The full LEP-1 data set collected with the ALEPH detector at the Z pole during 1991-1995 is analysed in order to measure the ? decay branching fractions. The analysis follows the global method used in the published study based on 1991-1993 data, but several improvements are introduced, especially concerning the treatment of photons and ?0's. Extensive systematic studies are performed, in order to match the large statistics of the data sample corresponding to over 300 000 measured and identified ? decays. Branching fractions are obtained for the two leptonic channels and 11 hadronic channels defined by their respective numbers of charged particles and ?0's. Using previously published ALEPH results on final states with charged and neutral kaons, corrections are applied to the hadronic channels to derive branching ratios for exclusive final states without kaons. Thus the analyses of the full LEP-1 ALEPH data are combined to yield a complete description of ? decays, encompassing 22 non-strange and 11 strange hadronic modes. Some physics implications of the results are given, in particular related to universality in the leptonic charged weak current, isospin invariance in a 1 decays, and the separation of vector and axial-vector components of the total hadronic rate. Finally, spectral functions are determined for the dominant hadronic modes and updates are given for several analyses. These include: tests of isospin invariance between the weak charged and electromagnetic hadronic currents, fits of the ? resonance lineshape, and a QCD analysis of the non-strange hadronic decays using spectral moments, yielding the value ?s(m? 2) 0.340 ± 0.005exp ± 0.014th. The evolution to the Z mass scale yields ?s(MZ 2) = 0.1209 ± 0.0018. This value agrees well with the direct determination from the Z width and provides the most accurate test to date of asymptotic freedom in the QCD gauge theory. © 2005 by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The four LEP collaborations, ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL, have searched for the neutral Higgs bosons which are predicted by the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). The data of the four collaborations are statistically combined and examined for their consistency with the background hypothesis and with a possible Higgs boson signal. The combined LEP data show no significant excess of events which would indicate the production of Higgs bosons. The search results are used to set upper bounds on the cross-sections of various Higgs-like event topologies. The results are interpreted within the MSSM in a number of "benchmark" models, including CP-conserving and CP-violating scenarios. These interpretations lead in all cases to large exclusions in the MSSM parameter space. Absolute limits are set on the parameter tan β and, in some scenarios, on the masses of neutral Higgs bosons.

Previously published and as yet unpublished QCD results obtained with the ALEPH detector at LEP1 are presented. The unprecedented statistics allows detailed studies of both perturbative and non-perturbative aspects of strong interactions to be carried out using hadronic Z and tau decays. The studies presented include precise determinations of the strong coupling constant, tests of its avour independence, tests of the SU(3) gauge structure of QCD, study of coherence eects, and measurements of single-particle inclusive distributions and two-particle correlations for many identied baryons and mesons.

Proton-proton elastic scattering at the LHC energy of s = 7 TeV The TOTEM Collaboration, G. Antchev, P. Aspell et al.Measurement of proton-proton elastic scattering and total cross-section at The TOTEM Collaboration, G. Antchev, P. Aspell et al.-LHC optics measurement with proton tracks detected by the Roman pots of the TOTEM experiment The TOTEM Collaboration, G Antchev, P Aspell et al. Abstract -TOTEM has measured the differential cross-section for elastic proton-proton scattering at the LHC energy of √ s = 7 TeV analysing data from a short run with dedicated large-β * optics. A single exponential fit with a slope B = (20.1 ± 0.2 stat ± 0.3 syst ) GeV −2 describes the range of the four-momentum transfer squared |t| from 0.02 to 0.33 GeV 2 . After the extrapolation to |t| = 0, a total elastic scattering cross-section of (24.8 ± 0.2 stat ± 1.2 syst ) mb was obtained. Applying the optical theorem and using the luminosity measurement from CMS, a total proton-proton cross-section of (98.3 ± 0.2 stat ± 2.8 syst ) mb was deduced which is in good agreement with the expectation from the overall fit of previously measured data over a large range of center-of-mass energies. From the total and elastic pp cross-section measurements, an inelastic pp cross-section of (73.5 ± 0.6open access editor's choice 21002-p1The TOTEM Collaboration (G. Antchev et al.) Introduction. -The observation of the rise of the total cross-section with energy was one of the highlights at the ISR, the first CERN collider [1][2][3][4]. Some indirect indications for this unforeseen phenomenon had already come earlier from high-energy cosmic-ray showers [5][6][7]. A long series of total proton-antiproton cross-section measurements followed in the last decades both at the CERN SppS collider [8,9] and at the TEVATRON [10][11][12][13].In this letter, we report the first measurement of the total and elastic proton-proton cross-sections at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using the optical theorem together with the luminosity provided by the CMS experiment [14,15]. With a dedicated beam optics configuration (β * = 90 m) TOTEM has measured the differential crosssection of elastic scattering for four-momentum transfer squared values |t| to 2 × 10 −2 GeV 2 , making the extrapolation to the optical point at |t| = 0 possible. This allows the determination of the elastic scattering cross-section as well as the total cross-section.