Readiness of the ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter for LHC collisions
The ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter has been operating continuously since August 2006. At this time, only part of the calorimeter was readout, but since the beginning of 2008, all calorimeter cells have been connected to the ATLAS readout system in preparation for LHC collisions. This paper gives an overview of the liquid argon calorimeter performance measured in situ with random triggers, calibration data, cosmic muons, and LHC beam splash events. Results on the detector operation, timing performance, electronics noise, and gain stability are presented. High energy deposits from radiative cosmic muons and beam splash events allow to check the intrinsic constant term of the energy resolution. The uniformity of the electromagnetic barrel calorimeter response along η (averaged over φ) is measured at the percent level using minimum ionizing cosmic muons. Finally, studies of electromagnetic showers from radiative muons have been used to cross-check the Monte Carlo simulation. The performance results obtained using the ATLAS readout, data acquisition, and reconstruction software indicate that the liquid argon calorimeter is well-prepared for collisions at the dawn of the LHC era.

title: Measurement of $\cos_{2beta}$ in $B^0 \to D^{(*)}$ 0 h0 decays with a time-dependent Dalitz plot analysis of $D^0 \to K^0_{s} \pi^{+} \pi^{-}$
abstract: We report a preliminary measurement of $\cos2\beta$ in $B^0\to D^{(*)0}h^0$ decays with a time-dependent Dalitz plot analysis of $D^0\to K_S\pi^+\pi^-$, where $h^0$ is a light neutral meson such as $\pi^0$, $\eta$, $\eta'$ or $\omega$. The strong phase variation on the Dalitz plot allows the access to the angle $\beta$ with only a two-fold ambiguity ($\beta+\pi$). Using $311\times 10^{6}$ $B\bar{B}$ pairs collected at the Babar detector, we obtain $\cos2\beta = 0.54 \pm 0.54 \pm 0.08 \pm 0.18$, $\sin2\beta = 0.45 \pm 0.36 \pm 0.05 \pm 0.07$, and $|\lambda| = 0.975^{+0.093}_{-0.085} \pm 0.012 \pm 0.002 $, where the first errors are statistical, the second are experimental systematic uncertainties, and the third are the signal Dalitz model uncertainties. This measurement favors the solution of $\beta= 22^\circ$ over $68^\circ$ at an 87% confidence level.

title: The ATLAS High Level Trigger Steering
abstract: The High Level Trigger (HLT) of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider receives events which pass the LVL1 trigger at ~75 kHz and has to reduce the rate to ~200 Hz while retaining the most interesting physics. It is a software trigger and performs the reduction in two stages: the LVL2 trigger and the Event Filter (EF). At the heart of the HLT is the Steering software. To minimise processing time and data transfers it implements the novel event selection strategies of seeded, step-wise reconstruction and early rejection. The HLT is seeded by regions of interest identified at LVL1. These and the static configuration determine which algorithms are run to reconstruct event data and test the validity of trigger signatures. The decision to reject the event or continue is based on the valid signatures, taking into account pre-scale and pass-through. After the EF, event classification tags are assigned for streaming purposes. Several powerful new features for commissioning and operation have been added: comprehensive monitoring is now built in to the framework; for validation and debugging, reconstructed data can be written out; the steering is integrated with the new configuration (presented separately), and topological and global triggers have been added. This paper will present details of the final design and its implementation, the principles behind it, and the requirements and constraints it is subject to. The experience gained from technical runs with realistic trigger menus will be described.

title: Search for quark contact interactions in dijet angular distributions in pp collisions at s=7 TeV measured with the ATLAS detector
abstract: Dijet angular distributions from the first LHC pp collisions at center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 7 TeV have been measured with the ATLAS detector. The dataset used for this analysis represents an integrated luminosity of 3.1 pb-1. Dijet $\chi$ distributions and centrality ratios have been measured up to dijet masses of 2.8 TeV, and found to be in good agreement with Standard Model predictions. Analysis of the $\chi$ distributions excludes quark contact interactions with a compositeness scale $\Lambda$ below 3.4 TeV, at 95% confidence level, significantly exceeding previous limits.

title: Measurement of moments of the hadronic-mass and energy spectrum in inclusive semileptonic anti-B ---> X(c) l- anti-nu decays

title: Evidence for the $B^0 \to \rho^0 \rho^0$ decay and implications for the CKM angle $\alpha$
abstract: We search for the decays B0->rho0rho0, B0->rho0f0, and B0->f0f0 in a sample of about 348 million Upsilon(4S)->BBbar decays collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at SLAC. We find evidence for B0->rho0rho0 with 3.0 sigma significance and measure the branching fraction B = (1.16 +0.37-0.36 +-0.27) 10^{-6} and longitudinal polarization fraction f_L = 0.86 +0.11-0.13 +-0.05. As a consequence, the uncertainty on the CKM unitarity angle alpha due to penguin contributions in B->rhorho decays is estimated to be 18 degrees at 1 sigma level. We also set upper limits on the B0->rho0f0 and B0->f0f0 decay rates. All results are preliminary.

title: Vector mesons at H1

title: Partial wave analysis using graphics processing units
abstract: Partial wave analysis is an important tool for determining resonance properties in hadron spectroscopy. For large data samples however, the un-binned likelihood fits employed are computationally very expensive. At the Beijing Spectrometer (BES) III experiment, an increase in statistics compared to earlier experiments of up to two orders of magnitude is expected. In order to allow for a timely analysis of these datasets, additional computing power with short turnover times has to be made available. It turns out that graphics processing units (GPUs) originally developed for 3D computer games have an architecture of massively parallel single instruction multiple data floating point units that is almost ideally suited for the algorithms employed in partial wave analysis. We have implemented a framework for tensor manipulation and partial wave fits called GPUPWA. The user writes a program in pure C++ whilst the GPUPWA classes handle computations on the GPU, memory transfers, caching and other technical details. In conjunction with a recent graphics processor, the framework provides a speed-up of the partial wave fit by more than two orders of magnitude compared to legacy FORTRAN code.

title: The Mu3e Experiment
abstract: The Mu3e experiment is designed to search for charged lepton flavour violation in the process μ + → e + e − e + with a branching ratio sensitivity of 10 − 16 . This requires a detector capable of coping with rates of up to 2  9 muons/s whilst being able to reduce backgrounds from accidental coincidences and the process μ + → e + e − e + ν ¯ μ ν e to below the 10 − 16 level. The use of 50 μ m thin high-voltage monolithic active pixel sensors in conjunction with an innovative tracking concept provide the momentum and position resolution necessary, whilst the timing resolution is provided by a combination of scintillating fibres and tiles. The recently approved Mu3e experiment will be located at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland and is currently preparing for detector construction.