Web Journal
LogoAbout Journalfor Readersfor Authorsfor Refereesfor EditorsFlowchart of a paper
ISSN 1748-0221
19:51 - Thursday, 28 March 2024
for assistance and suggestions: the JINST editorial office


     JINST Instrumentation Theses Archive



2006 JINST TH 006    

Ph.D. degree thesis
accepted by Instituto Superior T�cnico da Universidade T�cnica de Lisboa, Portugal, in 2006

Andr� David

Supervisor: Jo�o Seixas

Prompt and displaced muon production in Indium-Indium collisions as measured by the NA60 experiment

 Keywords:

  • Data acquisition circuits
  • Modular electronics

 Abstract:
This work addresses the production of intermediate mass muon pairs in indium-indium collisions, at a beam momentum of 158 GeV per nucleon, as measured by the NA60 experiment at the CERN SPS.

A radiation-tolerant silicon pixel tracker measures the trajectories of charged particles at the interaction level. In order to explore the measurement of single muon offsets with respect to the interaction vertex, we have developed a background subtraction method that deals with the vertex dipole magnetic field and wrong matches between muons and vertex tracks.

We then compare the data in the region between the * and J/* resonances to a superposition of muon pairs from simultaneous semi-leptonic decays of D mesons and Drell-Yan prompt dimuons.

Doing this in the dimuon mass dimension provides results compatible with those previously reported by the NA38 and NA50 experiments.

Performing the same analysis using the unique ability of NA60 to measure the muon offsets, we conclude that the excess is prompt in nature, has a mass shape steeper than Drell-Yan and grows faster than linearly with the number of nucleons participating in the interaction.



for assistance and suggestions: the JINST editorial office