arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to H. Spiesberger.
The excess of high-Q2 events recently observed in deep-inelastic positron-proton scattering at HERA has refuelled speculations on physics beyond the standard model, in particular on low-mass leptoquark-type particles. We review the theoretical framework for leptoquark interactions, and their production and decay at HERA. Bounds on leptoquark masses and couplings, and implications on other experiments are also discussed.
Theoretical interpretations of the high-Q^2 events recently observed in deep-inelastic positron-proton scattering at HERA are reviewed. We discuss leptoquarks, squarks with R-parity violating couplings, and contact interactions. Bounds from and implications on other experiments are taken into consideration.
We study pair production of leptoquarks in e+e- annihilation at linear colliders. A detailed simulation including beamstrahlung and initial state radiation, leptoquark decay and hadronization, as well as detector smearing, is performed. Discovery limits are estimated for center-of-mass energies of 500 and 800 GeV. The prospects for determining masses and couplings of leptoquarks are also investigated.
In supersymmetric theories with R-parity breaking, sleptons can be produced in quark-antiquark annihilation at the Tevatron through interactions in which two quark fields are coupled to a slepton field. If at the same time trilinear slepton-lepton-lepton couplings are present, the sleptons can be searched for as resonances in $p\bar{p}\to \tildeν \to l^+l^-$ and $\tildeτ\to lν$ final states. Existing Tevatron data can be exploited to derive bounds on the Yukawa couplings of sleptons to quark and lepton pairs. Similar bounds can also be obtained from $e^+e^-$ annihilation to hadrons at LEP2.
The HERA data on inelastic lepton proton scattering for values of the Bjorken scaling variable x < 0.05 are confronted with predictions based on Generalized Vector Dominance. Good agreement between theory and experiment is found over the full kinematic range of the squared four-momentum-transfer, Q^2, from Q^2 = 0 (photoproduction) to Q^2 < 350 GeV^2.
In supersymmetric theories with R-parity breaking, trilinear couplings of two leptons to scalar sleptons are possible. In electron-positron collisions such interactions would manifest themselves through contact terms in Bhabha scattering and in annihilation to mu or tau pair Interpreting the high x, high Q2 DIS HERA events as charm squark production with squark masses of order 200 GeV, the formation of tau sneutrinos with a mass in the range close to the LEP2 energy or even in reach, is an exciting speculation which can be investigated in the coming LEP2 runs with energies close to 200 GeV.
The cross sections for the formation of scalar resonances, leptoquarks or squarks, in electron/positron-proton collisions at HERA are presented including next-to-leading order QCD corrections. Depending mildly on the mass of the resonances, the K-factors increase the production cross sections by up to 30% if the target quarks are valence quarks. The QCD corrections to the partial decay widths of leptoquarks/squarks to leptons and quarks are small. The electron spectrum in the decays is softened nevertheless by perturbative gluon radiation at a level of 3.4 GeV for a leptoquark/squark mass of 200 GeV.
In reference to the recently observed high Q^2, large x events in deep-inelastic positron-proton scattering at HERA, various leptoquark and supersymmetric scenarios are discussed. We study the impact of virtual leptoquark or R-parity breaking squark exchange as well as generic contact interaction on the production of quark-antiquark pairs in $e^+e^-$ annihilation, in particular at LEP2.
A high luminosity upgrade of HERA will allow the measurement of standard model parameters and the neutral current couplings of quarks. These results will have to be consistent with other precision measurements or indicate traces of new physics. The analysis of $W$ production will complement future results of LEP 2 and the Tevatron. We summarize the main results and conclusions obtained by the working group on Electroweak Physics concerning the potential of future experimentation at HERA.
We present a new calculation of the $O(α_s^2)$ coefficient of the energy-energy correlation function (EEC) using two different schemes to cancel infrared and collinear poles. The numerical evaluation uses the phase space slicing and the hybrid subtraction method. Both schemes converge with decreasing slicing cut. The results are independent of the scheme for small cuts. For the pure phase space slicing method, the cut must be below $10^{-6}$ to achieve good results. All four approaches agree with each other and confirm the results of Kunszt and Nason and Glover and Sutton, for the latter also with respect to contributions of different colour factors.
We discuss some theoretical uncertainties in the calculation of the cross section for charm production in charged current deep inelastic neutrino scattering related to ambiguities in the treatment of terms which are singular in the limit of a vanishing charm mass. In particular we compare the so-called variable flavour scheme where these terms are absorbed in the parton distribution functions containing the charm as an active flavour, with the so-called fixed flavour scheme with no charm mass subtraction where the charm appears only in the final state of fixed-order scattering matrix elements. Using available parametrizations of parton distribution functions we find that the two schemes lead to largely differing results for separate structure functions whereas the differences cancel to a large extent in the total cross section in that kinematical region which has been measured so far.
We derive exact expressions for luminosities of massive vector-boson pairs which can be used to describe the cross sections for processes in hadron collisions or $e^+e^-$ annihilation which proceed via two-vector-boson scattering. Our approach correctly takes into account the mutual influence of the emission of one vector boson on the emission of a second one. We show that only approximately the exact luminosities can be factorized into convolutions of single-vector-boson distributions. Numerical results are given and compared to simplified approaches.
We have calculated the leading and next-to-leading logarithm coefficients of $O(α_s^2)$ $e^+e^-$ annihilation jet cross sections, thrust distribution and energy-energy correlation in the two-jet limit when the jet resolution and the event shape variables vanish. We have compared our results with expectations based on leading logarithm approximations used to resum the pertubative cross sections where this is possible. There is good agreement for the leading and next-to-leading coefficients of jet cross sections in the Durham scheme. Also for the thrust distribution and energy-energy correlation we find results which are consistent with the leading logarithm predictions.
I discuss radiative corrections due to the emission of photons from quarks which contribute to deep inelastic lepton--nucleon scattering as well as to $pp$ collisions at high energies. These corrections are dominated by quark-mass singularities which have to be absorbed into the parton distribution functions. Observable effects appear as a modification of the $Q^2$ dependence of the distribution functions. Numerical results indicate, however, that these QED corrections are negligible except at extremely large $Q^2$ and large $x$. Therefore it is safe to neglect the single and multiple photon effects in $pp$ scattering at LHC energies.