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# System, centrality, and transverse mass dependence of two-pion correlation radii in heavy ion collisions at 11.6 and 14.6 A⋅GeV/c

## I Introduction

Bose-Einstein correlations of identical charged pions were first observed and used to extract a source size for pion emission in $`p\overline{p}`$ annihilations Goldhaber et al. (1960). This technique has since been applied to heavy ion collisions ranging in energy from 1.8 A$``$GeV/c at the Bevalac Fung et al. (1978); Zajc et al. (1984) to $`\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}=130`$ GeV at RHIC Adler et al. (2001); Adcox et al. (2002) (see also recent reviews Csörgő (2002); Wiedemann and Heinz (1999) and references therein). Symmetrization of the two-pion wave function results in an enhancement of the two-particle correlation in a region of low relative momentum, the extent of which is inversely proportional to the size or radius of the emitting source. The technique is most commonly referred to as HBT, after the similar technique pioneered by Hanbury-Brown and Twiss to measure stellar radii from intensity interferometry with radio waves Brown and Twiss (1954). The form of the two-pion correlation depends upon the emission function assumed for the pion source. For static source distributions with no final state interactions, such as the Fermi Statistical Model first used by Goldhaber et al. Goldhaber et al. (1960), the correlation function is related to the square of the 3-dimensional Fourier transform of the source distribution, $`\rho (𝐫)`$, with respect to the pion relative momentum, $`𝐪=𝐩_\mathrm{𝟏}𝐩_\mathrm{𝟐}`$,

$$C(𝐩_\mathrm{𝟏},𝐩_\mathrm{𝟐})\frac{P(𝐩_\mathrm{𝟏},𝐩_\mathrm{𝟐})}{P(𝐩_\mathrm{𝟏})P(𝐩_\mathrm{𝟐})}=1+|\stackrel{~}{\rho }(𝐪)|^2.$$
(1)
For a multi-dimensional, Gaussian parameterization of the source, the enhancement in the relative momentum correlation is given by a multi-dimensional Gaussian with each Gaussian width inversely proportional to the canonically conjugate dimension, or radius. For dynamic, rapidly expanding sources the radii decrease with increasing transverse mass, $`m_T`$, of the pion pair Pratt (1984, 1986); Makhlin and Sinyukov (1988); Chapman et al. (1995a); Wiedeman et al. (1996), where $`m_T=\sqrt{k_{T}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+m_\pi ^2}`$, and $`k_T`$ is the mean transverse momentum of the pion pair. These $`m_T`$-dependent radii correspond to the relative separations of the pions with low relative momentum and are commonly referred to as “lengths of homogeneity”.

Interest in measuring source sizes in heavy ion collisions comes partly from the expectation that the presence of a QCD phase transition will lead to large source sizes and long lifetimes for particle emission Pratt (1986); Bertsch and Brown (1989); Rischke and Gyulassy (1996). The absence of such a signal, coupled with the complex and subtle nature of the $`m_T`$ dependence, has left many puzzled over how best to interpret the available HBT results. However, in heavy ion collisions, there exists additional geometric information from the size of the system, the centrality of the collision, and also the reaction plane. Results on the pion source shape relative to the reaction plane for non-central collisions Lisa et al. (2000); Wiedeman (1998) provide one important confirmation that HBT radii are strongly correlated with physical dimensions of the nuclear overlap region. A previous comparison of HBT sources to nuclear geometry Bartke (1986) also confirmed this correlation, but the compilation included different source parameterizations, online triggers, and experimental acceptances.

We present a study of the dependence of the radii on system size and centrality for the two-pion correlation function from 14.6 A$``$GeV/c Si+Al, Si+Au, and 11.6 A$``$GeV/c Au+Au collisions at the BNL AGS measured by the E802 rotating magnetic spectrometer (Henry Higgins). The radii are compared to three geometric quantities: the effective nuclear radius for the number of projectile participants, the radius for the total participants, and the transverse distribution of binary collisions calculated with a Glauber model. The data sets of the three systems span a range of seven distinct nuclear geometries. The $`m_T`$ dependence is examined for the high statistics central Si+Au and Au+Au systems and compared to measurements of Au+Au central collisions by the E866 Forward Spectrometer. Furthermore, the centrality dependence is investigated separately for high and low values of $`m_T`$ for all systems.

Sec. II describes the experimental apparatus relevant to this analysis. Sec. III covers the data reduction. The correlation analysis procedure is described in Sec. IV and results are presented in Sec. V. The conclusions are given in Sec. VI. Appendix C contains the complete set of tables for the correlation radii. A Monte Carlo study to check systematic effects in the Yano-Koonin fits is presented in Appendix A. Details and systematic studies of the Coulomb correction are provided in Appendix B.

## II Experiment

The Si+Al/Au data were collected in 1991 and 1992 by BNL E859, and the Au+Au data were collected in 1992 and 1994 by BNL E866. Both experiments were extensions of BNL E802. This series of experiments ran in the B1 line of the Brookhaven AGS from 1986 through 1995. The complete experimental setups are described elsewhere Abbott et al. (1990); Shigaki et al. (1999). The components essential for this analysis are a Target Multiplicity Array (TMA), a Zero-degree Calorimeter (ZCAL) Beavis et al. (1989), a series of four drift chambers (T1–T4), two trigger chambers (TR1,TR2), two multi-wire proportional chambers (TRF1,TRF2) a time of flight wall (TOF), beam counters (BC), and a level-2 trigger (LVL2).

The TMA measured total charged particle multiplicity from resistive tube pads configured in a wall and barrel array surrounding the target. A sum of the discriminated pad signals was used in the level-1 trigger to enhance both central and peripheral data sets. The TMA was present only for the Si beam and was removed prior to the Au beam commissioning in 1992. The ZCAL consisted of alternating layers of Pb and scintillator and was placed 11 m downstream from the target. It was completely rebuilt and incorporated into the level-1 trigger prior to the start of Au beam in 1992. For the data sets presented here the rms energy resolution ranged from $`2.0\sqrt{E}`$ for the Si beam to $`3.2\sqrt{E}`$ for the Au beam.

Beam definitions and $`t_0`$ for TOF were provided by upstream beam counters (BC) in anti-coincidence with a series of veto paddles. The interaction trigger condition was established by a bullseye (BE) scintillator detector, placed just before the ZCAL. For the Au beam, this was replaced by a Čerenkov radiator. The interaction trigger was defined by $`Z<26.5`$ for the Si Beam, and $`Z<73`$ for the Au beam.

The four drift chambers were placed two before and two after the magnet. T1, T2, T3, and T4, were positioned approximately 1, 1.5, 4, and 4.5 m downstream from the target, respectively. The drift chambers provided a position resolution of 150 $`\mu `$m, and a minimum two-track separation of 2 mm. For this analysis, the magnet was run at 0.4 Tesla, for an integrated field of 0.585 T-m. The trigger chambers, TR1 and TR2, were located behind T3 and T4, respectively. For the 1994 running, two highly segmented multi-wire chambers, TRF1 and TRF2 were added behind T1 and T2, respectively, to improve track reconstruction in the higher multiplicity environment. Resolutions for the TRF chambers were approximately 200 $`\mu `$m. The TOF was placed about 6 m downstream and particle flight times were measured with an rms resolution of 120 ps.

The level-2 trigger (LVL2) was an integral part of the data taking and was especially important for collecting two-pion events in peripheral collisions. It consisted of TR1, TR2, TOF, and a series of LeCroy CAMAC modules used for fast readout, hit storage, memory lookup, and logic Zajc (1992). The trigger algorithm looped over all TR1-TOF hit combinations and matched hits on TR2 for tracks projected from the target. Momentum and $`1/\beta `$ for valid combinations were determined through lookup tables based on hit positions and time-of-flight. One or two independent regions in mass vs. momentum could be specified in any logical combination to form the trigger condition. All events for which the LVL2 did not produce a veto within 40 $`\mu `$sec were accepted. A set of events in which the LVL2 decision was recorded but not used to veto were collected for each LVL2 condition used in the experiment. All data sets presented here made use of the level-2 trigger, sometimes in combination with a level-1 centrality trigger in the TMA or ZCAL. LVL2 rejection factors ranged from 3–10 for Au+Au central to Si+Al peripheral events. Trigger inefficiencies were determined to be of order 1% for these data, and were dominated by the wire chamber inefficiencies. No detectable trigger bias was found for the two-pion data sets.

Nine data sets were taken covering seven different system and centrality conditions. These data sets are summarized in order of increasing system size and centrality in Table 1. The online cut column refers to the multiplicity hardware centrality definition for the Si beam data and the forward energy definition for the Au beam data. Sets 1 and 2 are for $`\pi ^+`$ pairs from a 14.6 A$``$GeV/c Si beam incident on a 1.63 g/cm2 Al target (6% beam interaction length). Set 1 combines both peripheral TMA triggered data and minimum bias data. Set 2 includes only the minimum bias data. Sets 3–6 are for pion pairs from a Si beam incident on a 0.944 g/cm2 Au target (1%). Two different TMA level-1 thresholds were used to collect negative pion pairs for peripheral and semi-peripheral events (sets 3 and 4). The central TMA trigger was used to collect pion pairs of both signs (sets 5 and 6). Negative pion pairs from 11.6 A$``$GeV/c Au+Au collisions were taken using the same Au target (1.5% interaction length for Au beam) for central triggers in 1992 (set 9), and for minimum bias events in 1994 (sets 7 and 8).

The Au+Au minimum bias data set was divided at E$`_{\text{ZCAL}}`$$`=550`$ in order to match the online centrality condition for data set 9. All data sets were subject to offline cuts to reject beam pile-up and to improve centrality definition. Table 1 gives the final pion pair statistics after all offline cuts.

The final TMA multiplicity and ZCAL forward energy distributions for all nine data sets are shown in Fig. 1. Only the ZCAL distributions are shown for the Au+Au system (sets 7–9) — a new multiplicity array (NMA) was in place for the collection of data in sets 7 and 8 but was not used in this analysis. The negative values in some of the E$`_{\text{ZCAL}}`$ distributions were the results of excessive noise in the ZCAL electronics readout. This effect is taken into account in the centrality determination described in the next section.

## III Data Reduction

### III.1 Centrality Determination

The forward energy distributions from ZCAL were used to determine the collision geometry for each system. The number of participant nucleons from the projectile is nominally calculated from the ZCAL forward energy (E$`_{\text{ZCAL}}`$) and the kinetic energy per nucleon (E$`_{\text{nucleon}}`$) according to,

$${}_{}{}^{ZC}N_{\text{proj}}^{}=A\frac{\text{E}_{\text{ZCAL}}}{\text{E}_{\text{nucleon}}}.$$
(2)
In applying Eq. 2 to the data, negative E$`_{\text{ZCAL}}`$ values were included in the average. The mean values for $`{}_{}{}^{1/3}{}_{}{}^{ZC}N_{\text{proj}}^{}`$ are given in Table 2.

To account for the effect of the excess noise in the ZCAL, and to obtain a more accurate determination of the collision geometry, a Monte Carlo Glauber model was used to simulate the forward energy distributions. We use a value of 30 mb for the N-N cross-section and the nuclear distributions are given by a Wood-Saxon distribution with nuclear radius, $`r=1.07A^{1/3}`$ fm, and surface thickness 0.55 fm B. Hahn (1956).

The ZCAL value for each Monte Carlo event in a given system was calculated by sampling from a Poisson distribution set by the beam distribution for the data. This distribution was then smeared with a Gaussian to simulate the additional noise observed in the distributions. The width of the Gaussian term (10–20 GeV) was chosen to match the noise in the target-out corrected minimum bias distribution while maintaining agreement for beam events.

The model was used to calculate distributions for the number of projectile, target, and total participants and the transverse rms distribution of binary collisions ($`\rho _{\text{rms}}`$). Each Monte Carlo event was assigned a weight according to it’s calculated ZCAL value, defined by the ZCAL distribution for 2$`\pi `$ events divided by the minimum bias distribution. This weighting procedure is necessary to reproduce the correct ZCAL distribution for events with two pions in the spectrometer. The weighted distributions for the impact parameter and total participants are shown in Fig. 2. The mean values are listed in Table 2. The average value of $`{}_{}{}^{ZC}N_{\text{proj}}^{}`$ calculated with Eq. 2 are similar to the values of $`N_{\text{proj}}`$ calculated using the Glauber model. All geometric quantities are observed to increase with increasing centrality within each system. The geometric values are identical for the two central Si+Au data sets and nearly equivalent for the two central Au+Au data sets.

### III.2 Pion identification and pair selection

The tracking algorithm for the 1991-1992 data (sets 1–6, 9) Rothschild (1994) began with a road-finder to connect TOF, TR1 and TR2 hits. Additional hits collected on the downstream tracking chambers were used to construct the downstream track segment. This was projected through the magnet using an effective dipole field approximation assuming a target vertex and hist were collected on T1 and T2. All hits associated with the track were fit with the vertex constraint removed. Tracks were required to pass goodness of fit cuts and to project to within 2 cm of the nominal target position. The single particle momentum resolution was determined by GEANT simulation and parameterized as $`\sigma _p=ap/\beta bp^2`$, with $`a=1.2\%`$ and $`b=0.6\%`$ (GeV/c)-1. For the 1994 data (sets 7–8) upstream track segments were found and fit independently using the additional hits on TRF1 and TRF2. The two track segments were then fit using the same magnetic field approximation, and applying the same vertex and goodness of fit cuts. Using additional information from TRF1 and TRF2 the momentum resolution for 1994 was improved to give $`a=0.85\%`$ and $`b=0.12\%`$ (GeV/c)-1 Wang (1996).

Pions were identified up to a momentum of 1.85 GeV/c by requiring a unique association with a TOF hit, and a measured $`1/\beta `$ that lies within $`3\sigma `$ of the expected value for pions and outside of the $`3\sigma `$ band for kaons. The dominant background comes from electron contamination, determined to be less than 5% Soltz (1994) in the region $`0.54<p<1.3`$ GeV/c. Pion pair momentum distributions for the central Si+Au and Au+Au data sets are shown in Fig. 3. The Si-beam data were taken with a spectrometer setting of 14 degrees, which covers an angular region from 14 to 28 degrees and leads to a mean pair-rapidity for pions approximately equal to $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$$`=`$1.72. For the Au-beam the spectrometer was rotated to 21 degrees, primarily to achieve lower track densities in the upstream chambers. The mean pion pair-rapidity for the Au-beam data is 1.43, slightly backwards of $`Y_{\text{NN}}=1.61`$.

The two-track resolution was determined separately for the 1991–1992 and 1994 tracking algorithms, by examining the ratio of signal to event-mixed pairs versus the relative slopes $`\delta \theta _x`$ and $`\delta \theta _y`$ upstream of the magnet. For the 1991–1992 data set, the two-track efficiency is well parameterized by a two-dimensional Gaussian,

$`\epsilon (\delta \theta _x,\delta \theta _y)`$ $`=`$ $`10.86\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{(2.75)^2\delta \theta _x^2+\delta \theta _y^2}{2(0.0121)^2}}\right],`$
$`\delta \theta _x`$ $`=`$ $`p_{1x}/p_{1z}p_{2x}/p_{2z},`$
$`\delta \theta _y`$ $`=`$ $`p_{1y}/p_{1z}p_{2y}/p_{2z}.`$ (3)
A detailed GEANT simulation of two-pion events produced the same Gaussian widths for the two-track efficiency, but the coefficient for the exponential was closer to unity. One expects this coefficient to be less than unity in the data due to the presence of mis-associated hits from other tracks. The inverse of Eq. III.2 was applied as a correction in the region where the efficiency was greater than $``$50%, defined as,

$$\sqrt{(2.75)^2\delta \theta _x^2+\delta \theta _y^2}>0.011.$$
(4)
Pairs not in this region were removed from the analysis.

For the 1994 data (sets 7 and 8), the two-track efficiency is flat but then drops sharply for close tracks. For these data, no correction was applied and the two-track cut is given by,

$$\sqrt{\delta \theta _x^2+\delta \theta _y^2}>0.008.$$
(5)
## IV Correlation Analysis

### IV.1 Parameterizations

Ideally the Bose-Einstein correlation function is defined to be the ratio of the probability for emitting two pions in the presence of Bose-Einstein symmetrization to the probability for the case with no symmetrization. The latter can be approximated using Monte Carlo or event mixing Kopylov (1974) techniques. For each data set, an event-mixed background was formed from pion pairs from different events chosen at random from the entire data set. The number of background pairs was chosen to be 5–10 times the signal to achieve statistical errors smaller than those for the signal, but still Poisson distributed Soltz (1994). This background differs from the ideal in two respects, it contains a residual correlation distortion first noted by Zajc Zajc et al. (1984), and it lacks two-body final state interactions such as the Coulomb interaction. The effect of the residual correlation is included in the systematic error estimates. We correct for the Coulomb interaction using an analytic approximation for the Coulomb wave function of two-pions emanating from a finite static source. This source is assumed to be a spherically symmetric Gaussian in the pair center-of-mass frame. This approximation has been described before Ahle et al. (1996) and is reviewed in Appendix B. The two-track cuts (Eq. 4 and 5) are applied to both the signal and background. Other final state interactions such as the di-pion strong interaction Suzuki (1987); Bowler (1988) and the Coulomb interaction with the nuclear remnant are expected to be negligible Kopylov (1972) and are not considered. The correlation function is then given by,

$$C_2(𝐪,k_T)=\frac{A(𝐪,k_T)}{B(𝐪,k_T)}\frac{1}{\epsilon (\delta \theta _x,\delta \theta _y)}\frac{1}{F(\eta ,Q_{\text{inv}},R_{\text{inv}})}.$$
(6)
Here, $`A`$ and $`B`$ are the signal and event-mixed background, $`\epsilon `$ is the two-track efficiency defined by Eq. III.2, and $`F`$ is the Coulomb correction defined by Eq. 17. $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ is the magnitude of two-pion relative 4-momentum in the pair rest frame, and $`R_{\text{inv}}`$ is the parameter returned by the 1-D invariant Gaussian parameterization,

$$C_2(Q_{\text{inv}})=1+\lambda e^{(Q_{\text{inv}}^2R_{\text{inv}}^2)}.$$
(7)
Fits to this parameterization are used to perform an iterative determination of the Coulomb correction. Beginning with the assumption of a point source (i.e. Gamow correction), the $`R_{\text{inv}}`$ parameter converges to within 1% after two iterations for all data sets.

The Yano-Koonin parameterization Yano and Koonin (1978) is used to extract the longitudinal velocity of the source,

$$C_2(Q_{\text{inv}},q_\text{l})=1+\lambda e^{\left(R^2+\tau ^2\right)\gamma _s^2\left(q_0\beta _sq_\text{l}\right)^2+\left(Q_{\text{inv}}^2R^2\right)},$$
(8)
where $`q_\text{l}=p_{z1}p_{z2}`$ and $`\beta _s`$ is the longitudinal component of the source velocity. $`R`$ and $`\tau `$ are the spherically symmetric Gaussian radius and emission duration, respectively.

Using the source frames determined from the Yano-Koonin fits, all data sets were fit to the 3-D Bertsch-Pratt parameterization Pratt (1986); Bertsch and Brown (1989),

$$C_2(q_\text{l},q_\text{s},q_\text{o})=1+\lambda e^{\left(q_\text{l}^2R_\text{l}^2q_\text{s}^2R_\text{s}^2q_\text{o}^2R_\text{o}^2\right)},$$
(9)
where $`q_\text{l}`$ is the longitudinal component of the relative momentum from Eq. 8. The transverse relative momentum is separated into components perpendicular ($`q_\text{s}`$) and parallel ($`q_\text{o}`$) to the pion pair velocity. This parameterization measures the longitudinal and transverse correlation lengths, $`R_\text{l}`$ and $`R_\text{s}`$, respectively. For an azimuthally symmetric source without dynamical correlations, the pion emission duration is calculated from $`R_\text{o}`$, $`R_\text{s}`$, and the transverse velocity of the pion pair, $`\beta _T`$,

$$\tau =\sqrt{R_{\text{o}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}R_{\text{s}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}/<\beta _T>.$$
(10)
A variation of this parameterization suggested by Chapman Chapman et al. (1995b), includes a cross-term, $`R_{\text{lo}}`$, which is expected to be non-vanishing for sources that are asymmetric in $`z`$,

$$C_2(q_\text{l},q_\text{s},q_\text{o})=1+\lambda e^{\left(q_\text{l}^2R_\text{l}^2q_\text{s}^2R_\text{s}^2q_\text{o}^2R_\text{o}^22q_\text{l}q_\text{o}R_{\text{lo}}^2\right)}.$$
(11)
It is instructive to relate the cross-term to the Generalized Yano-Koonin parameterization (GYK) Chapman et al. (1995a), using the relation, $`q_0=\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{\beta }_{pr}`$.

$`C_2(q_\text{l},q_\text{T},q_\text{0})=1+\lambda e^{\left(q_\text{l}^2R_\text{l}^2q_\text{T}^2R_\text{T}^2q_\text{0}^2\tau ^2\right)}`$
$`=`$ $`1+\lambda e^{(q_\text{l}^2(R_\text{l}^2+\beta _l^2\tau ^2)q_\text{T}^2(R_\text{T}^2+\beta _T^2\tau ^2)2q_\text{l}q_\text{o}\beta _l\beta _T\tau ^2))}.`$
This provides a simple explanation for the cross-term, $`R_{\text{lo}}`$ in the absence of dynamical correlations, and illustrates why the cross-term vanishes for sources which are symmetric about the $`z=0`$ plane.

### IV.2 Minimization

A new log-likelihood minimization function is used in this analysis. It assumes Poisson probability distributions for both signal and background, with means given by $`\mu `$ and $`\nu `$ respectively. The correlation function is defined as the ratio of these means by imposing a delta-function constraint on the conditional probability for $`C`$, given $`A`$ and $`B`$,

$`P(C|A,B)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\mu 𝑑\nu \left(\frac{\mu ^Ae^\mu }{A!}\right)\left(\frac{\nu ^Be^\nu }{B!}\right)\delta \left(C\mu /\nu \right)}`$ (13)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{C^A}{A!B!}}{\displaystyle \frac{\left(A+B+1\right)!}{\left(C+1\right)^{A+B+2}}}.`$
Taking the negative of twice the log and collecting leading order terms in $`A`$ and $`B`$ leads to the minimization function used in this analysis,

$$\chi _P^2=2\left[A\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{C\left(A+B\right)}{A\left(C+1\right)}\right)+B\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{A+B}{B\left(C+1\right)}\right)\right].$$
(14)
Note that Eq. 14 approaches a chi-squared distribution, $`\frac{(ACB)^2}{\sigma _A^2+\sigma _{CB}^2}`$, in the limit of large $`A`$ and $`B`$. We compare Eq. 14 to another log-likelihood minimization function commonly used Zajc (1991),

$`\chi _{PML}^2=2(C_2BA)`$
$`2(\sigma _A^2+\sigma _{C_2B}^2)\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(C_2BA)+(\sigma _A^2+\sigma _{C_2B}^2)}{(\sigma _A^2+\sigma _{C_2B}^2)}}\right).`$
This form also assumes a Poisson distributed signal for $`A`$, but the error terms for the background have been derived by working backwards from the chi-squared limit. All terms in Eq. 14 follow naturally from the assumption of Poisson distributions for $`A`$ and $`B`$ and the log-likelihood method. For this reason, the new minimization function may be more accurate for fits involving bins with small counts. However, both Eqs. 14 and IV.2 were shown to give consistent results in fits to the data. The minimization was performed using the MINUIT package min .

## V Results

For each of the nine data sets in Table 1 the three parameterizations, $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$, Yano-Koonin, and Bertsch-Pratt were performed in order. The $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ fits were used to determine the Coulomb correction. The longitudinal velocity of the source frames were obtained from the Yano-Koonin fits, and the HBT radii from the Bertsch-Pratt fits were used in analysis of centrality, system, and $`k_T`$ dependence. A complete set of tables for all fitted radii are given in Appendix C.

### V.1 $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ Fit Results

Fit results for the final iteration $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ fits are summarized in Table 8. Tables 8 through 15 are found in Appendix C. These radii were taken as input to the Coulomb correction calculation for all subsequent multi-dimensional parameterizations for these data sets. For each system, $`R_{\text{inv}}`$ increases with collision centrality. Table 8 also lists the mean transverse mass,$`<m_T>`$, for each of the nine data sets. In calculating this mean, it is common to restrict the average to only those pairs with low relative momentum, which carry the information on the source dimensions. However, for systems that vary in size, the region of low relative momentum will also vary inversely with the source size. To account for this effect, the average restricted to the region $`Q_{\text{inv}}<2/R_{\text{inv}}`$ using the step function $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$,

$$<m_T^{}>=\frac{_{i=1}^N\sqrt{(k_T^2)_i+m_\pi ^2}\mathrm{\Theta }(2/R_{\text{inv}}(Q_{\text{inv}})_i)}{_{i=1}^N\mathrm{\Theta }(2/R_{\text{inv}}(Q_{\text{inv}})_i)}$$
(16)
The quantity $`<m_T^{}>`$ should be sufficiently general to be used over a wide variation of system sizes and experimental acceptances. Table 8 shows that $`<m_T^{}>`$ is never less than 84% of $`<m_T>`$ for these data.

The fully corrected $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ correlation functions fits are shown in the left set of panels of Fig. 4.

### V.2 Yano-Koonin Fit Results

By construction, the $`R`$ and $`\tau `$ parameters of Eq. 8 are in the longitudinal rest frame of the source, and are invariant under longitudinal boosts. However, large longitudinal boosts yield q-distributions that are extended along a narrow ridge of the $`q_\text{l}=q_0`$ axis, and this presents a challenge for binning and minimization. This effect was studied with a Monte Carlo simulation and it was determined that there is a slight systematic bias in the fitted $`\tau `$ and $`\beta _s`$ when the reference frame differs from the true source frame by more than a half unit of rapidity. The results of this study are given in Appendix A.

To minimize this bias, all data sets were initially fit in the $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$ frame, 1.72 for the Si-beam and 1.60 for Au. Data sets with values of $`\beta _\text{s}`$ which differed significantly from zero were then refit in the frames expected to yield $`\beta _\text{s}=0`$. Only the Si+Au central data (sets 5 and 6) and Au+Au data (sets 7–9) required a second fit. The weighted means for $`\beta _\text{s}`$for the Si+Au central and Au+Au systems were $`0.24\pm 0.03`$ and $`0.15\pm 0.05`$ respectively. This led to the choice of the $`Y=1.50`$ frame from for central Si+Au, and the $`Y=1.45`$ frame for Au+Au. Final fit frames and all parameters for the Yano-Koonin fits are listed in Table 9. These frames are used for all remaining fits.

All final values for $`\beta _\text{s}`$ are within two standard deviations of zero. As with the $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ results, the Yano-Koonin radius increases monotonically with centrality for all systems and from smaller systems to larger. The emission duration shows a similar but weaker dependence on system size and centrality. We note that because the acceptance for the Si-beam pairs centered at $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$ (see Fig. 3), the final values for $`\beta _\text{s}`$ for the Si+Al and non-central Si+Au systems are consistent with both the assumptions of a fixed source at $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$ and longitudinal boost invariance. The final values of $`\beta _\text{s}`$ for the symmetric Au+Au system are closer to the mean pair rapidity of $`Y=1.43`$ than to $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$ and therefore imply a source that is longitudinally boost invariant. However, the values of $`\beta _\text{s}`$ for the asymmetric Si+Au central system are indicative of a pion source shifted backwards to $`Y=1.50`$ and are inconsistent with the assumption of longitudinal boost-invariance.

### V.3 Bertsch-Pratt Fit Results

The results of the Bertsch-Pratt fits with and without the Chapman $`R_{\text{lo}}`$ cross-term are listed in Tables 10 and 11, respectively. The system and centrality dependence of the radii will be presented graphically in Sec. V.4. The $`R_{\text{lo}}`$ cross-terms are consistent with zero for the symmetric systems measured at mid-rapidity, as expected. The largest values are for the Si+Au and Au+Au central systems, and only for the central Si+Au$`2\pi ^{}`$ does the $`R_{\text{lo}}`$ term differ from zero by more than $`2\sigma `$.

Slices of the correlation functions for the Bertsch-Pratt fits (no cross-term) for all systems in Table 10 are shown in the right three panels of Fig. 4. The slices in each q-component are averaged over $`q_i<40`$ MeV/c in the orthogonal q-variables.

From the values of $`R_\text{o}`$ and $`R_\text{s}`$ in the Bertsch-Pratt fits we have extracted values for the emission duration, $`\tau `$, using Eq. 10. These are compared to the corresponding emission duration parameters measured in the Yano-Koonin fits. Fig. 5 shows the two parameterizations give similar results, but with Yano-Koonin $`\tau `$ is smaller for the lighter systems. This trend is consistent with the assumption of spherical symmetry in Yano-Koonin, and the trend towards greater asymmetry ($`R_\text{l}`$$`>`$$`R_\text{s}`$) in the lighter systems. The Generalized Yano-Koonin (GYK) suggested in Chapman et al. (1995a), which separates the transverse and longitudinal components of the source, is a logical extension to Eq. 8. Use of this parameterization in the future may lead to an improved correspondence between emission durations determined by the two methods. For the remaining sections $`\tau `$ is extracted from Eq. 10 and its error incorporates the $`R_\text{o}`$-$`R_\text{s}`$ covariant term from the error matrix.

As a systematic check on the reference frames, Bertsch-Pratt fits were also performed in the Longitudinal Co-Moving System (LCMS) frame, defined as the local frame in which the longitudinal pair momentum is zero. These results are given in Table 12. All radii are consistent with the fixed frame fits to within two standard deviations. Large differences are not expected given that the fixed frames used in the previous fits were consistent with the pair LCMS for all but the Si+Au central system, and the rms width of pair rapidity distribution is small ($``$0.1).

### V.4 Centrality and System Dependence

We examine the dependence of the HBT radii on system size and centrality by comparing the Bertsch-Pratt radii given in Table 10 to the geometric quantities of Table 2. Fig. 6 shows each of the radius parameters and the extracted emission duration plotted vs. mean values of $`N_{\text{proj}}^{1/3}`$ and $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$. The geometric dependences were fit to a linear form, $`a+bx`$. The extracted slopes and intercepts are given in Table III. $`R_\text{s}`$ is also fit to to a linear dependence on $`\rho _{\text{rms}}`$, yielding $`a=0.01\pm 0.38`$, $`b=1.19\pm 0.18`$, with a $`\chi ^2`$/dof of 3.5/7.

All fitted parameters exhibit a linear dependence on both $`N_{\text{proj}}^{1/3}`$ and $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$. Converting $`R_\text{s}`$ values to 3D rms radii ($`\sqrt{3}\times R_\text{s}`$) yields slopes of $`0.99\pm 0.14`$. and $`1.20\pm 0.17`$ for $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$ and $`N_{\text{proj}}^{1/3}`$, respectively. The latter slope is consistent with the $`A_p^{1/3}`$ scaling noted by J. Bartke Bartke (1986), where $`A_p`$ denotes the atomic number of the projectile. This scaling dependence was taken from an analysis of mean-free paths of nuclear projectiles in emulsion Tanihata (1985); Heckman et al. (1978). It is equivalent to the A-dependence of a hard sphere nuclear radius, and is consistent with measurements of the nuclear charge distribution in electron scattering B. Hahn (1956). The $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$ slopes for $`R_\text{l}`$ are 60% smaller than for $`R_\text{s}`$, whereas for $`R_\text{o}`$ they are 10% larger. In addition, the $`\tau `$ parameter also displays a significant slope that is consistent with the dependence of $`R_\text{l}`$.

We note that the rms values in reference Bartke (1986) were derived from a variety of trigger conditions, parameterizations and regions of $`m_T`$, whereas in this analysis the parameterizations are uniform, the trigger conditions are accounted for, and the value of $`<m_T^{}>`$ is in the range of 300–325 MeV for Si+Al/Au and 350–360 MeV for Au+Au. The implication of the higher $`<m_T^{}>`$ range for Au+Au will be discussed in the next section.

The $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$ fits have a slightly lower $`\chi ^2`$/dof than the $`N_{\text{proj}}^{1/3}`$ fits. The success of the $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$, $`N_{\text{proj}}^{1/3}`$ and $`\rho _{\text{rms}}`$ fits illustrates that there is more than one way to map the system/centrality onto geometry, and that the scaling of HBT radii need not be restricted to an effective radius of an assembly of wounded nucleons.

To translate the slopes and intercepts into a true geometric dependence of the pion source sizes requires a careful study of the $`m_T`$ dependence of each radius. However, if the $`m_T`$ dependence is largely independent of system/centrality, one can extrapolate the entire scaling to lower $`m_T`$. Then the scaling observed at moderate values of $`m_T`$ will also be valid at lower $`m_T`$ value, where (for $`R_\text{s}`$) the geometric source is better approximated.

The intercepts for all $`R_\text{s}`$ fits are consistent with zero, as one would expect for the dependence of a transverse overlap region that is extrapolated to zero participants. The intercepts for all other radius parameters differ significantly from zero. This is physically meaningful in the context of the standard interpretations given to these parameters, where $`R_\text{l}`$ is indicative of the hadronization time, and $`R_\text{o}`$ and $`\tau `$ are sensitive to the emission duration. Thus, even when extrapolating to zero participants, one may expect to measure finite lengths and durations for the pion hadronization.

### V.5 Transverse Momentum Dependence

To study the transverse momentum dependence the central Si+Au$`2\pi ^{}`$ data set was subdivided into three equal-statistics bins in $`m_T`$ (sets a,c,e), and the Si+Au$`2\pi ^+`$ data set was subdivided into two equal bins (sets b,d). The two central Au+Au$`2\pi ^{}`$ data sets were merged, and then divided into three equal bins (sets f,g,h). For this merged data set, the two-track cut of Eq. 5 was increased from 8 mrad to 15 mrad, and no two-track correction was applied. Fits to the full merged data set were performed for all parameterizations above and were found to be consistent with fits to the separate data sets. The data sets are given in Table 13, along with the fit parameters and values for $`<m_T^{}>`$. The fully corrected $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ and Bertsch-Pratt correlation functions and fits are shown in Fig. 7.

The transverse momentum dependence of the two-pion correlation function has been discussed by many authors, Pratt (1984); Sinyukov (1989); Chapman et al. (1995c); Chapman and Nix (1996); Herrmann and Bertsch (1995); Wiedeman et al. (1996); Wiedeman and Heinz (1997), and in principle can be used to test dynamic models for rapidly expanding sources. We have found that the small number of $`k_T`$ bins are insufficient to constrain these models. Instead we use an exponential form, $`e^{(\alpha +\beta m_T)}`$ to provide an empirical description of the $`m_T`$ dependence of the Si+Au system, and use this to check the Au+Au system for consistency. Values for $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are given in Table IV. Fig. 8 shows the $`m_T`$ dependence for sets a–h, and for the Si+Au radii rescaled from $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}=2.87`$ to $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}=6.89`$ to match Au+Au. The solid line shows the $`m_T`$ exponential fit also rescaled in this way. The Au+Au data points are consistent with the rescaled dependence for each radius.

Also shown are the E866 forward spectrometer results for $`\pi ^{}`$ pairs from $`1.9<Y<2.3`$ for a centrality range that corresponds to the top 24% of the interaction cross-section gated on multiplicity Soltz et al. (1999); Lee (1998). These data are less central than the Au+Au data set at mid-rapidity, which correspond to the top $``$15% of the interaction cross-section gated on forward energy. For comparison, the forward spectrometer results are also shown rescaled up from $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}=6.3`$, as determined from the Glauber model calculations for the 24% most central collisions. Unlike the determination of $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$ for the other data sets, this was not done using the forward energy distributions for events containing 2-pions. This effect is largest for less central distributions, and therefore the rescaling of the forward rapidity radii in Fig. 8 should be taken as an upper bound. Overall, there is good agreement between the the rescaled Si+Au parameterized $`m_T`$ dependence and the $`m_T`$ dependence of the Au+Au radii at both forward and mid-rapidity.

The parameterized $`<m_T^{}>`$ dependence of Si+Au radii can now be used to check for errors arising from the 20% higher $`<m_T^{}>`$ values of the pion pairs for Au+Au used in the centrality analysis. The $`<m_T^{}>`$ dependence is used to interpolate all Bertsch-Pratt radii in Table 10 to a common value of $`<m_T^{}>=0.325`$ GeV and the linear dependence on $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$ and $`N_{\text{proj}}^{1/3}`$ is refit. The results are given in Table V. The slopes for all parameters except $`\tau `$ increase slightly. All difference are less than the reported uncertainties, and the observations of the preceding section with respect to slopes and intercepts remain valid.

### V.6 Centrality and Momentum

To investigate the centrality dependence for low and high regions of $`m_T`$, each of the data sets 1–7, and 8+9 combined ‘was divided into two $`m_T`$ bins of equal statistics. The $`<m_T^{}>`$, $`R_{\text{inv}}`$, and Bertsch-Pratt radii for these fits are listed in Tables 14 and 15. The system and centrality dependence of the high and low $`m_T`$ regions are shown in Fig. 9, plotted only for the $`N_{\text{total}}`$ scaling. Independent linear fits to the two $`m_T`$ regions are unable to resolve significant differences in the slopes and intercepts for the two regions. The data are compared to the $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$ linear fits (solid lines) for the full data sets that were shown in Fig. 6. The dashed lines are equal to the solid line fits interpolated up to 415 MeV and down to 275 MeV using the parameterized $`m_T`$ dependence of Si+Au.

The high (low) $`m_T`$ values for $`R_\text{l}`$ and $`R_\text{s}`$ fall below (above) the linear fits to full $`m_T`$ regions, and are approximately consistent with the interpolations to higher (lower) $`m_T`$. For $`R_\text{o}`$ the high $`m_T`$ points are closer to the solid line, and the low $`m_T`$ points fall slightly lower. For the $`\tau `$ parameter, nearly all points fall below the unbinned scaling. One possible explanation is a time-ordered pion emission, in which the high $`m_T`$ pions are emitted at a time that is displaced relative to the emission of the low $`m_T`$ pions. However, the potentially complex interplay between space, time, and momentum must be considered fully. At the very least, these results suggest a direction for future theoretical work and analysis with higher statistics measurements.

The ratio $`R_\text{o}`$/$`R_\text{s}`$ has been suggested as way to search for changes in the pion emission duration Rischke and Gyulassy (1996) in heavy ion collisions. This ratio is plotted in Fig. 10 for the unbinned Si+Au central 2$`\pi ^+`$ (set 5) and Au+Au central data (set 8+9), and for these data sets subdivided into three $`m_T`$ bins.

The values of $`R_\text{o}`$/Rs vary from 1.2 to 1.5, but do not indicate any clear dependence on the $`m_T`$ bin size. It may be interesting to repeat this study in the future with larger data samples and‘ statistically independent bins of different sizes.

### V.7 Systematic Errors

The systematic error in determining the centrality is expected to be dominated by the ZCAL noise. In the course of modifying the noise components in our model, we found nominal variations in the derived mean quantities to be consistent with a systematic error of approximately 5%.

The sources of systematic errors for the HBT radii are summarized in Table 6, and nominal values are given. The error due to finite momentum resolution was examined for the $`R_{\text{inv}}`$ fit of the Au+Au central data set kla , and the effect of residual correlations in the background is reported elsewhere for the $`R_{\text{inv}}`$ fit to the central Si+Au data set Cianciolo (1994); Akiba et al. (1993). The variation for the resolution smearing applies equally to each of the Bertsch-Pratt radii. All other variations are from $`R_{\text{inv}}`$ parameterizations of the central Si+Au$`2\pi ^{}`$ data set. The sign of the variation indicates the direction of the effect of incorporating the correction/change.

Although some of the systematic errors enter with different signs, the different contributions are added in quadrature to yield a total systematic error of 3% for the radii and 5% for $`\lambda `$.

The effect of a partial Coulomb correction is considered separately in Appendix B. If a significant fraction of pairs ($`>50\%`$) are not subject to the Coulomb interaction, then this error would dominate for both $`R`$ and $`\lambda `$.

## VI Conclusion

These data demonstrate unambiguously the strong connection that exists between the space-time measurements from Bose-Einstein correlations and collision geometry. All radii and lifetimes were observed to depend significantly on several measurements of system size and centrality. At $`<m_T^{}>=0.325`$ GeV, $`R_\text{s}`$ was observed to scale with the effective rms radius for the total number participants, as well as the linear transverse size in a Glauber model. For the $`R_\text{l}`$ and $`\tau `$ parameters the linear dependence on $`N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}`$ is 60% weaker, and for $`R_\text{o}`$ it is 10% stronger. Only $`R_\text{s}`$ extrapolates to an intercept of zero. The other parameters have finite intercepts of 1–2 fm for $`N_{\text{proj}}^{1/3},N_{\text{total}}^{1/3}=0.`$

Yano-Koonin fits were used to determine the longitudinal source velocities ($`\beta _\text{s}`$) for all systems. For all symmetric and non-central Si+Au systems measured at $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$, $`\beta _\text{s}`$is consistent with both a fixed source at $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$ and a source which exhibits longitudinal boost invariance. The $`\beta _\text{s}`$ for the Au+Au systems are only consistent with boost invariance, and for Si+Au central systems they imply a source that is shifted backwards of $`Y_{\text{NN}}`$.

The $`m_T`$ dependence of the radii has been parameterized for central Si+Au and shown to be consistent with the central Au+Au $`m_T`$ dependence at both mid and forward rapidity. For the first time, the system/centrality dependence was investigated independently for both high and low $`m_T`$ regions.

The dependence of $`R_\text{l}`$ and $`R_\text{s}`$ with $`N_{\text{total}}`$ at high and low $`m_T`$ is consistent with interpolations based on the parameterized $`m_T`$ dependence of the Si+Au central data. However, the $`R_\text{o}`$ and $`\tau `$ radii are inconsistent with this interpolated $`m_T`$ dependence, implying that these two parameters are sensitive to the width of the $`m_T`$ bin. Finally, the ratio $`R_\text{o}`$/$`R_\text{s}`$ is shown to be above unity for both the Si+Au and Au+Au central systems, and binning the data in $`m_T`$ does not change this result.

###### Acknowledgements.

The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contracts with ANL (W-31-109-ENG-38), BNL (DE-AC02-98CH10886), Columbia University (DE-FG0286-ER40281), LLNL (W-7405-ENG-48), MIT (DE-AC02-76ER03069), UC Riverside (DE-FG03-86ER40271), by NASA (NGR-05003-513), under contract with the University of California, by the Ministry of Education and KOSEF (951-0202-032-2), in Korea, and by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture of Japan. We wish to thank E.P. Hartouni and S. Pratt for their support and for enlightening discussions. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Chuck Parsons, whose insight, ingenuity, and enormously creative spirit inspired a generation of graduate students on E859.

## Appendix A Frame Dependence of the Yano-Koonin Parameterization

To study systematic effects of the Yano-Koonin parameterization a Monte Carlo sample of pion events was generated for a 3 fm spherically symmetric Gaussian source with lifetime 2 fm/c at $`Y=1.75`$ in the lab. These simulated pairs were then fit to Eq. 8 while varying the fit frame (in which the q-variables were calculated) from $`Y=0.5`$ to $`Y=3.0`$ in steps of 0.25 units of rapidity. In all fits, the bin sizes were fixed at 20 MeV for $`q_\text{l}`$ and 15 MeV for $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ and $`q_0`$. Fig. 11 shows the results of this study for the fitted radius, lifetime, and source frame.

There is a systematic shift in the source frame that is approximately 10% of the difference between the fit frame and the actual source frame. In the simulation this difference is noticeable for differences as small as 0.25 units in rapidity. The change in source frame is correlated with a reduction in the measured lifetime, although $`R`$ is observed to be stable for the region tested.

## Appendix B Coulomb Correction

The Coulomb correction function used in this work is an analytic approximation to the full Coulomb wave calculation. The form of this correction is given by,

$$G(\eta )\times \left[1+\eta P5(s)\frac{(1+F(s))}{1+e^{s^2}}\right]$$
(17)
where $`G`$ is the standard Gamow correction for a point source, and $`P5`$ is a fifth order polynomial in the dimensionless quantity $`s`$,

$`G(\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi \eta }{e^{2\pi \eta }1}}`$ (18)
$`\eta `$ $`=`$ $`2\mu \alpha /Q_{\text{inv}}`$ (19)
$`s`$ $`=`$ $`R_{\text{inv}}Q_{\text{inv}}/\mathrm{}`$ (20)
$`P5(s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\sqrt{\pi }}}\mathrm{min}(\pi ,8(s5s^3/9+52s^5/225))`$ (21)
where, $`\mu `$ is the reduced mass of the pion pair and $`\alpha `$ is the fine structure constant. The full form of the integral equation that was solved is described elsewhere Ahle et al. (1996), and the FORTRAN code for the tabulated function $`F(s)`$ is available upon request cou .

The accuracy of this analytic approximation (Eq. 17) is demonstrated in Fig. 12 by comparing the correction function for a 5 fm source to the Coulomb Wave integration calculated by the Correlation After Burner code (CRAB) cra . Fig. 12 shows a significant difference between the full Coulomb correction and the and Gamow correction, but the fast approximation shows good agreement with the calculation from CRAB.

The effect of resolution smearing was estimated by evaluating Eq. 17 for the event-mixed background, but applying the Coulomb weight at the value of $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$ returned by a spectral response function. The form of the response function was parameterized in momentum and polar angle spread according to Monte Carlo single particle distributions Cianciolo (1994). Fig. 12 shows the Coulomb correction histogram — weighted background divided by background — with and without the response function. The effect of the response function is evident only in the lowest bin (0-10 MeV/c), and introduced a 1% reduction in the 3D HBT radii and $`\lambda `$ values. Given the small size of the effect, it was incorporated into the overall systematic error estimate, but the correlation fits used the unsmeared correction.

If the deviation of $`\lambda `$ from unity is caused by a substantial fraction of pions from long lived resonances, it is possible that the effect of the Coulomb interaction will also be reduced in strength. To understand the magnitude of this effect, the Si+Au$`2\pi ^{}`$ data sets were fit with a half-strength Coulomb correction, and also with no Coulomb correction. The results are summarized in Table 7. Variations in the radii are as large as 20% for $`R_\text{l}`$ and $`R_\text{o}`$, and $`\lambda `$ is greatly affected. A thorough investigation of effect of long lived resonances on the Coulomb correction is left for further study.

## Appendix C Tables of Correlation Radii

Tables 8 through 15 show the complete set of fitted radii used to study the system, centrality, and transverse mass dependence for the $`Q_{\text{inv}}`$, Yano-Koonin, and Bertsch-Pratt fits of the 14.6 A$``$GeV/c Si+Al, Si+Au, and 11.6 A$``$GeV/c Au+Au data sets. All $`R`$ and $`\tau `$ parameters are given in units of fm and fm/c, respectively.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The results of searches for scalar quarks with the data collected in the year 2000 by the ALEPH detector at LEP are presented in this letter. The energies and integrated luminosities of the analysed data samples are given in Table 1. Previous results obtained with lower energy data have been reported by ALEPH in Refs. \[1–5\] and by the other LEP collaborations in Refs. \[6–8\].

The theoretical framework for these studies is the supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model , with R-parity conservation. The lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is assumed to be the lightest neutralino $`\chi `$ or the sneutrino $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$. Such an LSP is stable and weakly interacting. Each chirality state of the Standard Model fermions has a scalar supersymmetric partner. The scalar quarks (squarks) $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{L}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{R}`$ are the supersymmetric partners of the left-handed and right-handed quarks, respectively. The mass eigenstates are orthogonal combinations of the weak interaction eigenstates $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{L}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{R}`$. The mixing angle $`\theta _{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}}`$ is defined in such a way that $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}=\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{L}\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}}+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{R}\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}}`$ is the lighter squark. The off-diagonal terms of the mass matrix, responsible for mixing, read, with standard notation: $`m_\mathrm{q}(A_\mathrm{q}\mu \kappa `$), with $`\kappa =\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ for down-type and $`\kappa =1/\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ for up-type quarks. Since the size of this mixing term is proportional to the mass of the Standard Model partner, it could well be that the lightest supersymmetric charged particle is the lighter scalar top (stop, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}`$) or, in particular for large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ values, the lighter scalar bottom (sbottom, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{b}}`$). Squarks could be produced at LEP in pairs, $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}\overline{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}}`$, via $`s`$-channel exchange of a virtual photon or Z. The production cross section  depends on $`\theta _{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}}`$ when mixing is relevant, i.e., for stops and sbottoms.

The searches for stops described here assume that all supersymmetric particles except the lightest neutralino $`\chi `$ and possibly the sneutrino $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ are heavier than the stop. Under these assumptions, the allowed decay channels are $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{c}/\mathrm{u}\chi `$, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\chi \mathrm{f}\overline{\mathrm{f}}^{}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ . The corresponding diagrams are shown in Fig. 1. The decay $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{c}\chi `$ (Fig. 1a) proceeds only via loops and has a very small width, of the order of 0.01–$`1\mathrm{eV}`$ , depending on the mass difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ between the stop and the neutralino, and on the masses and field content of the particles involved in the loops. For low enough $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ values ($`\mathrm{\Delta }M\stackrel{<}{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}6}\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$), the stop lifetime becomes sizeable, and must be taken into account in the searches for stop production. If $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ is so small that the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{c}\chi `$ channel is kinematically closed, the dominant decay mode becomes $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{u}\chi `$, and the stop can then be considered as stable for practical purposes.

For stop masses accessible at LEP, i.e., $`\stackrel{<}{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}100}\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$, the decay mode $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\chi \mathrm{f}\overline{\mathrm{f}}^{}`$ is mediated by virtual chargino and W (Fig. 1b) or sfermion (Fig. 1c) exchange. It is therefore of the same order in perturbation theory as the loop-induced $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{c}\chi `$ decay, and can be substantially enhanced if charginos have masses not much larger than their present experimental bounds, and could even dominate for light sfermions . The four-body decay channel yields topologies with b-jets, additional jets and/or leptons, and with missing mass and missing energy. A new multi-jet analysis, hereafter called MJ, has been designed to cope with these final states.

The $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ channel proceeds via virtual chargino exchange (Fig. 1d) and has a width of the order of 0.1–$`10\mathrm{keV}`$ . This decay channel dominates when it is kinematically allowed, i.e., if the lightest $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ is lighter than the stop. If the lightest neutralino is the LSP, the sneutrino decays invisibly into $`\chi \nu `$ without any change in the experimental topology.

Under the assumption that the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{b}}`$ is lighter than all supersymmetric particles except the $`\chi `$, the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{b}}`$ will decay as $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{b}}\mathrm{b}\chi `$ (Fig. 1e). Compared to the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}`$, the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{b}}`$ decay width is larger, of the order of 10–$`100\mathrm{MeV}`$.

The supersymmetric partners of the light quarks are generally expected to be quite heavy. If they are light enough to be within the reach of LEP, their dominant decay mode is expected to be $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}\mathrm{q}\chi `$.

The final state topologies addressed by the searches presented in this letter are summarised in Table 2, together with the related signal processes and with the references where analysis details can be found.

This letter is organised as follows. In Section 2, the ALEPH detector and the simulated samples used for the analyses are described. Section 3 is dedicated to the selection algorithms with emphasis on the new search for four-body stop decays. In Section 4 the results of the searches are given, along with their interpretation in the theoretical framework. The conclusions of the letter are given in Section 5.

## 2 ALEPH detector and event simulation

A thorough description of the ALEPH detector and of its performance, as well as of the standard reconstruction and analysis algorithms, can be found in Refs. . Only a brief summary is given here.

The trajectories of charged particles are measured by a silicon vertex detector (VDET), a cylindrical multi-wire drift chamber (ITC) and a large time projection chamber (TPC). These detectors are immersed in an axial magnetic field of $`1.5\mathrm{T}`$ provided by a superconducting solenoidal coil. The VDET consists of two cylindrical layers of silicon microstrip detectors; it performs precise measurements of the impact parameter in space, yielding powerful short-lived particle tags, as described in Ref. .

The electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL), placed between the TPC and the coil, is a highly-segmented sandwich of lead planes and proportional wire chambers. It consists of a barrel and two endcaps. The hadron calorimeter (HCAL) consists of the iron return yoke of the magnet instrumented with streamer tubes. It is surrounded by two double layers of streamer tubes, the muon chambers. The luminosity monitors (LCAL and SiCAL) extend the calorimeter hermeticity down to 34 mrad from the beam axis.

The energy flow algorithm described in Ref.  combines the measurements of the tracking detectors and of the calorimeters into “objects” classified as charged particles, photons, and neutral hadrons. The energy resolution achieved with this algorithm is $`(0.6\sqrt{E}+0.6)`$ GeV ($`E`$ in GeV). Electrons are identified by comparing the energy deposit in ECAL to the momentum measured in the tracking system, by using the shower profile in the electromagnetic calorimeter, and by the measurement of the specific ionization energy loss in the TPC. The identification of muons makes use of the hit pattern in HCAL and of the muon chambers.

Signal event samples were simulated with the generator described in Ref.  for $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{c}\chi `$, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{b}}\mathrm{b}\chi `$, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{q}}\mathrm{q}\chi `$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$. A modified version of this generator was designed to simulate the channel $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\chi \mathrm{f}\overline{\mathrm{f}}^{}`$, where the final state is modelled according to phase space and including parton shower development. The generation of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{c}/\mathrm{u}\chi `$ with lifetime follows the procedure described in Ref. .

To simulate the relevant Standard Model background processes, several Monte Carlo generators were used: BHWIDE  for Bhabha scattering, KORALZ  for $`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ and $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ production, PHOT02  for $`\gamma \gamma `$ interactions, KORALW  for WW production, and PYTHIA  for the other processes ($`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\mathrm{q}\overline{\mathrm{q}}(\gamma )`$, We$`\nu `$, Zee, ZZ, Z$`\nu \overline{\nu }`$). The sizes of the simulated samples typically correspond to ten times the integrated luminosity of the data.

All background and signal samples were processed through the full detector simulation.

## 3 Event selections

Several selection algorithms have been developed to search for the topologies given in Table 2. All these channels are characterised by missing energy. The event properties depend significantly on $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$, the mass difference between the decaying squark and the $`\chi `$ (or the $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ in the case of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$). When $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ is large, there is a substantial amount of visible energy, and the signal events tend to look like WW, We$`\nu `$, ZZ, and $`\mathrm{q}\overline{\mathrm{q}}(\gamma )`$ events. When $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ is small, the visible energy is small, and the signal events are therefore similar to $`\gamma \gamma `$ events. In order to cope with the different signal topologies and background situations, each analysis employs selections dependent on the $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ range. The stop lifetime may become sizeable at small $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$, in which case the signal final state topology depends strongly on the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}`$ decay length $`\lambda _{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}}`$; three different selections are used, each designed to cope with a specific $`\lambda _{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}}`$ range .

The optimisation of the selection criteria as well as the best combination of selections as a function of $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ and $`\lambda _{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}}`$ were obtained according to the $`\overline{\mathrm{N}}_{95}`$ prescription , i.e., by minimisation of the 95% C.L. cross section upper limit expected in the absence of a signal. The selections are mostly independent of the centre-of-mass energy except for an appropriate rescaling of the cuts with $`\sqrt{s}`$ when relevant. The selections applied to the year 2000 data follow closely those described in Refs. \[1–5\] except for the new analysis developed to address the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{b}\chi \mathrm{f}\overline{\mathrm{f}}^{}`$ decay, hereafter described in some detail.

### 3.1 Search for $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$

The MJ analysis consists of a small, a large and a very large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection. These selections are designed to address simultaneously all $`𝐛𝝌𝐪\overline{𝐪}^{\mathbf{}}`$ and $`𝐛𝝌\mathbf{}𝝂`$ final states, independently of the decay branching ratios. The selections use several anti-$`𝜸𝜸`$ criteria, reported in Table 3. The cuts are derived from the AJ selection, described in Ref.  as well as the variables used. Only the relevant differences are discussed in the following.

In the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$ channel, the b quark in the final state produces a visible mass higher than in the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜𝝌`$ channel. Therefore, for the small $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection, the cut on the number of charged particle tracks $`𝑵_{\mathrm{𝐜𝐡}}`$ is reinforced by requiring $`𝑵_{\mathrm{𝐜𝐡}}\mathbf{>}\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}`$, and both the visible mass, $`𝑴_{\mathrm{𝐯𝐢𝐬}}`$, and the visible mass computed excluding the leading lepton, $`𝑴_{\mathrm{𝐯𝐢𝐬}}^{\mathrm{𝐞𝐱}\mathbf{}_\mathrm{𝟏}}`$, are required to be greater than $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$. These tighter cuts allow others to be loosened: the transverse momentum $`𝒑_𝐭`$ and that calculated excluding the neutral hadrons, $`𝒑_𝐭^{\mathrm{𝐞𝐱}\mathrm{𝐍𝐇}}`$, must be greater than $`\mathbf{0.005}\sqrt{𝒔}`$ and $`\mathbf{0.01}\sqrt{𝒔}`$, respectively. The remaining background is reduced in the small $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection by requiring the thrust to be smaller than 0.875, and by the cut $`𝑬_{\mathrm{𝐯𝐢𝐬}}\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.26}\sqrt{𝒔}`$.

For the large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selections, the multi-jet signature is addressed by requiring $`𝒚_{\mathrm{𝟒𝟓}}`$, as calculated with the DURHAM algorithm , to be greater than 0.001. The level of the WW, ZZ and We$`𝝂`$ background is reduced by taking advantage of the b-quark content in the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$ final state. The value of $`\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝐥𝐨𝐠}_{\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}}𝑷_{\mathrm{𝐮𝐝𝐬}}`$ is required to be greater than 0.5, where $`𝑷_{\mathrm{𝐮𝐝𝐬}}`$ is the b-tag event probability introduced in Ref. . This background is further suppressed by a missing mass cut, the location of which is a function of the $`𝚫𝑴`$ of the signal considered. For example, for $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟐𝟎}`$, 30 and $`\mathrm{𝟒𝟎}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ the optimal cuts are $`𝑴_{\mathrm{𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬}}\mathbf{/}\sqrt{𝒔}\mathbf{>}\mathbf{0.75}`$, 0.70 and 0.65, respectively.

The region where the very large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection applies is characterised by a higher visible mass. The sliding cut on the missing mass is looser than that in the large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection. For $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟐𝟎}`$, 40 and $`\mathrm{𝟔𝟎}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ the optimal cuts are $`𝑴_{\mathrm{𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬}}\mathbf{/}\sqrt{𝒔}\mathbf{>}\mathbf{0.58}`$, 0.34 and 0.10. Other cuts are then necessary to reduce the background mainly due to WW events. Similarly to the large $`𝚫𝑴`$ case, $`\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝐥𝐨𝐠}_{\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}}𝑷_{\mathrm{𝐮𝐝𝐬}}`$ and $`𝒚_{\mathrm{𝟒𝟓}}`$ are required to be greater than 0.5 and 0.003, respectively. The mean momentum of all reconstructed charged particle tracks must be less than $`\mathbf{0.007}\sqrt{𝒔}`$. To reduce background from semileptonic W decays, the fraction of visible energy due to charged objects excluding the leading lepton is required to be greater than $`\mathbf{0.5}`$, and the leading lepton, if present, must not be isolated, i.e., the additional energy deposited in a $`\mathrm{𝟑𝟎}^{\mathbf{}}`$ cone around its direction must be at least $`\mathrm{𝟓𝟎}\mathbf{\%}`$ of its energy. At this level, the remaining background consists of WW events with energy lost in the beam pipe, responsible for the missing mass. These events are rejected by requiring $`\mathbf{|}𝒑_𝒛\mathbf{|}\mathbf{<}\mathbf{0.1}\sqrt{𝒔}`$ and the energy $`𝑬_{\mathrm{𝟏𝟐}^{\mathbf{}}}`$ deposited at polar angle smaller than $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟐}^{\mathbf{}}`$ to be less than $`\mathbf{0.015}\sqrt{𝒔}`$.

The efficiencies of the three selections were parametrised as a function of $`𝚫𝑴`$ for each stop pair final state that may result from the decay channels considered ($`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜𝝌`$, $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌\mathbf{}𝝂`$, $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐪\overline{𝐪}^{\mathbf{}}`$). This allows the signal efficiency to be parametrised as a function of the branching ratios. The efficiencies were checked to be practically independent of the lepton flavour ($`𝐞`$, $`𝝁`$, $`𝝉`$) in the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌\mathbf{}𝝂`$ decay. The small, large and very large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selections are combined using the $`\overline{𝐍}_{\mathrm{𝟗𝟓}}`$ procedure as a function of $`𝚫𝑴`$ and of the branching ratios. The background to the small $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection is dominated by $`𝜸𝜸\mathbf{}𝐪\overline{𝐪}`$ events and has a total expectation of $`\mathbf{5.0}\mathrm{𝐟𝐛}`$, while the backgrounds of the large and very large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selections, dominated by WW and other four-fermion processes amount to 3.5 and $`\mathbf{4.4}\mathrm{𝐟𝐛}`$, respectively.

### 3.2 Systematic uncertainties

The efficiencies of the MJ analysis may be affected by uncertainties regarding the assumptions on the stop hadron physics and by uncertainties related to the detector response. The results of the systematic studies are summarised in Table 4 for the three selections.

The systematic effects from the assumptions on the stop hadron physics were assessed by varying the parameters of the model implemented in the generator as in Ref. . The uncertainties from the stop hadron mass were evaluated by varying the effective spectator mass $`𝑴_{\mathrm{𝐞𝐟𝐟}}`$, set to $`\mathbf{0.5}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ in the analysis, in the range between 0.3 and $`\mathbf{1.0}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$. The efficiencies of the large and very large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selections are almost insensitive to this change. The 9$`\mathbf{\%}`$ effect found for the small $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection reflects the variation in the invariant mass available for the hadronic system.

The systematic error due to the uncertainty on the stop fragmentation was evaluated by varying $`\mathit{ϵ}_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$ by an order of magnitude, where $`\mathit{ϵ}_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$ is the parameter of the Peterson fragmentation function . The effect on the efficiency is very small ($`\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{\%}`$).

The amount of initial state radiation in stop pair production depends on the value of the stop coupling to the Z boson, which is controlled by the stop mixing angle. A variation of $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$ from $`\mathrm{𝟓𝟔}^{\mathbf{}}`$ to $`\mathrm{𝟎}^{\mathbf{}}`$, i.e., from minimal to maximal coupling, was applied. The effect was found to be small in all selections, at the level of 1 to 3%.

Detector effects have been studied for the variables used in the selections. The distributions of all relevant variables show good agreement with the simulation. In particular, the b-tagging performance was checked on hadronic events collected at the Z resonance. The systematic errors associated to detector effects and to the reconstruction procedure were found to be negligible.

Beam-related background, not included in the event simulation, may affect the $`𝑬_{\mathrm{𝟏𝟐}^{\mathbf{}}}`$ variable. Its effect on the selection efficiency was determined from data collected at random beam crossings. The net effect is a relative decrease of the signal efficiency by about 5%. The uncertainty on this correction is negligible.

Finally, an additional uncertainty of $`\mathrm{𝟑}\mathbf{\%}`$ due to the limited Monte Carlo statistics was added. The total systematic uncertainty is at the level of 10% for the small $`𝚫𝑴`$ selection. It is dominated by the limited knowledge of the stop hadron physics, and results from rather extreme changes in the model parameters. The systematic uncertainties for the large and very large $`𝚫𝑴`$ selections are at the level of 4–5$`\mathbf{\%}`$.

The systematic uncertainties in the selections other than for the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$ channel are essentially identical to those reported in Refs. .

## 4 Results and interpretation

The numbers of candidate events selected and background events expected are reported in Table 5 for all the data samples used to derive the results below. An overall agreement is observed. In particular, a total of six candidate events is selected by the new MJ analysis, with 8.5 events expected from background processes; two events are found by each of the selections, in agreement with predictions of 3.3, 2.3 and 2.9 background events at small, large and very large $`𝚫𝑴`$, respectively.

In the framework of the supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model , the outcome of these searches can be translated into constraints in the space of the relevant parameters. In this process the systematic uncertainties on the selection efficiencies were included according to the method described in Ref. , and no background subtraction was applied. The constraints discussed below, derived from the results given in Table 5, are at 95% confidence level.

The regions excluded in the plane $`\mathbf{(}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{,}𝑴_𝝌\mathbf{)}`$ under the hypothesis of a dominant $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜\mathbf{/}𝐮𝝌`$ decay are shown in Fig. 2a for two values of the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}`$ mixing angle $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$, $`\mathrm{𝟎}^{\mathbf{}}`$ and $`\mathrm{𝟓𝟔}^{\mathbf{}}`$, corresponding to maximal and vanishing $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}`$Z coupling, respectively. For $`\mathrm{𝟖}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{<}𝚫𝑴\mathbf{<}𝑴_𝐖\mathbf{+}𝑴_𝐛`$, and using also CDF results , the lower limit on $`𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$ is $`\mathrm{𝟗𝟐}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, independent of $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$.

The very small $`𝚫𝑴`$ corridor is partially covered by the “long-lived hadrons” analysis as indicated by the plain dark region in Fig. 2a. The stop mass lower limit provided by the “long-lived hadrons” analysis is shown in Fig. 2b as a function of $`\mathrm{𝐥𝐨𝐠}\mathbf{(}𝒄𝝉_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{/}\mathrm{𝐜𝐦}\mathbf{)}`$ for various $`𝚫𝑴`$ values. The smallest $`𝚫𝑴`$ value considered is $`\mathbf{1.6}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, corresponding to the “effective” kinematic limit for the decay $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜𝝌`$ . Below that $`𝚫𝑴`$ value, the stop decay mode is $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐮𝝌`$, and the limit is $`\mathrm{𝟗𝟓}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, given by the large lifetime selection. The absolute mass lower limit obtained is $`\mathrm{𝟔𝟑}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$. It is reached for $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{=}\mathbf{1.6}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ and for a $`𝒄𝝉_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$ value of $`\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathrm{𝐜𝐦}`$. In that configuration of parameters, the “AJ small $`𝚫𝑴`$” and the “long-lived hadrons intermediate lifetime” selections are combined.

In the MSSM , more restrictive constraints on the stop mass can be obtained since $`𝚫𝑴`$ and the stop lifetime are related. The mass lower limit obtained by scanning over the relevant model parameters as in Ref.  is shown in Fig. 2c as a function of $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐚𝐧}𝜷`$. For any $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐚𝐧}𝜷`$, the stop mass limit is $`\mathrm{𝟔𝟓}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, reached for $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐚𝐧}𝜷\mathbf{}\mathbf{2.7}`$.

Under the hypothesis that the decay $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$ is dominant, the regions excluded in the plane $`\mathbf{(}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{,}𝑴_𝝌\mathbf{)}`$ are shown in Fig. 3a, for relative proportions of the possible $`𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$ final states as in W decays. In Fig. 3b the leptonic modes $`𝐛𝝌\mathbf{}𝝂`$ (with equal branching ratios for $`\mathbf{}\mathbf{=}𝐞`$, $`𝝁`$ and $`𝝉`$) are assumed to be dominant. The excluded regions are given for $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}^{\mathbf{}}`$ and $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟓𝟔}^{\mathbf{}}`$. For $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{>}\mathrm{𝟖}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, the $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$-independent lower limits on $`𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$ are $`\mathrm{𝟕𝟖}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ and $`\mathrm{𝟖𝟎}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, for the two cases of W and leptonic final state dominance, respectively.

The combination of the AJ and MJ analyses allows constraints to be set under the more general hypothesis that both the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜𝝌`$ and $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$ decay channels contribute to stop decays. The excluded regions in the plane $`\mathbf{(}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{,}𝑴_𝝌\mathbf{)}`$ are shown in Fig. 4a for $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}^{\mathbf{}}`$ and $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟓𝟔}^{\mathbf{}}`$. This result was obtained by arbitrarily varying the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜𝝌`$ branching ratio and the leptonic fraction in the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$ decay, and by using the $`\overline{𝐍}_{\mathrm{𝟗𝟓}}`$ prescription to determine the appropriate combination of selections. The stop mass limit is shown in Fig. 4b as a function of the branching ratio $`\mathrm{𝐁𝐑}\mathbf{(}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜𝝌\mathbf{)}`$ for several fixed $`𝚫𝑴`$ values and for $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟓𝟔}^{\mathbf{}}`$. The smallest $`𝚫𝑴`$ value considered is $`\mathrm{𝟓}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, corresponding to the threshold for the production of a $`𝐛`$ quark in the final state. The lowest limit obtained is $`\mathrm{𝟔𝟑}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$; it is reached for $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟓}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, $`\mathrm{𝐁𝐑}\mathbf{(}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜𝝌\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.22}`$, and $`\mathrm{𝐁𝐑}\mathbf{(}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌\mathbf{}𝝂\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{0.55}`$.

Under the assumption that the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛\mathbf{}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝝂}`$ decay mode is dominant, with equal branching ratios for $`\mathbf{}\mathbf{=}𝐞`$, $`𝝁`$ and $`𝝉`$, the excluded region in the plane $`\mathbf{(}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}\mathbf{,}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝝂}}\mathbf{)}`$ is shown in Fig. 5a. If $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{>}\mathrm{𝟖}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, and using the LEP1 limit on the sneutrino mass and D0 results , the lower limit on $`𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$ is $`\mathrm{𝟗𝟕}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, independent of $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$. The lower limit is $`\mathrm{𝟖𝟐}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ if the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝉\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝝂}_𝝉`$ decay mode is dominant and $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{>}\mathrm{𝟖}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, independent of $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}}`$.

The excluded region in the plane $`\mathbf{(}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}}\mathbf{,}𝑴_𝝌\mathbf{)}`$ is shown in Fig. 5b under the assumption of a dominant $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌`$ decay. Taking also the CDF exclusion  into account, a lower limit of $`\mathrm{𝟖𝟗}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ is set on $`𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}}`$, for any $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}`$ mixing angle and $`𝚫𝑴\mathbf{>}\mathrm{𝟖}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$. The region excluded for $`𝜽_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}^{\mathbf{}}`$, for which the $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}`$Z coupling is maximal, is also shown.

As discussed in detail in Ref. , the results of the search for acoplanar jets, with or without b tagging, can also be translated into constraints on the mass of degenerate squarks. In order to compare these results with those obtained at the Tevatron , limits have been evaluated within the MSSM  under the following assumptions: a degenerate mass $`𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐪}}`$ for all left-handed and right-handed $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐮}\mathbf{,}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐝}\mathbf{,}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐜}\mathbf{,}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐬}\mathbf{,}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}`$ squarks; lowest order GUT relation between the soft supersymmetry breaking gaugino mass terms, allowing the gluino and neutralino masses to be related; $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐚𝐧}𝜷\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟒}`$ and $`𝝁\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟒𝟎𝟎}`$ GeV. The results in the plane $`\mathbf{(}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐠}}\mathbf{,}𝑴_{\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐪}}\mathbf{)}`$ are shown in Fig. 6. Improved constraints are obtained in the region of small $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐪}`$ to $`𝝌`$ mass differences.

## 5 Conclusions

Searches for signals of pair-produced scalar partners of quarks have been performed in the data sample of $`\mathrm{𝟐𝟎𝟕}\mathrm{𝐩𝐛}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}`$ collected in the year 2000 with the ALEPH detector at LEP, at centre-of-mass energies ranging from 204 to $`\mathrm{𝟐𝟎𝟗}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}`$. The final state topologies studied arise from the decays $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐜\mathbf{/}𝐮𝝌`$, $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌𝐟\overline{𝐟}^{\mathbf{}}`$, $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐭}\mathbf{}𝐛\mathbf{}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝝂}`$, $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐛}\mathbf{}𝐛𝝌`$, and $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝐪}\mathbf{}𝐪𝝌`$. The four-body stop decay channel was analysed for the first time at LEP, and the corresponding selections were extended to the $`\mathrm{𝟔𝟕𝟓}\mathrm{𝐩𝐛}^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}`$ of data collected by ALEPH at centre-of-mass energies of $`\mathrm{𝟏𝟖𝟑}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}`$ and above. All numbers of candidate events observed are consistent with the backgrounds expected from Standard Model processes. The results of these searches, combined with earlier ones obtained with data collected from 1997 to 1999, have been translated into improved mass lower limits, of which relevant examples are given in Table 6. In particular, a 95% C.L. lower limit of $`\mathrm{𝟔𝟑}\mathrm{𝐆𝐞𝐕}\mathbf{/}𝒄^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ has been set on the stop mass, irrespective of its lifetime and decay branching ratios.

## Acknowledgements

We wish to congratulate our colleagues from the accelerator divisions for the successful operation of LEP at high energies. We would also like to express our gratitude to the engineers and support people at our home institutes without whom this work would not have been possible. Those of us from non-member states wish to thank CERN for its hospitality and support.