comments

Comments/Responses on PRL draft 1.01
"B -> D** mu nu X"

5/1/2005
from Rick van Kooten
Andrei Nomerotski wrote:

hi Andrzej, ok, i am hoping to have it by wednesday.

it would be good to clarify the issue if we can use the DELPHI conference result as a reference since it may change the wording/ conclusions. let me summarize its importance: this is the only measurement of the D*2 semileptonic rate by a single experiment quoted in a "publication". DELPHI gives both: the rate and the limit. this reference has been used by others (ex Belle in their PRD, ref.3 in our draft). i checked that all other original papers (CLEO, ALEPH, OPAL) give only limits on D*2.

Although as a rule of thumb we avoid quoting preliminary results or conference results, my "vote" in this case would be to retain this reference as it adds information to the Letter. We avoid quoting preliminary results in particular if we know that a finalized number is being worked on, but in this case, it does not appear that the DELPHI result will ever be published in a journal.

This can perhaps be clarified as:

"ALEPH [6], and DELPHI (as preliminary) [7]"
ok
However, I think we can still "beef up" the conclusion, in particular if it is being considered for PRL that does have higher standards for impact for publication.

Instead of

"This result represents a considerable improvement over the previous measurements", how about

"This result represents a significant improvement of the knowledge of B branching ratios to orbitally excited D mesons, and a first direct measurement of the important ratio R."

(since it is also giving information on the presence / non-presence of the wide resonance).
ok
Comments on D** PRL draft 1.01, dated 22 April
==============================================
Abstract --------
o Space between number and "(stat)" and number and "(syst)".
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o semicolon after each intermediate display line.
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Page 4, column 1 ---------------
o LaTeX has a special symbol for "<<" with them nested closer together: \gg .
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o Just before equation 1, too much space before D_ 1 and D_2*.
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o In equation (1) and elsewhere, the symbol "\ell" looks nicer for "lepton".
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o "narrow D**mesons", insert space.
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O "DELPHI [7] experiments, with only" - insert comma.
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o "decays manifested itself" "decays manifests itself" - in this case, don't put in past tense, since this invariant mass peak is always there.
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o Insert space, "Xprocess"
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o "A selection of a semileptonic sample of muD0 candidates was obtained by" "A semileptonic sample of muD0 candidates was selected by"
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Page 4, column 2 ----------------
o 1280 (stat) - be consistent with fonts - is italicized elsewhere.
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o Figure: - in caption, "describes the signal and the background by a sum of two Gaussian functions and by the sum of exponential and first-order polynomial functions, respectively" to "describes the signal by a sum of two Gaussian functions and the background by the sum of exponential and first-order polynomial functions." Ditto with chang in text.
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- the dashed D* signal has be overlay clearly on top of the hatched wrong-sign histo.
the lines are ok in gv but indeed have some problems when printed out. made the fill style 3005 which is a simpler hatching.
o "the B candidate" - math mode on "B"
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Page 5, column 1 ----------------
o "correspondingly" to "respectively"
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o "the B vertex", "B" in math mode.
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o "The apparent mass peak" "The observed mass peak"
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o "and a second order polynomial" "and a second-order polynomial"
ok, done in both places
o Equation (2), semicolon after each intermediate display line.
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o "In the formulae above x" "in the formulae above, x"
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o Figure 2 - the line style doesn't appear to match any of the captions - the combined signal gaussians are hidden behind the cross-hatched wrong-sign.
the lines are ok in gv but indeed have some problems when printed out. made the fill style 3005 which is a simpler hatching.

o The relative error on r is 26%, yet the relative error on N_D_2* comes out to 21%. This must be due to correlation between N_D** and r. It should be mentioned that they are correlated. One way to do it is: "The (correlated) total number of events and the ratio derived from the fit".
ok, added ".. where the uncertainties take into account correlation of the variables."

Page 6 ------
o Again, spaces before "(stat)" and "(syst)"; semicolons after each intermediate display line.
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o "estimated varying the resolution" "estimated by varying the resolution"
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o "branching rates it was calculated that" "branching rates, the ratio $$xx$$ was calculated, where the absolute rates"
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o Space between the last initial and the last names consistently.
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o Ref. [13], instead of "submitted to PRL" "accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett."

ok

4/30/2005 from Brigitte Vachon

page 4, paragraph 1, 4th line: "..doublet with j=1/2 (D_0*, D_1') are predicted to exist, where the angular ...."
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page4, left column, para 3, line 3: ".. the ratio R_pi has been measured to be ..."   (We don't have to make a statement on the precision of the measurement).
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page4, bottom of left column: reference [10] is a comment. I would personally prefer to have this appear as a footnote rather than a reference. I assume PRL allows footnotes.
i think this is the PRL standard nowadays to have it as a reference

page 4, right column, line 4: ".. belong to the same jet and to from a ...." Nowhere in the text is it mentioned that you form jets in the events, and how.
yes, indeed. however the idea was that the ref[13] mentioned at the end of this sentence covers "jet" and "vertex" terms mentioned here.

page 4, right column, second paragraph, line 10: "..sign combination of the muon and pion charge"   (i.e. change "signs" for "charges").   This comment also applies to caption of figure 1.
ok, better indeed.

Figure 1: In the legend, you should write the different charge combination, ie.
" Data mu+pi-, mu-pi+"
"Data mu+pi+, mu-pi-"
we do have a note earlier that we imply the conjugated states - is not it enough?

page 5, left column, line 5: "..to exceed 3 and 0.25 mm respectively"
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page 5, left column, paragraph 1, line 9: "...candidates in the invariant mass difference peak was found..."
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page 5, left column, paragraph 2, line 3: " .. required to have a charge opposite..." ("the" -> "a")
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Figure 2: On the plot, write down all possible sign combinations, i.e.
"Data D+pi-, D-pi+"
"Data D+pi+, D-pi-"
same as above

Figure 2, caption: "The invariant mass M(D*pi) for events..." (remove the sign of the D* and pi charges in the invariant mass symbole)
ok

page 5, right column, last paragraph, line 2: replace "wrong-sign" with same sign combinations. Everywhere else you refer to the same sign combinations.
ok, thank you

line 5: "..float in the mass fit." (add "mass" to clarify which fit you are referring to)
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page 6, left column, line 4: "..following two formulae.."
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left column, last paragraph, line 4-5: remove "corresponding"
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line 7: add "by" --> "were estimated by varying the .."
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line 10: ".. by refitting the mass distribution after varying these parameters.."
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right column, middle of the page: "..average to zero after integration over all angles under the assumption of equal acceptances."
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4/29/2005 from Alice Bean

- You talk about the ratios R and R_pi and quote R_pi measured from Belle. This
paper measures R and yet the other measurements of R are not quoted. There are
4 references to CLEO, OPAL, ALEPH, and DELPHI and a statement that only
DELPHI measures the B->D2*lnu and yet the DELPHI paper is not published it is
only from conference proceedings from 2000. I'm not sure that the DELPHI result
therefore has the same standing as the others and I'm not sure that the other papers
are quoting an R value. Are they? I don't think that this R value is given in the PDG
either. Later, on page 6, there is a statement "This result represents a considerable improvement over
previous measurements."   It surely does, but the paper doesn't support this by quoting
those. It does quote R_pi results from Belle and then doesn't present our results in context
with this result. If our paper is about R, then the results on R should be quoted and if you
refer to R_pi, then some comment about R_pi in the conclusions should be made.

it turns out the CLEO measurement of R_pi was a conference result dated 1996 so after concultations with Alice we decided not to include it.

the DELPHI publication is a conference result which has not been published in any journal. i double checked it last week with Daniel Bloch who was one of the authors of this analysis at DELPHI. so we need to decide if we want to drop this citation. if we do drop it then there are no published measurements of the D*2 rate and hence no measurement of R. so then we have the first measurement and the text should be adjusted accordingly.
later : decided to include it, also see Rick vK comments above.

re conclusions on the comparison of R and R_pi : i'll try to see if this can be done in a sentence or two.. this would require some explanations of the factorization which was not really the purpose of the paper.

Comments on wording:

All through:    You have a ratio of   A and B. Should it be a ratio of A to B?
ok
page 4, 2nd paragraph starts out awkwardly. I'm not sure I like this either, but here is my attempt.
"The ratio R of semileptonic branching rates of B mesonS to D1 and D2* is defined to be:
...   This is one of the ...
like it more the way it is. unless there are some issues with english would leave it as is.

page 4, 5th para
How about "To observe the D** meson production in B... decays, we look for resonance peaks in the D*pi..."
we tryed to avoid "we" in the text

Also somewhere here, you probably have to have the usual "Charged conjugate states are implied ..." statement.
it's ref.[10]

page 4 6th para:   "A selection of mu D0 candidates was obtained by ...." with the mu in there I don't
think you need the word semileptonic.
ok

Later on in this paragraph you reference 13, shouldn't it be reference 11. I don't think you reference either
11 or 12 in the paper????
ok, thank you! fixed - the references are not needed.

Last paragraph on page 4
   Here you are trying to talk about B vertexing, but you start the paragraph by talking about the normalization
mode and this focuses the whole paragraph on the normalization mode, but you also use the same stuff not
for the normalization mode. Can you modify how you start this paragraph?
the point is to apply as many cuts as possible to the B->D*munu sample so the extrapolation of efficiency between
the D* and D** samples is minimal (and basically concerns only the pi**). that why we define the B vertex using D* mu
and it's important to have it in this order.
later: after discussion with Alice rephrased the first sentence.

Page 5, 4th para you talk about the ratio r. Can you actually put in r=G?/G? as I'm not sure what this
r actually is from your description and the next equation.
good point, this was not clear indeed. text modified, r defined as r=N_D*2/N_D1

Page 6, para 1 you reference the PDG value for Br(b->D*+mu-nubarX) but this is really in the PDG as
Br(b->D*ellnubarX) . Do we care about this or not?
you are right, fixed.

Page 6, Table 1,   This table would be made easier to understand if you could define each of Br_D**,
Br_D1, ...   I think you could do this in the two column equations above for each one.
we think it's difficult to fit it in.
later : after discussion with Alice put in another "Br..=" to results in the text.

Page 6, 4th line from end , the word cases is awkward and my comments above about R_pi and R
sorry, i did not understand the first part of this comment.. re R_pi and R : we don't quote R in the abstract
since it's not what we measure directly. the sentence about "improvement" was moved to the summary - you are
right that it belongs there.
later : after discussion with Alice removed "=0.77+-0.15" from the text so the value of R_pi is not mentioned at all.

4/25/2005 by Jianming Qian

1) please update the author list, acknowledgement paragraph and
visitor's addresses;
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2) figures are a bit too large, they are into the margins; also a really
nitpicking suggestion, it will look better if the "DO" is moved to the
top-left corner a bit;
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3) Table I: remove the last \hline and empty lines above/below the
"Total error";
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4) References:
   a) For papers from large collaboration, PRL prefers a collaboration
name first, i.e., D\O\ Collaboration, V. Abazov et al., ...
   b) please leave a space between the initials and the last names;
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5) I believe that we use roman font for "(stat)" and "(syst)" in a
formula.
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