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F. Schwab

Publications and source records attributed to F. Schwab.

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B, D and K decays

With the advent of the LHC, we will be able to probe New Physics (NP) up to energy scales almost one order of magnitude larger than it has been possible with present accelerator facilities. While direct detection of new particles will be the main avenue to establish the presence of NP at the LHC, indirect searches will provide precious complementary information, since most probably it will not be possible to measure the full spectrum of new particles and their couplings through direct production. In particular, precision measurements and computations in the realm of flavour physics are expected to play a key role in constraining the unknown parameters of the Lagrangian of any NP model emerging from direct searches at the LHC. The aim of Working Group 2 was twofold: on one hand, to provide a coherent, up-to-date picture of the status of flavour physics before the start of the LHC; on the other hand, to initiate activities on the path towards integrating information on NP from high-pT and flavour data.

hep-ph

Status of the Cabibbo Angle

We review the recent experimental and theoretical progress in the determination of |V_{ud}| and |V_{us}|, and the status of the most stringent test of CKM unitarity. Future prospects on |V_{cd}| and |V_{cs}| are also briefly discussed.

hep-ph

Determination of |V_us| from hadronic tau decays

The recent update of the strange spectral function and the moments of the invariant mass distribution by the OPAL collaboration from hadronic tau decay data are employed to determine |V_us| as well as m_s. Our result, |V_us|=0.2208\pm0.0034, is competitive to the standard extraction of |V_us| from K_e3 decays and to the new proposals to determine it. Furthermore, the error associated to our determination of |V_us| can be reduced in the future since it is dominated by the experimental uncertainty that will be eventually much improved by the B-factories hadronic tau data. Another improvement that can be performed is the simultaneous fit of both |V_us| and m_s to a set of moments of the hadronic tau decays invariant mass distribution, which will provide even a more accurate determination of both parameters.

hep-ph

V_us and m_s from hadronic tau decays

Recent experimental results on hadronic tau decays into strange particles by the OPAL collaboration are employed to determine V_us and m_s from moments of the invariant mass distribution. Our results are V_us = 0.2208+-0.0034 and m_s(2 GeV) = 81+-22 MeV. The error on V_us is dominated by experiment, and should be improvable in the future. Nevertheless, already now our result is competitive to the standard extraction of V_us from K_e3 decays, and it is compatible with unitarity.

hep-ph

Determination of m_s and |V_us| from hadronic tau decays

The mass of the strange quark is determined from SU(3)-breaking effects in the tau hadronic width. Compared to previous analyses, the contributions from scalar and pseudoscalar spectral functions, which suffer from large perturbative corrections, are replaced by phenomenological parametrisations. This leads to a sizeable reduction of the uncertainties in the strange mass from tau decays. Nevertheless, the resulting m_s value is still rather sensitive to the moment of the invariant mass distribution which is used for the determination, as well as the size of the quark-mixing matrix element |V_us|. Imposing the unitarity fit for the CKM matrix, we obtain m_s(2 GeV)=117+-17 MeV, whereas for the present Particle Data Group average for |V_us|, we find m_s(2 GeV)=103+-17 MeV. On the other hand, using an average of m_s from other sources as an input, we are able to calculate the quark-mixing matrix element |V_us|, and we demonstrate that if the present measurement of the hadronic decay of the tau into strange particles is improved by a factor of two, the determination of |V_us| is more precise than the current world average.

hep-ph