Abstract We present updated results from the UA1 experiment on cross sections times leptonic branching ratios for intermediate vector bosons produced in proton-antiproton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 0.630 TeV. We find that σ·B( W → l βn)=0.63±0.04±0.10 nb and σ·B( Z 0 → l + l − =0.071±0.011 nb where l denotes an average of electron and muon channels. An average over all data (electron and muon channels at 0.546 and 0.630 TeV) gives a ratio of R≡σ·( W → l ν)/σ·B( Z 0 → l + l − ) = 9.1 +1.7 −1.2 . Using current theoretical predictions for this quantity, limits are extracted on the number of light neutrino types. Combining UA1 and UA2 data and imposing the bound N ν ⩾3 we find that N ν ⩽5.9 at 90% CL. Constraints on the mass of the top quark are also discussed.
