The BABAR Collaboration BABAR, the detector for the SLAC PEP-II asymmetric e + e − B Factory operating at the Υ (4S) resonance, was designed to allow comprehensive studies of CP -violation in B-meson decays. Charged particle tracks are measured in a multi-layer silicon vertex tracker surrounded by a cylindrical wire drift chamber. Electromagnetic showers from electrons and photons are detected in an array of CsI crystals located just inside the solenoidal coil of a superconducting magnet. Muons and neutral hadrons are identified by arrays of resistive plate chambers inserted into gaps in the steel flux return of the magnet. Charged hadrons are identified by dE/dx measurements in the tracking detectors and in a ring-imaging Cherenkov detector surrounding the drift chamber. The trigger, data acquisition and data-monitoring systems , VME-and network-based, are controlled by custom-designed online software. Details of the layout and performance of the detector components and their associated electronics and software are presented.

The cross section for bremsstrahlung from highly relativistic particles is suppressed due to interference caused by multiple scattering in dense media, and due to photon interactions with the electrons in all materials. We present here a detailed study of bremsstrahlung production of 200 keV to 500 MeV photons from 8 and 25 GeV electrons traversing a variety of target materials. For most targets, we observe the expected suppressions to a good accuracy. We observe that finite thickness effects are important for thin targets.

We report on a precision measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry in fixed target electronelectron (Møller) scattering: AP V = (−131 ± 14 (stat.) ± 10 (syst.)) × 10 −9 , leading to the determination of the weak mixing angle sin 2 θ eff W = 0.2397 ± 0.0010 (stat.) ± 0.0008 (syst.), evaluated at Q 2 = 0.026 GeV 2 . Combining this result with the measurements of sin 2 θ eff W at the Z 0 pole, the running of the weak mixing angle is observed with over 6σ significance. The measurement sets constraints on new physics effects at the TeV scale.PACS numbers: 11.30. Er, 12.15.Lk, 12.15.Mm, 13.66.Lm, 13.88.+e, 14.60.Cd Precision measurements of weak neutral current processes at low energies rigorously test the Standard Model of electroweak interactions. Such measurements are sensitive to new physics effects at TeV energies, and are complementary to searches at high energy colliders.One class of low-energy electroweak measurements involves scattering of longitudinally polarized electrons from unpolarized targets, allowing for the determination of a parity-violating asymmetry Z is due to higher order amplitudes involving virtual weak vector bosons and fermions in quantum loops, referred to as electroweak radiative corrections [4,5].To date, the most precise low-energy determinations of the weak mixing angle come from studies of parity violation in atomic transitions [6] and measurements of the neutral current to charge current cross section ratios in neutrino-nucleon deep inelastic scattering [7]. In this Letter, we present a measurement of the weak mixing angle in electron-electron (Møller) scattering, a purely leptonic reaction with little theoretical uncertainty. We have previously reported the first observation of A P V in Møller scattering [8]. Here, we report on a significantly improved measurement of A P V resulting in a precision determination of sin 2 θ eff W at low momentum transfer. At a beam energy of ≃ 50 GeV available at End Station A at SLAC and a center-of-mass scattering angle of 90• , A P V in Møller scattering is predicted to be ≃ 320 parts per billion (ppb) at tree level [9]. Electroweak radiative corrections [4,5] and the experimental acceptance reduce the measured asymmetry by more than 50%.

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In 1953, Ter-Mikaelian predicted that the bremsstrahlung of low energy photons in a medium is suppressed because of interactions between the produced photon and the electrons in the medium. This suppression occurs because the emission takes place over on a long distance scale, allowing for destructive interference between di erent instantaneous photon emission amplitudes. We present here measurements of bremsstrahlung cross sections of 200 keV to 20 MeV photons produced by 8 and 25 GeV electrons in carbon and gold targets. Our data shows that dielectric suppression occurs at the predicted level, reducing the cross section up to 75% in our data.

We present measurements of time-dependent CP-violating asymmetries in neutral B decays to several CP eigenstates. The measurement uses a data sample of 23x10(6) Upsilon(4S)-->BbarB decays collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we find events in which one neutral B meson is fully reconstructed in a CP eigenstate containing charmonium and the flavor of the other neutral B meson is determined from its decay products. The amplitude of the CP-violating asymmetry, which in the standard model is proportional to sin2beta, is derived from the decay time distributions in such events. The result is sin2beta = 0.34+/-0.20 (stat)+/-0.05 (syst).

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