Arcadian Functor

occasional meanderings in physics' brave new world

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Marni D. Sheppeard

Friday, December 15, 2006

Closer to the Top


Fermilab have announced evidence for the single top quark. In the blogosphere, Tommaso Dorigo and Tony Smith have recently discussed single top production at D0. The parameter determined was the Vtb, which lies between 0.68 and 1.0. This is consistent with the Standard Model, which predicts the blue line in the diagram.

In other news today, a story on sea level rise, which may be more imminent than many appreciate. There were also some nice pictures in New Scientist last week from Antarctica.

Update 16.12: Tommaso has some further cautionary comments to make about the D0 diagram above.

6 Comments:

Blogger Mahndisa S. Rigmaiden said...

12 14 06

Now that is exciting news!

December 15, 2006 12:28 PM  
Blogger Kea said...

Yes!! For a while, the painfully slow verification of the accuracy of the Standard Model over decades felt like watching a mountain grow, but nowadays it feels more like waiting for the pebble that will finally cause the avalanche.

December 15, 2006 4:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"use with caution"
That subscript should be used in connection with the plot above, which shows three cross section determinations that are 90 to 95% correlated among each other.

D0's evidence is at 3.4 sigma, but their expected sensitivity was only 2.1 sigma. So, in other words, they could claim evidence only because they measured a upward fluctuation from the standard model prediction. Or, put in still another way: D0 could not both claim evidence and measure anything but a higher-than-expected cross section for single top production...

Cheers,
T.

December 17, 2006 2:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

... and indeed this inspired me into writing about the plot in my own blog... see http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2006/12/16/disclaimers-in-scientific-plots-and-the-d0-single-top-signal/

T.

December 17, 2006 6:38 AM  
Blogger Kea said...

Thanks a lot, Tommaso! Your comments are very helpful. I will take a look at your blog.

December 17, 2006 11:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sure...And thanks for the link!
T.

December 18, 2006 4:08 AM  

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