Zoya Karpova

Transverse momentum spectra of charmed and beauty mesons produced in proton-proton and proton-antiproton collisions at high energies are analyzed within the modified quark-gluon string model (QGSM) including the internal motion of quarks in colliding hadrons. It is shown that this approach can describe rather satisfactorily the experimental data at not large values of the transverse momentum where the NLO QCD calculation has a big uncertainty. We also show that using both the QGSM and the NLO QCD one can describe these data in a wide region of transverse momenta and give some predictions for the future LHC experiments.

In autumn 2003 a new high-altitude neutron monitor (NM) station located in the Baksan Valley of Northern Caucasus was included in the world-wide network of NMs. The Baksan NM has already registered powerful cosmic ray variations (Forbush–decreases) connected with solar activity in October–November 2003. Since February 2004 the Baksan NM data are accessible via Internet: 〈〉