Measurements of the angular distributions of muons from Υ decays in pp collisions at sqrt[s] = 1.96 TeV

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Apr 13;108(15):151802. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.151802. Epub 2012 Apr 11.

Abstract

The angular distributions of muons from Υ(1S,2S,3S) → μ+ μ- decays are measured using data from pp collisions at sqrt[s] = 1.96 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6.7 fb(-1) and collected with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. This analysis is the first to report the full angular distributions as functions of transverse momentum p(T) for Υ mesons in both the Collins-Soper and s-channel helicity frames. This is also the first measurement of the spin alignment of Υ(3S) mesons. Within the kinematic range of Υ rapidity |y|<0.6 and p(T) up to 40 GeV/c, the angular distributions are found to be nearly isotropic.