV. Exploring the mass and transverse-momentum dependence of the yield, the bottom decay contribution can be isolated from charm, and quantified by comparison to {\sc pythia} and {\sc mc@nlo} simulations. The resulting $b\bar{b}$-production cross section is $\sigma^{d{\rm Au}}_{b\bar{b}}=1.37{\pm}0.28({\rm stat}){\pm}0.46({\rm syst})$~mb, which is equivalent to a nucleon-nucleon cross section of $\sigma^{NN}_{bb}=3.4\pm0.8({\rm stat}){\pm}1.1({\rm syst})\ \mu$b.

title: Centrality categorization for Rp(d)+A in high-energy collisions
abstract: High-energy proton- and deuteron-nucleus collisions provide an excellent tool for studying a wide array of physics effects, including modifications of parton distribution functions in nuclei, gluon saturation, and color neutralization and hadronization in a nuclear environment, among others. All of these effects are expected to have a significant dependence on the size of the nuclear target and the impact parameter of the collision, also known as the collision centrality. In this article, we detail a method for determining centrality classes in p(d) + A collisions via cuts on the multiplicity at backward rapidity (i.e., the nucleus-going direction) and for determining systematic uncertainties in this procedure. For d + Au collisions at root s(NN) = 200 GeV we find that the connection to geometry is confirmed by measuring the fraction of events in which a neutron from the deuteron does not interact with the nucleus. As an application, we consider the nuclear modification factors Rp(d)+A, for which there is a bias in the measured centrality-dependent yields owing to auto correlations between the process of interest and the backward-rapidity multiplicity. We determine the bias-correction factors within this framework. This method is further tested using the HIJING Monte Carlo generator. We find that for d + Au collisions at root s(NN) = 200 GeV, these bias corrections are small and vary by less than 5% (10%) up to p(T) = 10 (20) GeV/c. In contrast, for p + Pb collisions at v root s(NN) = 5.02 TeV we find that these bias factors are an order of magnitude larger and strongly pT dependent, likely attributable to the larger effect of multiparton interactions.

title: Charm dimuon production in neutrino-nucleon interactions in the NOMAD experiment
abstract: We present our new measurement of charm dimuon production in neutrino-iron interactions based upon the full statistics collected by the NOMAD experiment. After background subtraction we observe 15,340 charm dimuon events, providing the largest sample currently available. The analysis exploits the large inclusive charged current sample (about 9 million events after all analysis cuts) to constrain the total systematic uncertainty to about 2%. The extraction of strange sea and charm production parameters is also discussed.

title: Neutrino production of opposite sign dimuons in the NOMAD experiment
abstract: The NOMAD Collaboration presents a study of opposite sign dimuon events in the framework of Leading Order QCD. A total of 2714 neutrino- and 115 antineutrino-induced opposite sign dimuon events with E μ 1 , E μ 2 >4.5 GeV, 15 E ν Q 2 >1 ( GeV / c ) 2 are observed in the Front-Calorimeter of NOMAD during the 1995 and 1996 runs. The analysis yields a value for the charm quark mass of m c =1.3 +0.3+0.3 −0.3−0.3 GeV / c 2 and for the average semileptonic branching ratio of B c =0.095 +0.007+0.014 −0.007−0.013 . The ratio of the strange to non-strange sea in the nucleon is measured to be κ =0.48 +0.09+0.17 −0.07−0.12 . The measured rate of charm-induced dimuon relative to single muon, as a function of neutrino energy, is consistent with the slow rescaling hypothesis of heavy quark production.

title: Acceptance tests and criteria of the ATLAS transition radiation tracker
abstract: The Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) sits at the outermost part of the ATLAS Inner Detector, encasing the Pixel Detector and the Semi-Conductor Tracker (SCT). The TRT combines charged particle track reconstruction with electron identification capability. This is achieved by layers of xenon-filled straw tubes with periodic radiator foils or fibers providing TR photon emission. The design and choice of materials have been optimized to cope with the harsh operating conditions at the LHC, which are expected to lead to an accumulated radiation dose of 10 Mrad and a neutron fluence of up to 2middot1014 n/cm2  after ten years of operation. The TRT comprises a barrel containing 52 000 axial straws and two end-cap parts with 320 000 radial straws. The total of 420 000 electronic channels (two channels per barrel straw) allows continuous tracking with many projective measurements (more than 30 straw hits per track). The assembly of the barrel modules in the US has recently been completed, while the end-cap wheel construction in Russia has reached the 50% mark. After testing at the production sites and shipment to CERN, all modules and wheels undergo a series of quality and conformity measurements. These acceptance tests survey dimensions, wire tension, gas-tightness, high-voltage stability and gas-gain uniformity along each individual straw. This paper gives details on the acceptance criteria and measurement methods. An overview of the most important results obtained to-date is also given

title: Study of energy response and resolution of the ATLAS barrel calorimeter to hadrons of energies from 20 to 350 GeV
abstract: A fully instrumented slice of the ATLAS detector was exposed to test beams from the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) at CERN in 2004. In this paper, the results of the measurements of the response of the barrel calorimeter to hadrons with energies in the range 20 to 350 GeV and beam impact points and angles corresponding to pseudorapidity values in the range 0.2-0.65 are reported. The results are compared to the predictions of a simulation program using the Geant 4 toolkit.

title: ATLAS INNER DETECTOR RESULTS FROM THE 2004 COMBINED TEST BEAM DATA