The mass of the W boson, a mediator of the weak force between elementary particles, is tightly constrained by the symmetries of the standard model of particle physics. The Higgs boson was the last missing component of the model. After observation of the Higgs boson, a measurement of the W boson mass provides a stringent test of the model. We measure the W boson mass, M W , using data corresponding to 8.8 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected in proton-antiproton collisions at a 1.96 tera–electron volt center-of-mass energy with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. A sample of approximately 4 million W boson candidates is used to obtain M W = 80 , 433.5 ± 6.4 stat ± 6.9 syst = 80 , 433.5 ± 9.4  MeV / c 2 , the precision of which exceeds that of all previous measurements combined (stat, statistical uncertainty; syst, systematic uncertainty; MeV, mega–electron volts; c , speed of light in a vacuum). This measurement is in significant tension with the standard model expectation.

We introduce twist-two quark interference fragmentation functions in helicity density matrix formalism and study their physical implications. We show how the nucleon's transversity distribution can be probed through the final state interaction between two mesons (π + π − , KK, or πK) produced in the current fragmentation region in deep inelastic scattering on a transversely polarized nucleon.

We present a new measurement of the inclusive forward-backward tt production asymmetry and its rapidity and mass dependence. The measurements are performed with data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.3 fb −1 of pp collisions at √ s = 1.96 TeV, recorded with the CDF II Detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. Significant inclusive asymmetries are observed in both the laboratory frame and the tt rest frame, and in both cases are found to be consistent with CP conservation under interchange of t andt. In the tt rest frame, the asymmetry is observed to increase with the tt rapidity difference, ∆y, and with the invariant mass M tt of the tt system. Fully corrected parton-level asymmetries are derived in two regions of each variable, and the asymmetry is found to be most significant at large ∆y and M tt . For M tt ≥ 450 GeV/c 2 , the parton-level asymmetry in the tt rest frame is A tt = 0.475 ± 0.114 compared to a next-to-leading order QCD prediction of 0.088 ± 0.013.

We summarize and combine direct measurements of the mass of the W boson in √ s = 1.96 TeV proton-antiproton collision data collected by CDF and D0 experiments at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Earlier measurements from CDF and D0 are combined with the two latest, more precise measurements: a CDF measurement in the electron and muon channels using data corresponding to 2.2 fb −1 of integrated luminosity, and a D0 measurement in the electron channel using data corresponding to 4.3 fb −1 of integrated luminosity. The resulting Tevatron average for the mass of the W boson is MW = 80 387 ± 16 MeV. Including measurements obtained in electron-positron collisions at LEP yields the most precise value of MW = 80 385 ± 15 MeV.