The branching fraction of $\tau^- \to \pi^- K^0_S K^0_S (\pi^0) \nu_\tau$ decays
We present a study of tau- --> pi- K0S K0S (pi0) nu and tau- --> K- K0S K0S (pi0) nu decays using a dataset of 430 million tau lepton pairs, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 468 fb-1, collected with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric energy e+e- storage rings. We measure branching fractions of (2.31 +/- 0.04 +/- 0.08)x10^{-4} and (1.60 +/- 0.20 +/- 0.22)x10^{-5} for the tau- --> pi- K0S K0S nu and tau- --> pi- K0S K0S pi0 nu decays, respectively. We find no evidence for tau- --> K- K0S K0S nu and tau- --> K- K0S K0S pi0 nu decays and place upper limits on the branching fractions of 6.3 x 10^{-7) and 4.0 x 10^{-7} at the 90% confidence level.

title: Measurements of branching fractions and CP-violating asymmetries in B-meson decays to the charmless two-body states K0 pi+, anti-K0 K+, and K0 anti-K0

title: Operation of the Cherenkov detector DIRC of BABAR at high luminosity
abstract: The DIRC (acronym for Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov (light)) is the ring imaging Cherenkov detector of the BABAR detector at the PEP-II ring of SLAC. It provides the identification of pions, kaons and protons for momenta up to 4 GeV/c with high efficiency. This is needed to reconstruct CP-violating B-decay final states and to provide B-meson flavour tagging for time dependent asymmetry measurements. The DIRC radiators consists of long rectangular bars made of synthetic fused silica and the photon detector is a water tank equipped with an array of 10.752 conventional photomultipliers. At the end of the year 2000 BABAR has recorded about 22 million B~B pairs reaching the design luminosity of L=3/spl middot/10/sup 33//cm/sup 2/s. The ability to keep the beam background level low at highest collision rates and the long term reliability of the DIRC components during continuous data taking are requirements of BABAR to accomplish its physics program.

title: Branching fraction for $B^{+} \to \pi^0 \ell^{+} \nu$, measured in $\upsilon_{4S} \to B \bar{B}$ events tagged by $B^{-} \to D^0 \ell^{-}$ anti-v ($X$) decays

title: Measurement of the CKM matrix element $|V_{ub}|$ with $B \to \rho e \nu$ decays

title: Improved Measurement of CP Violation in Neutral B Decays to c cs

title: On the random vector potential model in two dimensions
abstract: The random vector potential model describes massless fermions coupled to a quenched random gauge field. We study its abelian and non-abelian versions. The abelian version can be completely solved using bosonization. We analyse the non-abelian model using its supersymmetric formulation and show, by a perturbative renormalization group computation, that it is asymptotically free at large distances. We also show that all the quenched chiral current correlation functions can be computed exactly, without using the replica trick or the supersymmetric formulation, but using an exact expression for the effective action for any sample of the random gauge field. These chiral correlation functions are purely algebraic.

title: Spin-Charge Separation and the Spin Quantum Hall Effect
abstract: We use quantum field theory methods to study the network model for the spin quantum hall transition. When the couplings are fine tuned in a certain way, the spin and charge degrees of freedom, corresponding to the su-percurrent algebras su(2) 0 and osp(2|2) −2 respectively, completely decouple. This simpler theory is exactly solvable and some critical exponents are computed and shown to agree with the recent predictions based on percolation. The general network model is shown to be in a different universality class by identifying the attractive direction of the renormalization group flow.

title: Spinons in conformal field theory
abstract: We study the su(2) conformal field theory in its spinon description, adapted to the yangian invariance. By evaluating the action of the yangian generators on the primary fields, we find a new connection between this conformal field theory and the Calogero-Sutherland model with su(2) spin. We use this connection to describe how the spinons are the quasi-particles spanning the irreducible yangian multiplet, and also to exhibit operators creating the N-spinon highest-weight vectors.

title: Null-Vectors in Integrable Field Theory

abstract: The form factor bootstrap approach allows to construct the space of local fields in the massive restricted sine-Gordon model. This space has to be isomorphic to that of the corresponding minimal model of conformal field theory. We describe the subspaces which correspond to the Verma modules of primary fields in terms of the commutative algebra of local integrals of motion and of a fermion (Neveu–Schwarz or Ramond depending on the particular primary field). The description of null-vectors relies on the relation between form factors and deformed hyper-elliptic integrals. The null-vectors correspond to the deformed exact forms and to the deformed Riemann bilinear identity. In the operator language, the null-vectors are created by the action of two operators ? (linear in the fermion) and ? (quadratic in the fermion). We show that by factorizing out the null-vectors one gets the space of operators with the correct character.
In the classical limit, using the operators ? and ? we obtain a new, very compact, description of the KdV hierarchy. We also discuss a beautiful relation with the method of Whitham.

title: An insulating grid spacer for large-area MICROMEGAS chambers
abstract: We present a novel design for large-area gaseous detectors based on the MICROMEGAS technology. This technology incorporates an insulating grid, sandwiched between the micro-mesh and the anode-pad plane, which provides a uniform 200 μm amplification gap. The uniformity of the amplification gap thickness has been verified. The gain performances of the detector are presented and compared to the values obtained with detectors using cylindrical micro spacers. The new design presents several technical and financial advantages.