arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to W. J. Stirling.
We investigate soft gluon radiation in hadronic $t\bar t$ production. By taking the top quark decay properly into account, we are able to study the interplay of radiation both before and after the decay of the top quarks. The production--decay and decay--decay radiative interferences depend sensitively on the relative size of the gluon energy and the decay width. Radiation patterns for various production mechanisms are compared.
The large width of the top quark influences the way gluons are radiated in top events, giving rise to interesting interference effects in top production and decay. We discuss top width effects in soft guon radiation in $\ee \to \tt$ at high energies and near $\tt$ threshold.
The photoproduction of Drell-Yan lepton pairs at HERA is studied. We show that in the backward rapidity region the cross section is strongly sensitive to the small-$x$ behaviour of the quark distributions in the proton, and that with sufficient luminosity it should be possible to distinguish singular $xq \sim x^{-1/2}$ behaviour from standard Regge $xq \sim x^0$ behaviour. The effect on the event rate of experimental acceptance cuts is studied with the help of a Monte Carlo event generator.
The pattern of soft photon radiation in $\ee\to\ww$ has a rich structure, with contributions from photon emission off the initial state and off the final state particles both before and after decay. In particular, the interference between the contributions involving the decaying $W$'s depends on the decay width. We review the theoretical result for the radiation pattern, and present predictions for LEP200, {\it i.e.} in $\ee$ annihilation just above $\ww$ threshold.
A slight incompatibility in recent low-energy and high-energy α_s measurements can be interpreted as evidence for new light colour degrees of freedom. Assuming that these are the gluinos of a supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, we investigate to what extent they change the standard QCD predictions for deep inelastic structure functions, and in particular whether thay can be detected in such measurements at HERA. We present a modified set of parton distributions which includes a light gluino distribution and which can be used for further phenomenological investigations.
We study the possible flavour asymmetry, $\bar{u} \neq \bar{d}$, of the light quark sea distributions of the proton. We discuss the information that is at present available from data on deep-inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering and from Drell-Yan production on various nuclear targets. We show that the ratio of dilepton yields on hydrogen and deuterium targets is very sensitive to $\bar{u}-\bar{d}$.
We discuss the characteristic interference features of soft radiation in the threshold production of heavy unstable particles: soft gluon radiation in $\ee \to \tt$ and soft photon radiation in $\ee \to \ww$. We show that the heavy particle decay width controls the interference between the emission off the final state particles. As a result, the radiation pattern may provide a way of measuring the decay width of the heavy particles.
The reaction $pp \to W \ +\ γ +\ jet \ +\ X$ is considered at centre-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s} = 16$ and $40\;\tev$, including anomalous three-gauge-boson couplings $κ$ and $λ$. The possibility of obtaining limits on these quantities by comparison with the standard model is investigated. The radiation zero properties of the subprocess matrix elements are studied. CERN-TH.6753/92, DTP/92/92.
Soft gluons radiated in top quark production and decay can interfere in a way that is sensitive to the top width. We show how the width affects the gluon distribution in $e^+e^- \rightarrow t {\bar t}$ and discuss prospects for measuring $Γ$ from gluons radiated near $\tt$ threshold.