Conventional solid state reactions are diffusion limited processes that require high temperatures and long reaction times to reach completion. In this work, several solution based methods were utilized to circumvent this diffusion limited reaction and achieve product formation at lower temperatures. The solution methods studied all have the common goal of trapping the homogeneity inherent in a solution and transferring this homogeneity to the solid state, thereby creating a solid atomic mixture of reactants. These atomic mixtures can yield solid state products through {open_quotes}diffusionless{close_quotes} mechanisms. The effectiveness of atomic mixtures in solid state synthesis was tested on three classes of materials, varying in complexity. A procedure was invented for obtaining the highly water soluble salt, titanyl nitrate, TiO(NO{sub 3}){sub 2}, in crystalline form, which allowed the production of titanate materials by freeze drying. The freeze drying procedures yielded phase pure, nanocrystalline BaTiO{sub 3} and the complete SYNROC-B phase assemblage after ten minute heat treatments at 600{degrees}C and 1100{degrees}C, respectively. Two novel methods were developed for the solution based synthesis of Ba{sub 2}YCu{sub 3}O{sub 7-x} and Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}Ca{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 10}. Thin and thick films of Ba{sub 2}YCu{sub 3}O{sub 7-x} and Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}Ca{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 10} were synthesized by …

The work exposed in this thesis deals with the search for electroweak production of top quark (single top) in proton-antiproton collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. This production mode has not been observed yet. Analyzed data have been collected during the Run II of the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. These data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 370 pb{sup -1}. In the Standard Model, the decay of a top quark always produce a high momentum bottom quark. Therefore bottom quark jets identification plays a major role in this analysis. The large lifetime of b hadrons and the subsequent large impact parameters relative to the interaction vertex of charged particle tracks are used to tag bottom quark jets. Impact parameters of tracks attached to a jet are converted into the probability for the jet to originate from the primary vertex. This algorithm has a 45% tagging efficiency for a 0.5% mistag rate. Two processes (s and t channels) dominate single top production with slightly different final states. The searched signature consists in 2 to 4 jets with at least one bottom quark jet, one charged lepton (electron or muon) and missing energy accounting for a neutrino. This final …

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During the last decades, particle physicists have studied the tiniest building blocks of matter--the quarks and the leptons--and the forces between them in great detail. From these experiments, a theoretical framework has been built that describes the observed results with high precision. The achievement of this theory, which is referred to as the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, was the elaboration of a unified description of the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces in the framework of quantum gauge-field theories. Moreover, the Standard Model combines the weak and electromagnetic forces in a single electroweak gauge theory. The fourth force which is realized in nature, gravity, is too weak to be observable in laboratory experiments carried out in high-energy particle physics and is not part of the Standard Model. Although the Standard Model has proven highly successful in correlating a huge amount of experimental results, a key ingredient is as yet untested: the origin of electroweak symmetry breaking. Currently, the only viable ansatz that is compatible with observation is the Higgs mechanism. It predicts the existence of a scalar particle, called the Higgs boson, and the couplings to the fundamental Standard Model particles, however not its mass. An upper limit on …

A search was conducted for evidence of large extra dimensions (LED) at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron using the D0 detector. The Tevatron is a p{bar p} collider at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV. Events with particles escaping into extra dimensions will have large missing energy. The search was carried out using data from a total luminosity of 197 {+-} 13 pb{sup -1} with an observable high transverse momentum photon and a large transverse missing energy. The 70 observed events are consistent with photons produced by standard known reactions plus other background processes produced by cosmic muons. The mass limits on the fundamental mass scale at 95% confidence level for large extra dimensions of 2, 4, 6 and 8 are 500 GeV, 581 GeV, 630 GeV, and 668 GeV respectively.

In this thesis the first measurement of {sigma}(p{bar p}) {yields} Z{sup 0} {yields} {tau}{bar {tau}} with the D0 detector at the Tevatron is presented. The tau pair candidates are recorded by the D0 detector using p{bar p} interactions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. Events in which one tau decays into a muon and the other tau final state is hadronic with one charged particle are selected for this analysis. The selection criteria for the hadronic tau decay are based on the tau final state, hence for two channels of one-prong taus: single charged pion ({tau}{sub {pi}}) and rho decays ({tau}{sub {rho}}). The selection is based on simple cuts on a number of discriminating variables and the cut values have been optimized for the best cross section measurement. Of hadronic tau candidates that have been reconstructed as {tau}{sub {pi}} candidates, 0.801 {+-} 0.017 {+-} 0.066 pass the selection cut; in the case of {tau}{sub {rho}} taus, the selection efficiency is 0.676 {+-} 0.009 {+-} 0.009. Of all QCD jets that are reconstructed as hadronic tau candidates, 0.0093 {+-} 0.0002 pass the {tau}{sub {pi}} selection cuts and 0.0122 {+-} 0.0002 the {tau}{sub {rho}} cuts. The cross section has been measured …

The cross section for WW production is measured and limits on anomalous WW{gamma} and WWZ trilinear gauge couplings are set using WW {yields} ee/e{mu}/{mu}{mu} events collected by the Run II D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider corresponding to 1 fb{sup -1} of integrated luminosity at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. Across the three final states, 108 candidate events are observed with 40.8 {+-} 3.8 total background expected, consistent with {sigma}(p{bar p} {yields} WW) = 11.6 {+-} 1.8(stat) {+-} 0.7(syst) {+-} 0.7(lumi) pb. Using a set of SU(2){sub L} {direct_product} U(1){sub Y} conserving constraints, the one-dimensional 95% C.L. limits on trilinear gauge couplings are -0.63 < {Delta}{kappa}{sub {gamma}} < 0.99, -0.15 < {lambda}{sub {gamma}} < 0.19, and -0.14 < {Delta}g{sub 1}{sup Z} < 0.34.