Proton-Antiproton Collider Physics: Experimental Aspects

Abstract

These lectures review recent experimental results of relevance to the Standard Model of the electroweak interaction, which have been obtained at the CERN pp Collider in a series of data-taking runs between 1982 and the end of 1985. This review includes the measurement of the W and Z masses, their decay and production properties, and also searches for the top quark and other possible new particles postulated by a variety of theoretical models. The data, which will be discussed in sections 4 to 6, have been collected by the two major experiments, UA1 and UA2, at two values of the total centre-of-mass energy, $\sqrt s = 546$ and 630 GeV. The total integrated luminosity, accumulated mostly at $\sqrt s = 630$ GeV, is of the order of 0.8 pb^-1 for each of the two experiments. A substantial increase of the event sample (by a factor of about 10) is expected from a new series of data-taking runs between the end of 1987 and the middle of 1989, as a result of improvements to the $\bar p$ source and to the SPS itself. In order to match the increased luminosity, both the UA1 and UA2 experiments have been, or are in the process of being upgraded. In Section 7, the physics expectation from the forthcoming Collider runs will be discussed and compared with the expectations from the $p\bar p$ Tevatron collider at Fermilab which has recently started operation at $\sqrt {s = 1.8}$ TeV.