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# RXTE observations of single pulses of PSR B0531+21: II Test for radio behavior

## 1 Introduction

The coherent microwave radio emission mechanism of rotation powered pulsars is as yet an unsolved problem. The Ruderman and Sutherland RS (1975) model is the most successful in explaining some of the observed radio behavior. It postulates a region close to the neutron star surface that accelerates charges to relativistic energies, which produces $`\gamma `$ ray photons by synchrotron or related mechanism. These $`\gamma `$ rays produce e+– e- pairs in strong magnetic fields. The pairs are accelerated to relativistic energies in the same accelerator region. This process cascades into a spark of e+– e- pair plasma, which eventually produces the observed coherent microwave radio radiation. However the model requires a high work function of iron ions on the surface of the neutron star, which was later calculated to be too low (Hillebrandt & Mueller HM76 (1976); Flowers et al. FRHM77 (1977)). Cheng and Ruderman (CR (1980), and references therein) salvaged the model by invoking e+– e- pair production by thermal x-ray photons, emitted by the hot neutron star surface, in the Coulomb field of relativistic iron ions that are no longer bound to the neutron star surface. Therefore thermal x-ray photons probably play a significant role in the pulsar coherent radio emission mechanism.

The above models are classified as inner-gap (or polar cap) models, since their accelerator is just above the polar cap surface of the neutron star. However, the higher energy radiation from these pulsars ($`\gamma `$ rays, x-rays, infra-red and optical) is now believed to originate in the outer gaps (Cheng et al. 1986a , 1986b , henceforth CHR; Romani & Yadigaroglu RY95 (1995)), in which the accelerator is far away from the neutron star surface. This would have been a neat division of labor between the two gaps, but for the fact that the integrated profile of Crab pulsar is aligned (i.e., arrives at the same time), and also looks similar in shape, at wavelengths ranging from radio to $`\gamma `$ rays, except for a small part known as the radio precursor (Smith, FGS86 (1986); Lundgren et al. LCM95 (1995); Moffet & Hankins MH1996 (1996)). It is now speculated that most of the Crab pulsar emission (including the radio) arises in the outer gap, while the radio precursor arises in the inner gap (CHR). In the outer gap models, the observed x-rays are produced by synchrotron processes by the secondary e+– e- pairs, which also play a role in the bootstrap functioning of the outer gap (CHR). Thus at least in the Crab pulsar, there appears to be an intimate connection between the coherent radio emission and the non-thermal x-ray emission also (although this may not be true for, say, the Vela pulsar).

This paper looks for, in the Crab pulsar at x-ray energies, the three phenomena that are commonly observed at radio wavelengths in several normal (i.e., non milli second) rotation powered pulsars – pulse “nulling”, systematic subpulse “drifting”, and integrated profile instability or “mode changing”. The motivation for this analysis is to establish the direct connection, if any, between the radio and x-ray emitting relativistic charges in rotation powered pulsars.

Consider pulse nulling; it is as yet an unexplained phenomenon. Filippenko & Radhakrishnan (FR1982 (1982)) argue that the absence of radio emission during nulling is due to the cessation of sparking, which leads to a cessation of bunching of charges, and consequently to loss of coherence. However the current of relativistic charges exists, flowing continuously rather than as a series of sparks. Now, it is generally believed that the radio emission of rotation powered pulsars is due to a coherent process while the higher energy emissions (optical, x-ray, $`\gamma `$-ray, etc) are due to incoherent processes (see Manchester & Taylor MT1977 (1977)). Therefore in the above picture, radio nulling need not be accompanied by nulling of the high energy emission. On the other hand, Kazbegi et al. (KMMS1996 (1996)) think that pulse nulling is caused by “very low-frequency drift waves” that “change the curvature radius of field lines”. Since a fundamental parameter is affected here, it is likely that in this scenario all emission from the pulsar will cease during nulls. The same might be true in the nulling model of Jones (PBJ1981 (1981)), which postulates a reduction in the surface electric potential on the polar cap, due to a reduction in the mean nuclear charge of surface ions. Of course what exactly happens in either models will depend crucially upon the specific assumptions made and the detailed physics incorporated; but checking for the presence (or absence) of nulling at higher energies, in pulsars that exhibit radio nulling, might be an important clue to understanding the emission mechanism of rotation powered pulsars. It would be ideal to observe such pulsars simultaneously at radio and higher energies.

Now consider mode changing. According to Filippenko & Radhakrishnan (FR1982 (1982)) this is merely radio nulling at “certain regions of the polar gaps”. Therefore in their model mode changing might not occur at all at higher energies, which can be verified by the current and similar works.

The x-ray data were obtained by the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) aboard the RXTE x-ray observatory (ObsId numbers 10203-01-01-00 to 10203-01-03-01). They consist of 23 data files observed during August/September 1996, in the EVENT mode, combining photons from all five Proportional Counter Units, and also from both halves of all three Xenon anode layers of each PCU. Channels 50 to 249 of the PCA were combined, corresponding to the energy range 13.3 to 58.4 keV. The initial data analysis used the FTOOLS software, while the latter part used self-developed software; this is explained in detail in Vivekanand MV2001 (2001).

Fig. 1 shows the integrated profile of Crab pulsar for 1 868 112 periods. Samples 5 to 30 are considered to represent the on-pulse window, and the rest of the seven samples the off-pulse window, although the Crab pulsar might emit x-rays all through its period. Details of the analysis in the coming sections can be found in Vivekanand MV1995 (1995), Vivekanand & Joshi VJ97 (1997), Vivekanand et al. VAM1998 (1998), Vivekanand MV2000 (2000) and Vivekanand MV2001 (2001); they will be described only briefly here.

## 2 Pulse nulling

The coherent microwave radio radiation of some rotation powered pulsars often ceases for durations ranging from one to several hundred periods; this is known as “pulse nulling” (Backer DB70 (1970); Ritchings RT76 (1976)). During nulls the radio emission decreases by at least three orders of magnitude (Vivekanand & Joshi VJ97 (1997)).

Fig. 2 shows the observed probability of number of photons in the off-pulse and on-pulse windows for $``$ 1 868 112 periods. The off- and on- window data fit to Poisson distributions with mean values of 3.97 and 17.57 photons, respectively; the corresponding $`\chi ^2`$ are 12.3 and 38.2, for 18 and 40 degrees of freedom, respectively, which implies that the fits are good.

Any nulled periods in the data will have a Poisson distribution of photons in the on-pulse window with a mean value of 3.97 $`\times `$ 26 / 7 = 14.75 photons, which is plotted as the dashed curve in the second panel of Fig. 2. The observed on-pulse window probability in the second panel (dots) will be the convolution of the nulled distribution (dashed curve) with the true non-nulled distribution, the relative weights of the two distributions depending upon the fraction of nulled periods (Ritchings RT76 (1976); Vivekanand MV1995 (1995)). The third panel of Fig. 2 shows the result of deconvolving the two probability distributions in the second panel. One expects the result to contain (in general) two distributions: (a) a Poisson distribution with a mean value of 17.57 $``$ 14.75 = 2.82 photons, which is plotted as the dashed curve in the third panel of Fig. 2; this represents the true, non-nulled photon distribution of the Crab pulsar in the on-pulse window, and (b) a Dirac delta function at zero photons, which represents the nulled periods, if at all (Ritchings RT76 (1976); Vivekanand MV1995 (1995)).

Now it is well known that the deconvolution process is very sensitive to errors in the data. Clearly the deconvolution has not worked properly in Fig. 2, in spite of reducing the number of bins in the distribution, attempting a Wiener filter, etc. More data is needed for a robust result. However, the deconvolved distribution is not inconsistent with the dashed curve up to 12.0 photons along the abscissa; and there is no evidence for an excess probability (over the dashed curve) at 0.0 photons. Therefore one concludes that Crab pulsar does not display the pulse nulling phenomenon at x-ray energies. However one needs more data or better techniques for a quantitative result.

For the record, the deconvolution process had not worked either for PSR J0437-4715 in Fig. 2 of Vivekanand et al. (VAM1998 (1998)); the lower panel of their Fig. 2 shows the original distribution only. This explanation was left out inadvertently in that paper. However the nulling results of Vivekanand et al. (VAM1998 (1998)) do not change, because they were verified with a much coarser binning, where the deconvolution worked. Moreover, the deconvolution is not expected to significantly modify their original distribution, since the deconvolving function (off-pulse distribution) is about six times narrower than the function deconvolved (on-pulse distribution). In Fig. 2 above, the deconvolving function is comparable in width to the function deconvolved, which might be one of the reasons why the deconvolution is not working, in spite of the factor $``$ 10 or more amount of data available here.

## 3 Systematic sub pulse drifting

In some rotation powered pulsars, the radio emission is typically confined to two sub pulses, which march across the integrated profile with each successive period. This pattern repeats periodically (see Lyne & Ashworth LA83 (1983), and Vivekanand & Joshi VJ97 (1997), for two of the best examples). These are known as “drifting sub pulses”.

There are two standard methods of checking for drifting sub pulses. One is to plot the pulsar flux as a two dimensional function of the phase within the period and the period number, and obtain the two dimensional autocorrelation. Fig. 3 shows the average two dimensional autocorrelation of Crab pulsar at x-rays; one does not notice here the characteristic sloping bands due to drifting sub pulses.

The second method (Taylor et al. TMH75 (1975)) is to take cuts in Fig. 3 at period lag +1, and plot a distribution of the positions of the peaks of the autocorrelation. The sub pulse drifting phenomenon shows up in this plot as an off centered distribution, depending upon the drift rate. Fig. 4 shows that probability density for 115 such cuts (see Fig. 4 of Vivekanand et al. VAM1998 (1998) for the corresponding plot for PSR J0437$``$4715 at radio wavelengths). The distribution in Fig. 4 is quite symmetric; its mean value lies at sample 0.007$`\pm `$0.113 ms, which is consistent with there being no systematic drifting sub pulses in the Crab pulsar at x-rays.

## 4 Stability of integrated profile

The integrated profiles of rotation powered pulsars at radio wavelengths are generally very stable, after folding $``$ 100 periods. They are supposed to be as unique to pulsars as finger prints are to humans. However in some of them, the integrated profile changes to another stable shape, remains in that shape for $``$ 100 periods, before reverting back to the original integrated profile. This is known as “mode changing” (see Manchester & Taylor MT1977 (1977)). This should not be confused with the slower variations of integrated profiles seen in ms pulsars (Vivekanad et al. VAM1998 (1998); Kramer et al. MK1999 (1999)).

This is tested by correlating the master integrated profile, formed by folding the entire data, with sub integrated profiles consisting of N periods, for various values of N. Fig. 5 shows the plot of the logarithm of $`1\rho `$, where $`\rho `$ is the average correlation coefficient, as a function of logarithm of N, with N differing by powers of 2 (Helfand et al. HMT75 (1975); see Fig. 9 of Vivekanand et al. VAM1998 (1998) for the corresponding plot for PSR J0437$``$4715 at radio wavelengths). The correlation $`\rho `$ is very low for small N, since the x-ray emission of Crab pulsar is dominated by photon noise.

This is in contrast to radio pulsars, where even the individual periods bear some resemblance to the integrated profile. Table 2 shows that, at x-rays the integrated profile of Crab pulsar requires $``$ 100 times more periods to stabilize, in comparison to PSR J0437$``$4715 at radio wavelengths. For N larger than $``$ 500, $`\rho `$ shows no change of slope in Fig. 5, which would have been the signature of some perturbing influence on the stability of the integrated profile on those time scales (for example, mode changing). This trend continues for N $``$ 32 000 periods. One can therefore conclude that the Crab pulsar does not display the mode changing phenomenon at x-rays.

## 5 Discussion

The Crab pulsar does not display nulling, systematic sub pulse drifting or mode changing at x-ray energies. Its radio behavior has not been studied so far (see Manchester & Taylor MT1977 (1977)). The difficulty is that Crab pulsar observations at radio wavelengths using single dishes are flooded by the continuum emission from the Crab nebula; it is difficult to obtain high signal to noise ratio observations of single pulses. Crab pulsar observations at radio wavelengths using interferometers will overcome this problem, but these are technically difficult observations, and no results have been published until now (Hankins TH2001 (2001)).

So far, none of the above three phenomena have found a satisfactory explanation, and they have remained essentially radio wavelength phenomena; but it is possible that similar observations at higher energies might provide the clues for resolving them.

Consider nulling first. While discussing the theoretical problems in understanding this phenomenon at radio wavelengths, Michel FCM1991 (1991) writes “Rather than the micro physics faltering (e.g. bunching) the global physics might falter (e.g. current flow interruption), …” on page 68. Now, it is likely that it is the latter mechanism that might manifest itself in the high energy (e.g. x-ray) observations than the former. Therefore finding a rotation powered pulsar that nulls either (1) at both radio and high energies, or (2) at one and not the other energy, might provide an important clue to understanding the phenomenon.

Consider next drifting subpulses at radio wavelengths. The Ruderman and Sutherland RS (1975) model invokes an electric discharge that drifts systematically in the crossed electric and magnetic fields on the polar cap. Thus drifting is supposed to be essentially an inner-gap phenomenon; it is not clear that the electric and magnetic fields are suitable in the outer-gap for the observed drifts to occur. Now, finding a rotation powered pulsar that shows systematic subpulse drifting at high energies also might be a strong constraint for the outer-gap models.

Finally, it is possible that both inner and outer gaps can not exist simultaneously in the same rotation powered pulsar; operation of one might extinguish the other (CHR). In that case, simultaneous radio and high energy observations of rotation powered pulsars might be fruitful. For example, if one notices that the radio and x-ray nulls (if at all) are mutually exclusive, then one would have important information concerning the possible interplay between the two gaps, in terms of electric currents from one gap shorting out the electric fields of the other gap.

The implications of this work depend upon the radio behavior of the Crab pulsar, where none, or some or all of the above three phenomena might be found. If none of these are found in the radio, then the current results are consistent with the Crab pulsar emitting the radio and x-rays from the outer gap alone (CHR), although it would not be considered a conclusive proof.

However, suppose the Crab pulsar shows the pulse nulling phenomenon in the radio; then its absence at x-rays implies that loss of coherence, of some other such physics is responsible for nulling, while the basic relativistic charges from the Crab pulsar continue to emit the higher energies. In other words it is the micro physics faltering rather than the global physics. An interesting possibility is if the Crab pulsar shows nulling for a very small fraction of the time at both the radio as well as at the x-rays, which might have been impossible to detect by this work, then the global physics would be held responsible for nulling. A much more interesting possibility would be if nulling is not simultaneous at the two wavelengths; this might necessitate the operation of both the gaps (inner and outer) in the Crab pulsar, as discussed above.

Suppose the Crab pulsar displays systematic drifting subpulses. Then their absence at x-rays might be strong evidence for the two emissions arising in the two different gaps. In other words the radio and x-ray emissions are probably highly decoupled from each other.

###### Acknowledgements.

I thank the referee for very useful corrections and suggestions. This research has made use of (a) High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center’s (HEASARC) facilities such as their public data archive, and their FTOOLS software, and (b) NASA’s Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Bibliographic Services. I thank them for their excellent services.


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# Space Time Fluctuations and Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions

## 1 Introduction

In the recent past it has been pointed out  that observations in cosmic ray physics, and in particular Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR) experiments can be used to constrain to high precision the possibility that the fundamental Lorentz invariance (LI) may be broken to some level.

In fact, violations of LI have been invoked by many authors  to explain puzzling observations related to the detection of cosmic rays with energy in excess of $`10^{20}`$ eV, the so-called Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK)  cut-off, and the more uncertain excess of photons in the TeV energy region from distant sources. The two phenomena have in common that in both cases the detected particles should instead suffer significant attenuation since their energy is above the threshold for photopion production (in the first case) and pair production  (in the second case). In particular the GZK cutoff has been expected for a long time because of the dramatic energy losses of high energy protons with the $`3^oK`$ Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR). Violations of LI in both cases may act on the kinematics of the processes so to move the thresholds in regions which are possibly outside the observational window. In the following we mainly concentrate upon the case of UHECRs, pointing out, when necessary, the differences with respect to the case of pair production.

The recipes for the violations of LI that have been suggested insofar generally consist of requiring an explicit modification of the dispersion relation of UHE particles, due to their propagation in the “vacuum”, now affected by quantum gravity (QG). This effect is generally parametrized by introducing a typical mass, expected to be of the order of the Plank mass ($`M_P`$), that sets the scale for QG to become effective.

In fact, explicit modifications of the dispersion relation are not really necessary, as was recently pointed out in Refs.  for the case of propagation of UHECRs. There is an intrinsic uncertainty in the process of measurement of physical quantities on time (space) scales comparable with the Planck time (length). It is generally believed that coordinate measurements cannot be performed with precision better than Planck distance (time) $`\delta xl_P`$, since such a measurement would result in the production of a black hole. This means that the metric of space-time must feature quantum fluctuations on the Planck scale. A similar line of thought implies that an uncertainty in the measurement of energy and momentum of particles must occur, as described by the relation $`\delta p\delta EE^2/M_P`$. According to the authors of Refs.  the apparent problem of super-GZK particles may find a solution also in the context of this uncertainty approach.

We discuss here this appealing approach more in detail, by taking into account the effects of the propagation of CRs in the QG vacuum in the presence of the universal microwave background radiation. A fluctuating metric implies that different measurements of the particle energy or momentum may result in different outcomes. Therefore it becomes important to define the probability that the measured energy (momentum) of a particle is above some fixed value. Note that averaging over a large number of measurements would yield the classical values for the energy and momentum. The process of measurement mentioned above, during the propagation of particles over cosmological distances occurs at each single interaction of the particle with the environment. At each interaction vertex, the fluctuating energy/momentum of the particle is compared with the kinematic threshold for the occurrence of some physical process (in our case the photopion production). A clear consequence of this approach is that particles with classical energy below the standard Lorentz invariant threshold have a certain probability of interacting. In the same way, particles above the classical threshold have a finite probability of evading interaction.

We show here that the most striking consequences of the approach described above derive from low energy particles rather than from particles otherwise above the threshold for photopion production.

## 2 The effect of Space-Time fluctuations on propagation of UHE particles.

While electroweak and strong interactions propagate through space-time, gravity turns out to be a property of the space-time itself. This simple statement has profound implications in that our belief that gravity can be turned into a quantum theory immediately implies that the structure of space-time has quantum fluctuations. Another way of rephrasing this concept is that space-time is expected to have a granular (or foamy) structure, where however the size of space-time cells fluctuates stochastically, thereby causing an intrinsic uncertainty in the measurements of space-time lengths, and indirectly of energy and momentum of a particle moving through space-time. The uncertainty appears on scales comparable with the Planck scale.

It is generally argued that measurements of distances (times) smaller than the Planck length (time) are conceptually unfeasible, since the process of measurement collects in a Planck size cell an energy in excess of the Planck mass, hence forming a black hole, in which information is lost. This can be traslated in different ways into an uncertainty on energy-momentum measurements (). The Planck length is a good estimate of the uncertainty in the De Broglie wave-length $`\lambda `$ of a particle with momentum $`p`$. Therefore $`\delta \lambda l_P`$, and $`\delta p=\delta (1/\lambda )(p^2l_P)=(p^2/M_P)`$.

Speculating on the exact characteristics of the fluctuations induced by QG is beyond the scope of the present paper, and it would probably be useless anyway, since the current status of QG approaches does not allow such a kind of knowledge. We decided then to adopt a purely phenomenological approach, in which some reasonable assumptions are made concerning the fluctuations in the fabric of space-time, and their consequences for the propagation of high energy particles are inferred. Comparison with experimental data then possibly constrains QG models.

Following , we assume that in each measurement:

* the values of energy (momentum) fluctuate around their average values (assumed to be the result theoretically recoverable for an infinite number of measurements of the same observable):

$$E\overline{E}+\alpha \frac{\overline{E}^2}{M_P}$$
(1)
$$p\overline{p}+\beta \frac{\overline{p}^2}{M_P}$$
(2)
with $`\alpha ,\beta `$ normally distributed variables and $`p`$ the modulus of the 3-momentum (for simplicity we assume rotationally invariant fluctuations);
* the dispersion relation fluctuates as follows:

$$P_\mu g^{\mu \nu }P_\nu =E^2p^2+\gamma \frac{p^3}{M_P}=m^2$$
(3)
and $`\gamma `$ is again a normally distributed variable.

Ideally, QG should predict the type of fluctuations introduced above, but, as already stressed, this is currently out of reach, therefore we assume here that the fluctuations are gaussian. Our conclusions are however not sensitive to this assumption: essentially any symmetrical distribution with variance $`1`$, within a large factor, would give essentially the same results. Furthermore we assume that $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$ and $`\gamma `$ are uncorrelated random variables; again, this assumption reflects our ignorance in the dynamics of QG 111The fluctuations described above will in general derive from metric fluctuations of magnitude $`\delta g^{\mu \nu }h^{\mu \nu }\frac{l_P}{l}`$ . Our assumption reflects the fact that, while the magnitude of the fluctuation can be guessed, we do not make any assumption on its tensorial structure $`h^{\mu \nu }`$..

Our interest will be now concentrated upon processes of the type

$$a+bc+d$$

where we assume that a kinematic threshold is present; in the realm of UHECR physics (a,b) is either ($`\gamma ,\gamma _{3K}`$) or ($`p,\gamma _{3K}`$) and (c,d) is ($`e^+,e^{}`$) or ($`N,\pi `$).

To find the value of initial momenta for which the reaction occurs we write down energy-momentum conservation equations and solve them with the help of the dispersion relations, as discussed in detail in .

The energy momentum conservation relations are (in the laboratory frame, and specializing to the case in which the target (b) is a low energy background photon for which fluctuations can be entirely neglected)

$$E_a+\alpha _a\frac{E_a^2}{M_p}+\omega =E_c+\alpha _c\frac{E_c^2}{M_p}+E_d+\alpha _d\frac{E_d^2}{M_p}$$
(4)
$$p_a+\beta _a\frac{p_a^2}{M_p}\omega =p_c+\beta _c\frac{p_c^2}{M_p}+p_d+\beta _d\frac{p_d^2}{M_p}.$$
(5)
These equations refer to head-on collisions and collinear reaction products, which is appropriate for threshold computations. Together with the modified dispersion relations, these equations, after some manipulations, lead to a cubic equation for the initial momentum as a function of the momentum of one of products, and, after minimization, they define the threshold for the process considered. In figure 1 we report the distribution of thresholds in the $`70\%`$ of cases in which the solution is physical; in the other cases the kinematics does not allow the reaction.

This threshold distribution can be interpreted in the following way: a particle with energy above $`10^{15}`$ eV has essentially $`70\%`$ probability of being above threshold, and therefore to be absorbed. In the other $`30\%`$ of the cases the protons do not interact.

In (4,5) the fluctuations are taken independently for each particle, which is justified as long as the energies are appreciably smaller than the Planck energy. At that point it becomes plausible that different particles experience the same fluctuations, or more precisely fluctuations of the same region of space-time. It is instructive to consider this case in some more detail: we introduce then the four-momenta (and dispersion relations) of all particles fluctuating in the same way. Specializing to proton interaction on CMBR, the equation which defines the threshold $`p_{th}`$ is :

$$\eta \frac{2p_0^3}{(m_\pi ^2+2m_\pi m_p)M_P}\frac{m_\pi m_p}{(m_\pi +m_p)^2}\left(\frac{p_{th}}{p_0}\right)^3+\left(\frac{p_{th}}{p_0}\right)1=0$$
(6)
where $`\eta `$ is a gaussian variable with zero average and variance of the order of (but not exactly equal to) one, and $`p_0`$ is the L.I. threshold (GZK). The threshold is the positive solution of this equation.

The coefficient of the cubic term is very large, of the order of $`10^{13}`$ in this case, so that unless $`\eta `$ is $`O(10^{13})`$, we can write, neglecting pion mass

$$p_{th}p_0\left(\frac{m_p^2M_P}{\eta p_0^3}\right)^{\frac{1}{3}}.$$
(7)
When $`\eta `$ becomes negative, the above equation has no positive root; this happens essentially in $`50\%`$ of the cases. Since the gaussian distribution is flat in a small interval around zero, the distribution of thresholds for positive $`\eta `$ peaks around the value for $`\eta 1`$, meaning that the threshold moves almost always down to a value of $`10^{15}`$ eV ; essentially the same result holds for fluctuations affecting only the incident (higest energy) particle. For independent fluctuations of final momenta, the asymmetry in the probability of interaction arises from the fact that even exceedingly small negative values of the fluctuations lead to unphysical solutions.

Building upon our findings, we now apply the same calculations to the case of UHECR protons propagating on cosmological distances. An additional ingredient is needed to complete the dynamics of the process of photopion production, namely the cross section. The rather strong assumption adopted here is that the cross section remains the same as the Lorentz invariant one, provided the reaction is kinematically allowed. This implies that the interaction lengths remain unchanged.

In order to assess the situation of UHECRs, we first consider the case of particles above the threshold for photopion production in a Lorentz invariant world. According with eqs. (4, 5), in this case particles have a probability of $`30\%`$ of being not kinematically allowed to interact inelastically with a photon in the CMBR. Therefore, if our assumption on the invariance of the interaction length is correct, then each proton is still expected to make photopion production, although with a slightly larger pathlength.

The situation is however even more interesting for particles that are below the Lorentz invariant threshold for the process of photopion production. If the energy is below a few $`10^{18}`$ eV, a galactic origin seems to be in good agreement with measurements of the anisotropy of cosmic ray arrival directions . We will not consider these energies any longer. On the other hand, at energies in excess of $`10^{19}`$ eV, cosmic rays are believed to be extragalactic protons, mainly on the ground of the comparison of the size of the magnetized region of our Galaxy and the Larmor radius of these particles. We take these pieces of information as the basis for our line of thought. If the cosmic rays observed in the energy range $`E>10^{19}\mathrm{eV}`$ are extragalactic protons, then our previous calculations apply and we may expect that these particles have a $`70\%`$ probability of suffering photopion production, even if their energy is below the classical threshold for this process. Note that the pathlength associated with the process is of the order of the typical pathlength for photopion production (a few tens of Mpc), therefore we are here discussing a dramatic process in which the absorption length of particles drops from Gpc, which would be pertinent to particles with energy below $`10^{20}`$ eV in a Lorentz invariant world, to several Mpc, with a corresponding suppression of the flux. What are the consequences for the observed fluxes of cosmic rays? The above result implies that all with $`E>10^{15}`$ eV are produced within a radius of several tens of Mpc, and above this energy there is no dramatic change of pathlength with energy. There is no longer anything special about $`E10^{20}`$ eV, and any mechanism invoked to explain the flux of super-GZK particles must be at work also at lower energies.

The basic situation remains the same in the case of pair production as the physical process under consideration. For a source at cosmological distance, a cutoff is expected due to pair production off the far infrared background (FIR) or the microwave background. Using the results in  we expect that the modified thresholds are a factor $`0.06`$ ($`0.73`$) lower than the Lorentz invariant ones for the case of interaction on the CMBR (FIR). There is also a small increase in the pathlengths above the threshold, which would appear exponentially in the expression for the flux. Therefore there are two effects that go in opposite directions: the first moves the threshold to even lower energies, and the second increases the flux of radiation at Earth because of the increase of the pathlength. It seems that geometry fluctuations do not provide an immediate explanation of the possible detection of particles in excess of the expected ones from distance sources in the TeV region. In any case the experimental evidence for such an excess seems at present all but established.

## 3 Discussion, conclusions and perspectives.

The investigation of the dependence of the kinematic thresholds for physical processes has been shown to be a powerful tool to study the Physics of space-time at extremely high energies, close to that Planck scale where the fabric of space-time is expected to change, from the flat and well-behaved sheet that we experience in everyday life to a complicated and unpredictable foam of probability that, till now, evaded any kind of direct investigation.

In this paper we related this foamy structure of space-time with the process of measurement of the physical properties of particles, in particular their energy and momentum. We found that the fluctuating metric may induce a violation of Lorentz invariance that changes the thresholds for the photopion production of a very high energy proton off the photons of the CMBR, or for the pair production of a high energy gamma ray in the bath of the FIR or CMBR photons.

For the case of UHECRs interacting with the CMBR, we obtained a picture that changes radically our view of the effect of QG on this phenomenon, as introduced in previous papers: not only particles with energy above $`10^{20}`$ eV are affected by the fluctuations in space-time, but also particles with lower energy, down to $`10^{15}`$ eV seem to be affected by such fluctuations. In fact the latter, as a result of a fluctuating space-time, may end up being above the threshold for photopion production, so that particles may suffer significant absorption. Our conclusion is that all particles with energy in excess of $`10^{15}`$ eV eventually detected at Earth would be generated at distances comparable with the pathlength for photopion production ($`100`$ Mpc). A consequence of this is that there is no longer anything special characterizing the energy $`10^{20}`$ eV.

Since the conclusion of our work are quite strong, it is important to summarize in detail the assumptions involved in the calculations:

1) space-time fluctuations follow from Quantum Gravity. This is a rather mild statement and essentially accepted on the basis of the “space-time foam” approach . Following  we further assume that these fluctuations are at the level of the Planck scale 222We assume that this is true in the comoving reference frame, in which the CMB radiation is isotropic. If this is assumed to be true in all reference frames, than it is necessary to modify the Lorentz transformations .

2) Fluctuations in the momentum and in the dispersion relation are induced by the fluctuations in the metric of space-time. Our assumption is that the fluctuations in the dispersion relation and in the energy and momenta of the particles involved can be considered as independent. This is an assumption usually shared by most literature in the field.

3) The cross section for photopion production at threshold is assumed to be the same as in the Lorentz invariant case. The cross section can be considered as a combination of a matrix element and a phase space factor. While the former may well be affected by violation of Lorentz invariance, it can be demonstrated that the phase space does not change appreciably once the incident particle has energy above the threshold for photopion production. This may be not true in other situations, as discussed in the literature .

We list below some tests that may allow to understand whether the current or future observations are compatible with the scenario discussed in this paper.

a) Future experiments  dedicated to the detection of UHECRs will provide a substantial increase in the statistics, so that the spectral features of the UHECRs in the energy region $`E>10^{19}`$ eV can be resolved, and further indications on the nature of primaries and their possible extragalactic origin will be obtained. In particular the present possible disgreement between AGASA  and HiRes  will be clarified.

One should also keep in mind that an evaluation of the expected flux in terms of sources distributed as normal galaxies is in contradiction with AGASA data by an amount ranging from $`2`$ to $`6\sigma `$ depending on the assumed source spectrum . Since the nature of the sources is not known, it is not clear if their abundance within the absorption pathlength is sufficient to explain the observed flux in presence of space-time fluctuations, nor if they can induce observable anisotropies.

In any case, in a Lorentz invariant framework a suppression in the flux at $`10^{20}`$ eV is expected. If such a feature is unambiguously detected in the UHECR spectrum, no much room would be left for the fluctuations of space-time discussed in this paper, since in this scenario nothing special happens around $`10^{20}`$ eV. In quantitative terms  this would imply a phenomenological bound on $`ł_P`$ now interpreted as a parameter: $`l_p<10^{46}`$ cm instead of $`l_p10^{33}`$ cm; in other words, only fluctuations with variance $`10^{13}`$, instead of $`1`$, would be allowed 333 Alternatively, one can assume a more general form of fluctuations, i.e. $`\delta EE(E/M_P)^\alpha `$ and similar for momentum and dispersion relations. In this case a bound $`\alpha >2.3`$ would follow..

b) According with our findings, all particles with energy in excess of $`10^{15}`$ eV lose their energy by photopion production on cosmological spatial scales, as a result of the metric fluctuations. This energy ends up mainly in gamma rays, neutrinos and protons. The protons pile up in the energy region right below $`10^{15}`$ eV. The gamma ray component actually generates an electromagnetic cascade that ends up contributing low energy gamma rays, in the energy band accessible to instruments like EGRET and GLAST. This cascade flux cannot be larger than the measured electromagnetic energy density in the same band $`\omega _{cas}^{exp}=10^6eV/cm^3`$ . The cascade flux in our scenario can be estimated as follows. Let $`\mathrm{\Phi }(E)=\mathrm{\Phi }_0(E/E_0)^\gamma `$ be the emissivity in UHECRs ($`\mathrm{particles}/\mathrm{cm}^3/\mathrm{s}/\mathrm{GeV}`$). Let us choose the energy $`E_0=10^{10}`$ GeV and let us normalize the flux to the observations at the energy $`E_0`$. The total energy going into the cascade can be shown to be

$$\omega _{cas}\frac{5\times 10^4}{\gamma 2}x_{min}^{2\gamma }\xi eVcm^3,$$

where $`\xi `$ is the fraction of energy going into gamma rays in each photopion production, and $`x_{min}=(E_{th}/E_0)=10^4`$ for $`E_{th}=10^{15}`$ eV. It is easy to see that, for $`\gamma =2.7`$, the cascade bound is violated unless $`\xi 10^3`$.

One note of warning has to be sent concerning the development of the electromagnetic cascade: the same violations of LI discussed here affect other processes, as stressed in the paper. For instance pair production and pion decay are also affected by violations of LI . Therefore the possibility that the cascade limit is exceeded concerns only those scenarios of violations of LI that do not inhibit appreciably pair production and the decay of neutral pions.

The protons piled up at energies right below $`10^{15}`$ eV, would be a nice signature of this scenario, but it seems difficult to envision a way of detecting these remnants. In fact, even a tiny magnetic field on cosmological scales would make the arrival time of these particles to Earth larger than the age of the universe. Moreover, even assuming an exactly zero extragalactic magnetic field, these particles need to penetrate the magnetic field of our own Galaxy and mix with the galactic cosmic rays, making their detection extremely problematic if not impossible.

We believe that the results presented here are robust, in the sense that the qualitative features are rather insensitive to modifications of the theoretical scheme. Clearly a more detailed flux computation, taking into account propagation of primaries as well as generation and propagation of the secondaries is needed in order to assess in a more quantitative way observable effects of possible metric fluctuations on UHECRs.

Acknowledgements We are grateful to Giuseppe Di Carlo for very useful and stimulating discussions.

Note Added

Soon after the completion of the present work, a paper  appeared in the preprint archives which addresses the problem of the fluctuations in the metric of space-time and the corresponding violations of LI. Our results include the results of that paper, but also represents a generalization to the particles with energy below the classical threshold for photopion production, that in our opinion imply a possibly stronger constrain on the effect of fluctuations of space-time on cosmic rays propagation.


text:
# Search for mSUGRA in single-electron events with jets and large missing transverse energy in 𝑝𝑝̄ collisions at √𝑠=1.8 TeV

## I INTRODUCTION

The standard model (SM) has been a great achievement in particle physics. A large number of experimental results have confirmed many features of the theory to a high degree of precision. However, the SM is theoretically unsatisfactory, and it poses many questions and problems . The most notable ones are the fine-tuning problem of the SM Higgs self-interaction through fermion loops  and the unknown origin of electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB). Supersymmetry (SUSY)  incorporates an additional symmetry between fermions and bosons, and offers a solution to the fine-tuning problem and a possible mechanism for EWSB.

SUSY postulates that for each SM degree of freedom, there is a corresponding SUSY degree of freedom. This results in a large number of required supersymmetric particles (sparticles), and at least two Higgs doublets in the theory. A new quantum number, called $`R`$-parity , is used to distinguish between SM particles and sparticles. All SM particles have $`R`$-parity $`+1`$ and sparticles have $`R`$-parity $`1`$. The simplest extension to the SM, the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), respects the same $`\text{SU(3)}\text{SU(2)}\text{U(1)}`$ gauge symmetries as does the SM. SUSY must be a broken symmetry. Otherwise we would have discovered supersymmetric particles of the same masses as their SM partners. A variety of models have been proposed for SUSY breaking. One of these, the minimal supergravity (mSUGRA) model, postulates that gravity is the communicating force from the SUSY breaking origin at a high mass scale to the electroweak scale, which is accessible to current high energy colliders. The mSUGRA model is described in detail in Ref. . It can be characterized by four parameters and a sign: a common scalar mass ($`m_0`$), a common gaugino mass ($`m_{1/2}`$), a common trilinear coupling value ($`A_0`$), the ratio of the vacuum expectation values of the two Higgs doublets ($`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$), and the sign of $`\mu `$, where $`\mu `$ is the Higgsino mass parameter.

In this analysis, $`R`$-parity is assumed to be conserved. This implies that sparticles must be pair-produced in $`p\overline{p}`$ collisions. The sparticles can decay directly, or via lighter sparticles, into final states that contain SM particles and the lightest supersymmetric particles (LSPs), which must be stable. Because the LSP interacts extremely weakly, it escapes detection and leaves a large imbalance in transverse energy ($`E\text{/}_T`$) in the event. We assume that the lightest neutralino ($`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$) is the LSP, and that $`A_0=0`$ and $`\mu <0`$. We fix $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =3`$ and perform the search in the $`m_{1/2}`$$`m_0`$ plane.

Most recently, searches for mSUGRA signatures have been performed at LEP and the Tevatron. At DØ, dilepton+$`E\text{/}_T`$  and jets+$`E\text{/}_T`$  final states have been examined for possible mSUGRA effects. This report describes a search in the final state containing a single isolated electron, four or more jets, and large $`E\text{/}_T`$. One of the possible mSUGRA particle-production processes which results in such a final state is shown in Fig. 1. The search is particularly sensitive to the moderate $`m_0`$ region where charginos and neutralinos decay mostly into SM $`W`$ and/or $`Z`$ bosons which have large branching fractions to jets. It also complements our two previous searches since the signatures are orthogonal to one another.

## II THE DØ DETECTOR

DØ is a multipurpose detector designed to study $`p\overline{p}`$ collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The work presented here is based on approximately $`92.7\mathrm{pb}^1`$ of data recorded during the 1994–1996 collider runs. A full description of the detector can be found in Ref. . Here, we describe briefly the properties of the detector that are relevant for this analysis.

The detector was designed to have good electron and muon identification capabilities and to measure jets and $`E\text{/}_T`$ with good resolution. The detector consists of three major systems: a non-magnetic central tracking system, a uranium/liquid-argon calorimeter, and a muon spectrometer. A cut-away view of the detector is shown in Fig. 2.

The central detector (CD) consists of four tracking subsystems: a vertex drift chamber, a transition radiation detector, a central drift chamber, and two forward drift chambers. It measures the trajectories of charged particles and can discriminate between singly-charged particles and $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs from photon conversions through the ionization measured along their tracks. It covers the pseudorapidity  region $`|\eta _\mathrm{d}|<3.2`$.

The calorimeter is divided into three parts: the central calorimeter (CC) and the two end calorimeters (EC), each housed in its own steel cryostat, which together cover the pseudorapidity range $`|\eta _\mathrm{d}|<4.2`$. Each calorimeter consists of an inner electromagnetic (EM) section, a fine hadronic (FH) section, and a coarse hadronic (CH) section. Between the CC and the EC is the inter-cryostat detector (ICD), which consists of scintillator tiles. The EM portion of the calorimeters is 21 radiation lengths deep and is divided into four longitudinal segments (layers). The hadronic portions are 7–9 nuclear interaction lengths deep and are divided into four (CC) or five (EC) layers. The calorimeters are segmented transversely into pseudoprojective towers of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\eta \times \mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =0.1\times 0.1`$. The third layer of the EM calorimeter, where most of the EM shower energy is expected, is segmented twice as finely in both $`\eta `$ and $`\varphi `$, with cells of size $`\mathrm{\Delta }\eta \times \mathrm{\Delta }\varphi `$ = $`0.05\times 0.05`$. The energy resolution for electrons is $`\sigma (E)/E=15\%/\sqrt{E(\mathrm{GeV})}0.4\%`$. For charged pions, the resolution is $`50\%/\sqrt{E(\mathrm{GeV})}`$ and for jets $`80\%/\sqrt{E(\mathrm{GeV})}`$. The resolution in $`E\text{/}_T`$ is $`1.08\mathrm{GeV}+0.019E_T(\mathrm{GeV})`$, where $`E_T`$ is the scalar sum of the transverse energies in all calorimeter cells.

The wide angle muon system (WAMUS), which covers $`|\eta _\mathrm{d}|<2.5`$, is also used in this analysis. The system consists of four planes of proportional drift tubes in front of magnetized iron toroids with a magnetic field of 1.9 T and two groups of three planes of proportional drift tubes behind the toroids. The magnetic field lines and the wires in the drift tubes are transverse to the beam direction. The muon momentum $`p`$ is measured from the muon’s angular bend in the magnetic field of the iron toroids, with a resolution of $`\sigma (1/p)=0.18(p2\mathrm{GeV})/p^20.003\mathrm{GeV}^1`$, for $`p>4.0\mathrm{GeV}`$.

A separate synchrotron, the Main Ring, lies above the Tevatron and goes through the CH calorimeter. During data-taking, it is used to accelerate protons for antiproton production. Particles lost from the Main Ring can deposit significant energy in the calorimeters, increasing the instrumental background. We reject much of this background at the trigger level by not accepting events during beam injection into the Main Ring, when losses are largest.

## III EVENT SELECTION

Event selection at DØ is performed at two levels: online selection at the trigger level and offline selection at the analysis level. The algorithms to reconstruct the physical objects (electron, muon, jet, $`E\text{/}_T`$) as well as their identification at the online and offline levels are described in Ref. . We summarize below the selections pertaining to this analysis.

### A Triggers

The DØ trigger system reduces the event rate from the beam crossing rate of 286 kHz to approximately 3–4 Hz, at which the events are recorded on tape. For most triggers (and those we use in this analysis) we require a coincidence in hits between the two sets of scintillation counters located in front of each EC (level 0). The next stage of the trigger (level 1) forms fast analog sums of the transverse energies in calorimeter trigger towers. These towers have a size of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\eta \times \mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =0.2\times 0.2`$, and are segmented longitudinally into EM and FH sections. The level 1 trigger operates on these sums along with patterns of hits in the muon spectrometer. A trigger decision can be made between beam crossings (unless a level 1.5 decision is required, as described below). After level 1 accepts an event, the complete event is digitized and sent to the level 2 trigger, which consists of a farm of 48 general-purpose processors. Software filters running in these processors make the final trigger decision.

The triggers are defined in terms of combinations of specific objects required in the level 1 and level 2 triggers. These elements are summarized below. For more information, see Refs. .

To trigger on electrons, level 1 requires that the transverse energy in the EM section of a trigger tower be above a programmed threshold. The level 2 electron algorithm examines the regions around the level 1 towers that are above threshold, and uses the full segmentation of the EM calorimeter to identify showers with shapes consistent with those of electrons. The level 2 algorithm can also apply an isolation requirement or demand that there be an associated track in the central detector.

For the later portion of the run, a “level 1.5” processor was also available for electron triggering. In this processor, each EM trigger tower above the level 1 threshold is combined with the neighboring tower of the highest energy. The hadronic portions of these two towers are also combined, and the ratio of EM transverse energy to total transverse energy in the two towers is required to be $`>0.85`$. The use of a level 1.5 electron trigger is indicated in the tables below as an “EX” tower.

The level 1 muon trigger uses the pattern of drift tube hits to provide the number of muon candidates in different regions of the muon spectrometer. A level 1.5 processor can also be used to put a $`p_T`$ requirement on the candidates (at the expense of slightly increased dead time). At level 2, the fully digitized event is available, and the first stage of the full event reconstruction is performed. The level 2 muon algorithm can also require the presence of energy deposition in the calorimeter consistent with that from a muon.

For a jet trigger, level 1 requires that the sum of the transverse energies in the EM and hadronic sections of a trigger tower be above a programmed threshold. Level 2 then sums calorimeter cells around the identified towers (or around the $`E_T`$-weighted centroids of the large tiles) in cones of a specified radius $`\mathrm{\Delta }R=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }\eta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi ^2}`$, and imposes a threshold on the total transverse energy.

The $`E\text{/}_T`$ in the calorimeter is computed both at level 1 and level 2. For level 1, the vertex $`z`$ position is assumed to be at the center of the detector, while for level 2, the vertex $`z`$ position is determined from the relative timing of hits in the level 0 scintillation counters.

The trigger requirements used for this analysis are summarized in Table I. Runs taken during 1994–1995 (Run 1b) and during the winter of 1995–1996 (Run 1c) were used, and only the triggers “ELE\_JET\_HIGH” and “ELE\_JET\_HIGHA” in the table were used to conduct this search for mSUGRA. The “EM1\_EISTRKCC\_MS” trigger was used for background estimation. As mentioned above, these triggers do not accept events during beam injection into the main ring. In addition, we do not use events which were collected when a Main Ring bunch passed through the detector or when losses were registered in monitors around the Main Ring. Several bad runs resulting from hardware failure were also rejected. The “exposure” column in Table I takes these factors into account.

### B Object Identification

#### 1 Electrons

Electron identification is based on a likelihood technique. Candidates are first identified by finding isolated clusters of energy in the EM calorimeter with a matching track in the central detector. We then cut on a likelihood constructed from the following five variables:

* a $`\chi ^2`$ from a covariance matrix that checks the consistency of the shape of a calorimeter cluster with that expected of an electron shower;
* an electromagnetic energy fraction, defined as the ratio of the portion of the energy of the cluster found in the EM calorimeter to its total energy;
* a measure of consistency between the trajectory in the tracking chambers and the centroid of energy cluster (track match significance);
* the ionization deposited along the track $`dE/dx`$;
* a measure of the radiation pattern observed in the transition radiation detector (TRD). (This variable is used only for CC EM clusters because the TRD does not cover the forward region .)

To a good approximation, these five variables are independent of each other.

High energy electrons in mSUGRA events tend to be isolated. Thus, we use the additional restriction:

$$\frac{E_{\mathrm{tot}}(0.4)E_{\mathrm{EM}}(0.2)}{E_{\mathrm{EM}}(0.2)}<0.1,$$
(1)
where $`E_{\mathrm{tot}}(0.4)`$ is the energy within $`\mathrm{\Delta }R<0.4`$ of the cluster centroid ($`\mathrm{\Delta }R=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }\eta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi ^2}`$) and $`E_{\mathrm{EM}}(0.2)`$ is the energy in the EM calorimeter within $`\mathrm{\Delta }R<0.2`$. We denote this restriction the “isolation requirement.”

The electron identification efficiency, $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^e`$, is measured using the $`Zee`$ data. Since only CC ($`|\eta _\mathrm{d}^e|<1.1`$) and EC ($`1.5<|\eta _\mathrm{d}^e|<2.5`$) regions are covered by EM modules, electron candidates are selected and their identification efficiencies are measured in these two regions. An electron is considered a “probe” electron if the other electron in the event passes a strict likelihood requirement. This gives a clean and unbiased sample of electrons. We construct the invariant mass spectrum of the two electron candidates and calculate the number of background events, which mostly come from Drell-Yan production and misidentified jets, inside a $`Z`$ boson mass window. After background subtraction, the ratio of the number of events inside the $`Z`$ boson mass window before and after applying the likelihood and isolation requirements to each probe electron, gives $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^e`$.

The $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^e`$ is a function of jet multiplicity in the event. The presence of jets reduces $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^e`$ primarily due to the isolation requirement and reduced tracking efficiency. However, with a larger numbers of jets ($`3`$) in the event, the efficiency of locating the correct hard-scattering vertex increases. The two effects compensate each other for events with high jet multiplicity . The electron identification efficiencies used in this analysis are obtained from $`Zee`$ data with at least two jets and are given in Table II.

Sometimes a jet with very similar characteristics to an electron can pass the electron identification selection, and result in a fake electron. The effect of fake electrons is discussed in section V A.

#### 2 Jets

Jets are reconstructed in the calorimeter using a fixed-size cone algorithm with $`\mathrm{\Delta }R=0.5`$. A jet that originates from a quark or a gluon deposits a large fraction of its energy in the FH part of the calorimeter, and so we identify jets through the fractional energy in the EM and CH parts of the calorimeter. We require the fraction of the total jet energy deposited in the EM section of the calorimeter (emf ) to be between 0.05 and 0.95 for high energy jets ($`E_T^j>35\mathrm{GeV}`$), and the fraction of the total jet energy deposited in the CH section of the calorimeter (chf ) to be less than 0.4. Because electronic and uranium noise is generally of low energy, the lower bound of the emf requirement is raised gradually for lower energy jets in the CC. (It is 0.2 for CC jets with $`E_T^j15\mathrm{GeV}`$.) Because there is no electromagnetic coverage in the ICR, we do not apply a lower bound cut on emf in that region.

A multijet data sample corrected for detector noise is used to measure the jet identification efficiency, $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^j`$. The efficiency is a function of $`E_T^j`$, and is parametrized as in Eq. 2, with the fitted values of the parameters listed in Table III.

$$\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^j=p_0+p_1\times E_T^j+p_2\times (E_T^j)^2.$$
(2)
#### 3 Muons

To avoid overlapping with the dilepton analysis, we veto events containing isolated muons satisfying all the following criteria:

* The muon has a good track originating from the interaction vertex.
* The muon has pseudorapidity $`|\eta _\mathrm{d}^\mu |2.5`$.
* There is a large integrated magnetic field along the muon trajectory ($`\stackrel{}{B}𝑑\stackrel{}{l}`$). This ensures that the muon traverses enough of the field to give a good $`P_T`$ measurement.
* The energy deposited in the calorimeter along a muon track is at least that expected from a minimum ionizing particle.
* Transverse momentum $`p_T4\mathrm{GeV}`$.
* The distance in the $`\eta \varphi `$ plane between the muon and the closest jet is $`\mathrm{\Delta }R(\mu ,j)>0.5`$.

#### 4 Event selection

About 1.9 million events passed the ELE\_JET\_HIGH and the ELE\_JET\_HIGHA triggers. We require at least one electromagnetic cluster with $`E_T>18\mathrm{GeV}`$ and a track matched to it. The interaction vertex must be within $`|z_v|<60\mathrm{cm}`$. About 600,000 events remain after these selections. Kinematic and fiducial requirements are then applied to select our base data sample. The criteria are listed below, with numbers in the curly brackets specifying the number of events surviving the corresponding requirement.

* One electron in the good fiducial volume ($`|\eta _\mathrm{d}^e|<1.1`$ or $`1.5<|\eta _\mathrm{d}^e|<2.5`$) passing restrictive electron identification criteria, and with $`E_T^e>20\mathrm{GeV}`$ — {15547}.
* No extra electrons in the good fiducial volume passing “loose” electron identification for $`E_T^e>15\mathrm{GeV}`$. The selection criteria for the “loose” electrons are the same as those used for signal electrons in the dilepton analysis, keeping two analyses independent of each other — {15319}.
* $`|\eta ^e|<2.0`$ — {13997}.
* No isolated muons — {13980}.
* Four or more jets with $`E_T^j>15\mathrm{GeV}`$ and $`|\eta _\mathrm{d}^j|<2.5`$ — {187}.
* $`E\text{/}_T>25\mathrm{GeV}`$ — {72}.

After these selections the base sample contains 72 events. The major SM backgrounds are from $`W+4`$ jets $`e+\nu +4`$ jets, $`t\overline{t}WbWbe+\nu +4`$ jets, $`WW+2\text{jets}e+\nu +4`$ jets, and multijet events in which one of the jets is misidentified as an electron and the jet transverse energies are inaccurately measured to give rise to $`E\text{/}_T`$.

## IV EVENT SIMULATION

We use pythia  to simulate mSUGRA signal and $`t\overline{t}`$ and $`WW`$ backgrounds. We check our results and obtain generator-dependent systematic errors using the herwig  generator. $`W`$ boson and associated jet production is generated using vecbos  and herwig. The final state partons, which are generated by vecbos as a result of a leading order calculation, are passed through herwig to include the effects of additional radiation and the underlying processes, and to model the hadronization of the final state partons .

In order to efficiently search for mSUGRA in a large parameter space and to reduce the statistical error on signal acceptance, we used a fast Monte Carlo program called fmcø  to model events in the DØ detector and to calculate the acceptance for any physics process passing our trigger and offline selections. The flow-chart of fmcø is shown in Fig. 3. First, through a jet-reconstruction program, the stable particles that interact in the detector are clustered into particle jets, in a way similar to the clustering of calorimeter cells into jets. However, the generated electrons, if they are not close to a jet ($`\mathrm{\Delta }R>0.5`$ in $`\eta \varphi `$ space), are considered as the electrons reconstructed in the detector. Otherwise, they are clustered into the jet. The generated muons are considered as the reconstructed muons in the detector. Next, the electrons, jets, muons, and $`E\text{/}_T`$ in the events are smeared according to their resolutions determined from data . The offline selections (Sec. III B 4) are applied to the smeared objects. Finally, each passed event is weighted with trigger and identification efficiencies. The outputs of fmcø are an “ntuple” that contains the kinematic characteristics ($`E_T`$, $`\eta `$, $`\varphi `$, etc.) of every object and a run-summary ntuple that contains the information of trigger efficiency and total acceptance for the process being simulated. The acceptance $`A`$ is calculated as follows:

$$A=\frac{1}{N_{\mathrm{gen}}}\underset{i}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{pass}}}{}}\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{\mathrm{total}}\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^e\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^{\mathrm{jets}},$$
(3)
where $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{\mathrm{total}}`$ is the overall trigger efficiency, $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^e`$ is the electron identification efficiency, $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^{\mathrm{jets}}`$ is the product of jet identification efficiencies of the four leading jets, $`N_{\mathrm{gen}}`$ is the number of generated events, and $`N_{\mathrm{pass}}`$ is the number of events that pass the offline kinematic requirements. The uncertainty on the acceptance, $`\delta _A`$, is calculated as:

$$\delta _A=\frac{1}{N_{\mathrm{gen}}}\underset{i}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{pass}}}{}}\delta _\epsilon ,$$
(4)
where $`\delta _\epsilon `$ comes from the propagation of uncertainties on $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{\mathrm{total}}`$, $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^e`$, and $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{id}}^{\mathrm{jets}}`$. Since the same electron and jet identification efficiencies, and the same trigger turn-ons are used the error on the acceptance is 100% correlated event-by-event as shown in Eq. 4.

Because the signal triggers impose a combination of requirements on the electron, jets, and $`E\text{/}_T`$, the overall trigger efficiency has three corresponding components. The efficiency of each component was measured using data. The individual efficiencies are then used to construct the overall trigger efficiency. The details of the measurements and construction are documented in Ref. . Table IV compares the trigger efficiencies of $`W+`$ jets events measured in data with those simulated using vecbos Monte Carlo. We find that they are in good agreement at each jet multiplicity.

We also compared the acceptance of fmcø with geant  and data, and found good agreement for $`W+`$ jets, $`t\overline{t}`$, and $`WW`$ events.

## V BACKGROUNDS

### A Multijet background

From the ELE\_JET\_HIGH and ELE\_JET\_HIGHA triggered data we obtain two sub-samples. For sample 1, we require all offline criteria to be satisfied, except for $`E\text{/}_T`$. At small $`E\text{/}_T`$ ($`<20\mathrm{GeV}`$), sample 1 contains contributions mainly from multijet production, where jet energy fluctuations give rise to $`E\text{/}_T`$. At large $`E\text{/}_T`$ ($`>25\mathrm{GeV}`$), it has significant contributions from $`W+`$ jets events, with additional contributions from $`t\overline{t}`$ production and possibly the mSUGRA signal. For sample 2, we require that the EM object represent a very unlikely electron candidate by applying an “anti-electron” requirement . All other event characteristics are the same as those in sample 1. The sample 2 requirements tend to select events in which a jet mimics an electron, and consequently sample 2 contains mainly multijet events with little contribution from other sources for $`E\text{/}_T>25\mathrm{GeV}`$. The $`E\text{/}_T`$ spectra of the two samples can therefore be used to estimate the number of multijet background events ($`N_{\mathrm{multijet}}`$) in sample 1 as follows. We first normalize the $`E\text{/}_T`$ spectrum of sample 2 to that of sample 1 in the low-$`E\text{/}_T`$ region, and then estimate $`N_{\mathrm{multijet}}`$ by multiplying the number of events in the signal region ($`E\text{/}_T>25\mathrm{GeV}`$) of sample 2 by the same relative normalization factor .

The $`E\text{/}_T`$ spectra for both samples are shown in Fig. 4, normalized to each other for $`0E\text{/}_T14\mathrm{GeV}`$, and for the cases in which the fake electron is in the CC and EC, respectively. From these distributions, we calculate $`N_{\mathrm{multijet}}`$ to be $`82.6\pm 15.3`$ and $`19.1\pm 4.7`$, for inclusive jet multiplicities of 3 and 4 jets, respectively. (The inclusive 3-jet sample is obtained the same way as the base sample, except that we require at least 3 jets, rather than 4, in the event.) The errors include statistical uncertainties and systematic uncertainties in the trigger and object identification efficiencies, different definitions of sample 2, and different choice for the normalization regions.

### B $`t\overline{t}`$ background

The number of $`t\overline{t}`$ background events, $`N_{t\overline{t}}`$, is calculated using fmcø. The $`t\overline{t}`$ events were generated using pythia  for $`m_{\mathrm{top}}=175\mathrm{GeV}`$. A $`t\overline{t}`$ production cross section of $`\sigma =5.9\pm 1.7\mathrm{pb}`$, as measured by DØ , is used. The results are $`N_{t\overline{t}}=27.7\pm 8.3`$ events and $`N_{t\overline{t}}=16.8\pm 5.2`$ events for inclusive jet multiplicities of 3 and 4 jets, respectively. The errors include uncertainties on the $`t\overline{t}`$ production cross section, differences in physics generators, trigger and object identification efficiencies, and on the integrated luminosity.

### C $`WW+`$ jets background

fmcø is also used to calculate the $`WW+`$ jets background. The production cross section at next-to-leading order is taken as $`\sigma =10.40\pm 0.23\mathrm{pb}`$ , assuming no anomalous couplings ($`\delta \kappa =\lambda =0`$. The $`WW`$ events were generated using pythia. There are $`7.7\pm 1.2`$ and $`1.4\pm 0.3`$ events expected for inclusive jet multiplicity of 3 and 4 jets, respectively. The errors include uncertainties on the production cross section, trigger and object identification efficiencies, differences in physics generators, the jet energy scale, and on the integrated luminosity.

### D $`W+`$ jets background

To good approximation, each extra jet in $`W+`$ jets events is the result of an extra coupling of strength $`\alpha _s`$ , and we expect the number of $`W+`$ jets events to scale as a power of $`N_{\mathrm{jet}}`$. The scaling law is supported by the $`W+`$ jets, $`Z+`$ jets, and $`\gamma +`$ jets data . In this analysis, we first estimate the number of $`W+3`$-jet events, $`N_3^W`$, in the data collected with ELE\_JET\_HIGH and ELE\_JET\_HIGHA triggers, and then extract the effective scaling factor $`\alpha `$ using $`W+n`$-jet events collected with EM1\_EISTRKCC\_MS trigger. The expected number of $`W+4`$-jet events ($`N_4^W`$) in our base sample is then:

$$N_4^W=N_3^W\alpha \frac{\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{W4}}{\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{W3}},$$
(5)
where $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{W3}`$ and $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{W4}`$ are trigger efficiencies of $`W+3`$-jet and $`W+4`$-jet events, respectively, as shown in Table IV.

#### 1 Estimating the number of $`W+n`$-jet events

We estimate the number of $`W+n`$-jet events in a way similar to that used to estimate the multijet background. We first use a neural network (NN) to define a kinematic region in which $`W+n`$-jet events dominate the background and any possible contribution from mSUGRA can be neglected. In that region, we normalize the number of $`W+n`$-jet MC events to the number of events observed in the data which have had all other major SM backgrounds subtracted. The normalization factor is then applied to the whole $`W+n`$-jet MC sample to obtain our estimate for the $`W+n`$-jet background in the data.

In this analysis, we use a NN package called mlpfit . All NNs have the structure of X-2X-1, where X is the number of input nodes, i.e., the number of variables used for training, and 2X is the number of nodes in the hidden layer. We always use 1 output node with an output range of 0 to 1. Signal events (in this case, $`W+n`$-jet events) are expected to have NN output near 1 and background events near 0. We choose the NN output region of 0.5–1.0 to be the “signal”-dominant kinematic region. The variables used to distinguish $`W+n`$-jet events from other SM backgrounds and the mSUGRA signal are:

* $`E\text{/}_T`$
* $`E_T^e`$
* $`H_T=E_T^j`$ for all jets with $`E_T^j>15\mathrm{GeV}`$
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{e,E\text{/}_T}`$
* $`M_T=\sqrt{2E_T^eE\text{/}_T[1\mathrm{cos}(\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{e,E\text{/}_T})]}`$
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{j_1,E\text{/}_T}`$ (not used for $`4`$-jet events)
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{j_2,E\text{/}_T}`$ (used for $`2`$-jet and $`3`$-jet events)
* $`𝒜`$—aplanarity  (used for $`2`$, $`3`$, and $`4`$-jet events) is defined in terms of the normalized momentum tensor of the $`W`$ boson and the jets with $`E_T^j>15\mathrm{GeV}`$:

$$M_{ab}=\frac{_ip_{ia}p_{ib}}{_ip_i^2},$$
(6)
where $`\stackrel{}{p_i}`$ is the three-momentum of object $`i`$ in the laboratory frame, and $`a`$ and $`b`$ run over the $`x`$, $`y`$, and $`z`$ coordinates. Denoting $`Q_1`$, $`Q_2`$, and $`Q_3`$ as the three eigenvalues of $`M_{ab}`$ in ascending order, $`𝒜`$ $`=1.5\times Q_1`$. The $`p_z`$ of the $`W`$ boson is calculated by imposing the requirement that the invariant mass of the electron and the neutrino (assumed to be the source of $`E\text{/}_T`$) equals the $`W`$ boson mass. This requirement results in a quadratic equation for the longitudinal momentum of the neutrino. Because the probability of a small $`p_z`$ is usually higher than that of a large $`p_z`$, the smaller $`p_z`$ solution is always chosen. In cases where there is no real solution, $`E\text{/}_T`$ is increased until a real solution is obtained.
* $`r_H=H_{T2}/H_Z`$, where $`H_{T2}=H_TE_T^{j_1}`$, and $`H_Z=_i|p_z|`$ where $`i`$ runs over the electron, all jets with $`E_T^j>15\mathrm{GeV}`$, and neutrino (as assumed in the calculation of $`𝒜`$) in the event  (only used for $`4`$-jet events).
* $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _e^{}`$, where $`\theta _e^{}`$ is the polar angle of the electron in the $`W`$ boson rest frame, relative to the direction of flight of the $`W`$ boson. The $`W`$ boson four-momentum is obtained by fitting the event to a $`t\overline{t}`$ assumption. The details of the fit are described in Ref.  (only used for $`4`$-jet events).
* $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _{eb}^{}`$, where $`\theta _{eb}^{}`$ is the angle between the electron and the $`b`$ jet from the same top (or antitop) quark in the $`W`$ boson rest frame . Again, a fit to the $`t\overline{t}`$ assumption is performed to identify the correct $`b`$ jet (only used for $`4`$-jet events).

All the offline requirements described in Sec. III B 4 are applied except that the requirement on the number of jets is reduced corresponding to different inclusive jet multiplicity. The multijet, $`t\overline{t}`$, and $`WW`$ backgrounds are estimated using the methods described in Sec. V AV D. The mSUGRA events were generated with $`m_0=170\mathrm{GeV}`$, $`m_{1/2}=58\mathrm{GeV}`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =3`$. This parameter set was chosen because it is close to the search limit obtained in the dilepton analysis.

#### 2 Estimating $`N_3^W`$

The result of the NN training for $`3`$-jet events is shown in Fig. 5(a). The number of $`W+3`$-jet events used in the training is the same as the sum of all background events, including any possible mSUGRA sources in their expected proportions. The match between training and data is shown in Fig. 5(b), where the data and MC are normalized to each other for NN output between 0.5 and 1.0. Because the number of mSUGRA events is negligible in this region, we do not include them in the background subtraction. We estimate that $`241.8\pm 18.0`$ $`W+3`$-jet events pass our final 3-jet selection.

#### 3 Measuring the scaling factor $`\alpha `$

We extract the parameter $`\alpha `$ from the data passing the EM1\_EISTRKCC\_MS trigger, which does not have a jet requirement in the trigger, and fit the measured number of $`W+n`$-jet events ($`\overline{N}_n^W`$) to:

$$\overline{N}_n^W=\overline{N}_1^W\alpha ^{n1}.$$
(7)
$`\overline{N}_n^W`$ values are obtained as described in Sec. V D 1. The NN training and normalization to the data are performed separately for each inclusive jet multiplicity. The results are summarized in Table V. The errors on $`\overline{N}_n^W`$ include statistical errors from MC and data, and uncertainties on the choice of different normalization regions and on the choice of different QCD dynamic scales used in generating vecbos events.

The fit of $`\overline{N}_n^W`$ to Eq. 7 is shown in Fig. 6, from which we extract $`\alpha =0.172\pm 0.007`$.

#### 4 Calculating the number of $`W+4`$-jet events, $`N_4^W`$

With $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{W3}=0.925\pm 0.016`$ and $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{trig}}^{W4}=0.957\pm 0.012`$, and using Eq. 5, we obtain $`N_4^W=43.0\pm 7.6`$.

### E Summary

The expected numbers of events in the base data sample from the major sources of background are summarized in Table VI. From the table, we conclude that the sum of the backgrounds is consistent with the observed number of candidate events.

## VI SEARCH FOR SIGNAL

### A Neural Network Analysis

We use a NN analysis to define a kinematic region in which the sensitivity of signal to background is highest. We use the following variables in the NN. Those not defined below have been defined in Sec.V D 1.

* $`E\text{/}_T`$ – For the signal, $`E\text{/}_T`$ comes from two LSPs and at least one neutrino. For the $`t\overline{t}`$, $`W+`$ jets, and $`WW`$ backgrounds, it comes from the neutrino. For multijet background, it comes from fluctuation in the measurement of the jet energy. Generally, the signal has larger $`E\text{/}_T`$ than the backgrounds.
* $`E_T^e`$ – The electron in the signal comes from a virtual $`W`$ boson decay. Its spectrum is softer than that of the electrons from the $`t\overline{t}`$ and $`W+`$ jets backgrounds.
* $`H_T`$ – A pair of heavy mSUGRA particles are produced in the hard scattering and most of the transverse energy is carried away by jets. The $`H_T`$ for the signal thus tends to be larger than that for the major backgrounds.
* $`E_T^{j_3}`$ – The third leading jet in $`E_T`$ from $`W+`$ jets, $`WW`$, and multijet events most likely originates from gluon emission. For $`t\overline{t}`$ and mSUGRA events, it is probably due to $`W`$ boson decay. Thus, the $`t\overline{t}`$ and mSUGRA signals have a harder $`E_T^{j_3}`$ spectrum.
* $`M_T`$ – For $`t\overline{t}`$, $`W+`$ jet, and $`WW`$ events, $`M_T`$ peaks near $`M_W=80\mathrm{GeV}`$. This is not the case for the signal since we expect the $`W`$ boson produced in the decay chain to be virtual for a wide range of $`m_{1/2}`$ up to 200 GeV.
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{e,E\text{/}_T}`$ – Because the electron and neutrino form a $`W`$ boson in $`t\overline{t}`$, $`W+`$ jet, and $`WW`$ events, their $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{e,E\text{/}_T}`$ spectra should peak away from $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{e,E\text{/}_T}=0`$. For multijet events, the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _{e,E\text{/}_T}`$ spectrum should peak near 0 and $`\pi `$ because $`E\text{/}_T`$ can be caused by fluctuations in the energy of the jet which mimics an electron.
* $`𝒜`$$`W+`$ jets, $`WW`$, and multijet events are more likely to be collinear due to QCD bremsstrahlung, while the signal and $`t\overline{t}`$ events are more likely to be spherical.
* $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _j^{}`$, where $`\theta _j^{}`$ is the polar angle of the higher-energy jet from $`W`$ boson decay in the rest frame of parent $`W`$ boson, relative to the direction of flight of the $`W`$ boson. This is calculated by fitting all the events to the $`t\overline{t}`$ assumption. For $`t\overline{t}`$ production, the spectrum is isotropic, but for the signal and other SM backgrounds, it is not.
* $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _e^{}`$, the signal has a somewhat different $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _e^{}`$ distribution than the background does, especially for $`t\overline{t}`$ events.

The spectra for these variables are shown in Fig. 7. There is no evidence of an excess in our data for the mSUGRA parameters used. Fig. 8 displays the $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _j^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _e^{}`$ distributions for signal and $`t\overline{t}`$ events. These two variables are particularly useful in reducing the $`t\overline{t}`$ background relative to the mSUGRA signal. Nevertheless, $`t\overline{t}`$ events still make the largest contribution in the signal-rich region because of their similarity to the mSUGRA signal. This can be seen in Fig. 9, in which the NN output is displayed for each background and the mSUGRA signal for a particular set of parameters. The result of the NN output for data is given in Fig. 10. The expected background describes the data well.

### B Signal Significance

To apply the optimal cut on the NN output, we calculated the signal significance based on the expected number of signal ($`s`$) and background ($`b`$) events that would survive any NN cutoff. We define the significance ($`\overline{𝒮}`$) below. The probability that the number of background events, $`b`$, fluctuates to $`n`$ or more events is:

$$F(n|b)=\underset{k=n}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p(k|b)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }}_{𝒮(n|b)}^{\mathrm{}}e^{t^2/2}𝑑t,$$
(8)
where $`p(k|b)=\frac{b^ke^b}{k!}`$ is the Poisson probability for observing $`k`$ events with $`b`$ events expected. $`𝒮(n|b)`$ can be regarded as the number of standard deviations required for $`b`$ to fluctuate to $`n`$, and it can be calculated numerically. For $`s+b`$ expected events, the number of observed events can be any number between $`[0,\mathrm{})`$. The significance is thus defined as:

$$\overline{𝒮}=\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p(n|s+b)𝒮(n|b)$$
(9)
where $`p(n|s+b)`$ is the Poisson probability for observing $`n`$ events with $`s+b`$ events expected.

The NN output corresponding to the maximum significance determines our cutoff to calculate the 95% C.L. limit on the cross section. The error on the expected signal includes uncertainties on trigger and object identification efficiencies, on parton distribution functions (10%), differences between MCs (12%), and on the jet energy scale (5%). Table VII lists the results in terms of 95% C.L. limits on production cross sections for various sets of model parameters of mSUGRA.

## VII RESULTS

We conduct an independent NN analysis on each generated mSUGRA point. The production cross section calculated by pythia is compared with that obtained by limit calculation at 95% C.L. to determine whether the mSUGRA point is excluded or not. Using the two cross sections at each point, we linearly extrapolate between the excluded and non-excluded points to determine the exact location of the exclusion contour. The exclusion contour at the 95% C.L. is plotted in Fig. 11. Shown in the same figure are the results of the DØ dilepton and LEP I  analyses.

Our single-electron analysis is particularly sensitive in the moderate $`m_0`$ region. The extended region of exclusion relative to the DØ dilepton result is in the range of $`165\mathrm{GeV}<m_0<250\mathrm{GeV}`$. The dominant SUSY process changes from $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$$`\stackrel{~}{q}`$ production at $`m_0=170\mathrm{GeV}`$ to $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ pair production at $`m_0=250\mathrm{GeV}`$. The limit worsens as $`m_0`$ increases because the mass difference between $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^\pm `$ ($`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0`$) and $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ decreases, resulting in softer electron and jets spectra, and consequently reduced acceptance.

As this work was being completed, a related result  on searches for mSUGRA in the jets plus missing energy channel at Tevatron appeared. Since its limits on mSUGRA parameters, although more restrictive than those obtained in this work and in the earlier DØ publication  in the analogous channel, are expressed in a different parameter plane ($`m_{\stackrel{~}{q}}`$ vs. $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$), we do not show them in Fig. 11.

## VIII CONCLUSION

We observe 72 candidate events for an mSUGRA signal in the final state containing one electron, four or more jets, and large $`E\text{/}_T`$ in $`92.7\mathrm{pb}^1`$ data. We expect $`80.3\pm 10.4`$ such events from misidentified multijet, $`t\overline{t}`$, $`W+`$ jets, and $`WW`$ production. We conclude that there is no evidence for the existence of mSUGRA. We use neural network to select a kinematic region where signal to background significance is the largest. The upper limit on the cross section extends the previously DØ obtained exclusion region of mSUGRA parameter space.

## Acknowledgments

We thank the staffs at Fermilab and collaborating institutions, and acknowledge support from the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation (USA), Commissariat à L’Energie Atomique and CNRS/Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (France), Ministry for Science and Technology and Ministry for Atomic Energy (Russia), CAPES and CNPq (Brazil), Departments of Atomic Energy and Science and Education (India), Colciencias (Colombia), CONACyT (Mexico), Ministry of Education and KOSEF (Korea), CONICET and UBACyT (Argentina), The Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (The Netherlands), PPARC (United Kingdom), Ministry of Education (Czech Republic), A.P. Sloan Foundation, NATO, and the Research Corporation.