The properties of electrons in a gas and an external electric field, e.g., agitation velocity, free path, energy lost per collision, and collision cross sections, were determined for electrons of energy less than 2 ev in a large number of gases. The computations were made from previously measured values for Townsend's energy factor or the ratio of electron agitation energy to molecule thermal energy. Results are presented for hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, ethylene, cyclopropane, and argon. (D.L.C.)

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Thermoluminescence in potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) induced by Co/ sup 60/ gamma irradiation at liquid nitrogen temperature (-198 deg C) was investigated. Glow curves in the temperature range --196 to 0 deg C were measured for a series of gamma exposure dosages ranging from 10/sup 4/ roentgen to 5 x 10/sup 6/ roentgen. The heating rate used for glow curve measurements was 12 deg C per minute. Twice recrystallized Mallinckrodt reagent grade potassium dihydrogen phosphate, with a grain size between 100 and 170 mesh, was used for most samples. In the case of the powder samples, the glow curve for an exposure dose of 10/sup 4/ roentgen exhibited two peaks in this temperature range, one at approximately --78 deg C and the other at approximately -146 deg C. The -78 deg C peak split into two distinct peaks with increasing dosage. At still higher doses an additional peak at about -9 deg C became evident. This peak may, however, be due to aluminum oxide. Calculation of the trap depth, E, and the frequency factor, s, associated with the --78 deg C peak, by the approximate method of Grossweiner yielded values of 0.485 ev and 9.97 x 10/sup 10/ sec/sup -1/ …

The heat capacity of high purity electrotransport refined lutetium was measured between 1 and 20/sup 0/K. Results for theta/sub D/ were in excellent agreement with theta values determined from elastic constant measurements. The heat capacity of a series of lutetium-hydrogen solid solution alloys was determined and results showed an increase in ..gamma.. from 8.2 to about 11.3 mJ/g-atom-K/sup 2/ for hydrogen content increasing from zero to about one atomic percent. Above one percent hydrogen ..gamma.. decreased with increasing hydrogen contents. The C/T data showed an increase with temperature decreasing below about 2.5/sup 0/K for samples with 0.1 to 1.5 atomic percent hydrogen. This accounts for a large amount of scatter in theta/sub D/ versus hydrogen content in this range. The heat capacity of a bulk sample of lutetium dihydride was measured between 1 and 20/sup 0/K and showed a large increase in theta/sub D/ and a large decrease in ..gamma.. compared to pure lutetium.

The experimental verification of the two-step nature of energy dissipation of photon energy by a crystal is the subject of this dissertation. The ..cap alpha..(O,O) Davydov component of the lowest energy singlet transition in pure strain-free napthalene single crystals is shown to exhibit an increase in absorption with increasing temperature, due to an increase in polariton damping via polariton-phonon scattering processes. (GHT)

A chelating ion-exchange resin with N-(2-hydroxyethyl)ethylene-diaminetriacetic acid (HEDTA) used as the ligand chemically bonded to XAD-4 by an ester linkage, HEDTA-4, was synthesized. It is stable under normal experimental conditions with the liquid chromatograph. The structure of the resin was confirmed by an infrared spectrum, and by potentiometric titrations. The capacity of the resin was also obtained by potentiometric titration and by a nitrogen analysis. The resin was used to pack a column of 5 mm internal diameter and 5 cm long. The effect of pH on the retention of different metal ions on the resin was studied. It was found that the resin was most selective for chromium(III), copper(II), lead(II), mercury(II), uranium(VI), zirconium(IV) and zinc(II) at a pH of less than 3. Furthermore, the resin proves to be functioning with a chelating mechanism rather than ion-exchange, and it can concentrate trace metal ions in the presence of a large excess of calcium and magnesium. This makes the resin potentially useful for purifying and analyzing drinking water.

The critical stress for the reorientation of vanadium hydride was determined for the temperature range 180/sup 0/ to 280/sup 0/K using flat tensile samples containing 50 to 500 ppM hydrogen by weight. The critical stress was observed to vary from a half to a third of the macroscopic yield stress of pure vanadium over the temperature range. The vanadium hydride could not be stress induced to precipitate above its stress-free precipitation temperature by uniaxial tensile stresses or triaxial tensile stresses induced by a notch.

The electric mobility and effective valence of hydrogen and deuterium in vanadium, niobium, tantalum and three niobium-tantalum alloys were measured. A resistance technique was used to directly determine the electric mobility of hydrogen and deuterium at 30/sup 0/C while a steady-state method was used to measure the effective valence. The use of mass spectrographic techniques on a single specimen which contained both hydrogen and deuterium greatly increased the precision with which the isotope effect in the effective valence could be measured.

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Off-line experiments indicated that fluorides of As, Se, Br, Kr, Zr, Nb, Mo, Tc, Ru, Sb, Te, I and Xe could be volatilized, but except for Br, Kr, I and Xe, none of these elements were observed after mass separation in the on-line experiments. The results of the on-line experiments indicated a very low level of hydride contamination at ambient temperature and consequently, uranium tetrafluoride replaced uranyl stearate as the primary gaseous fission product target. Possible reasons for the failure of the heated target system to yield non-rare gas activities are discussed and suggestions for designing a new heated target system are presented.

Solid-state electrochemical techniques are applied to the Ga-In-Sb-O system to measure some thermodynamic properties important for the analysis of solid-liquid phase equilibria in these important semiconductor materials. The standard Gibbs energies of formation of the most stable oxides of gallium and of indium are determined with a high-temperature solid-state electrochemical cell utilizing calcia-stabilized zirconia as the solid electrolyte and a (CO + CO/sub 2/) gaseous mixture as the reference electrode.

The feasibility of calculating Wagner self-interaction parameters from binary phase diagrams was examined. The self-interaction parameters of 22 non-ferrous liquid solutions were calculated utilizing an equation based on the equality of the chemical potentials of a component in two equilibrium phases. Utilization of the equation requires the evaluation of the first and second derivatives of various liquidus and solidus data at infinite dilution of the solute component. Several numerical methods for evaluating the derivatives of tabular data were examined. A method involving power series curve fitting and subsequent differentiation of the power series was found to be the most suitable for the interaction parameter calculations. Comparison of the calculated self-interaction parameters with values obtained from thermodynamic measurements indicates that the Wagner self-interaction parameter can be successfully calculated from binary phase diagrams.

Feasibility of using a low pressure glow discharge as an ion source for the mass spectrometric determination of trace elements in aqueous media was investigated. A cryogenically cooled hollow cathode ion source was developed to analyze aqueous samples without external preconcentration. Aqueous solutions containing seventy elements were analyzed and the detection limits, sensitivity factors, and linear regression correlation coefficients were determined. A standard test solution of trace elements in water was analyzed and the concentrations of trace elements were calculated using the sensitivity factors determined previously. The results compared favorably within the error limits predicted by the semiquantitative survey methods used. Tap water and natural lake water samples were examined and minimal interference effects due to organic compounds and biological compounds were noted. A research ion optical system (RIOS) was developed as a flexible mass analyzer for the development of new ion sources. The RIOS is a double focussing mass analyzer designed utilizing the Mattauch-Herzog geometry with externally adjustable slit assemblies.

This dissertation describes a search for Z/{gamma}* boson pair production decaying into {mu}{mu}{mu}{mu}, {mu}{mu}ee, and eeee final states with approximately 1 fb{sup -1} of data at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. The small cross section times branching ratio for each channel mandated a thorough study of the acceptance and efficiencies. After optimization, 1.7 {+-} 0.1 events are expected for Standard Model production with a background of 0.13 {+-} 0.03 events. One event was found in the {mu}{mu}ee channel. A cross section limit of 4.4 pb is determined at a 95% confidence level for Standard Model production. Additionally, one parameter and two parameter 95% C.L. limits are found for the anomalous neutral trilinear gauge couplings ZZZ* and ZZ{gamma}*. The one parameter 95% C.L. coupling limits with a form factor scale of 1.2 TeV are: -0.28 < f{sub 40}{sup Z} < 0.28, -0.31 < f{sub 50}{sup Z} < 0.29, -0.26 < f{sub 40}{gamma} < 0.26, and -0.30 < f{sub 50}{sup {gamma}} < 0.28.

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) promises to deliver great benefits to many industries. Primarily among them is a potential for large cost savings in maintenance of complex structures such as aircraft and civil infrastructure. However, several large obstacles remain before widespread use on structures can be accomplished. The development of three components would address many of these obstacles: a robust sensor validation procedure, a low-cost active-sensing hardware and an integrated software package for transition to field deployment. The research performed in this thesis directly addresses these three needs and facilitates the adoption of SHM on a larger scale, particularly in the realm of SHM based on piezoelectric (PZT) materials. The first obstacle addressed in this thesis is the validation of the SHM sensor network. PZT materials are used for sensor/actuators because of their unique properties, but their functionality also needs to be validated for meaningful measurements to be recorded. To allow for a robust sensor validation algorithm, the effect of temperature change on sensor diagnostics and the effect of sensor failure on SHM measurements were classified. This classification allowed for the development of a sensor diagnostic algorithm that is temperature invariant and can indicate the amount and type of sensor failure. …

We present a search for high-mass resonances decaying into two leptons of different flavor: e{mu}, e{tau}, and {mu}{tau}. These resonances are predicted by several models beyond the standard model, such as the R-parity-violating MSSM. The search is based on 1 fb{sup -1} of data collected at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF II) in proton anti-proton collisions. Our observations are consistent with the standard model expectations. The results are interpreted to set 95% C.L. upper limits on {sigma} x BR of {tilde {nu}}{sub {tau}} {yields} e{mu}, e{tau}, {mu}{tau}.

I present a measurement of the t{bar t} differential cross section, d{sigma}/dM{sub t{bar t}}, in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV using 2.7 fb{sup -1} of CDF II data. I find that d{sigma}/dM{sub t{bar t}} is consistent with the Standard Model expectation, as modeled by PYTHIA with CTEQ5L parton distribution functions. I set limits on the ratio {kappa}/M{sub Pl} in the Randall-Sundrum model by looking for Kaluza Klein gravitons which decay to top quarks. I find {kappa}/M{sub Pl} > 0.16 at the 95% confidence level.

This thesis centers on the use of spectral modeling techniques on data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to gain new insights into current questions in galaxy evolution. The SDSS provides a large, uniform, high quality data set which can be exploited in a number of ways. One avenue pursued here is to use the large sample size to measure precisely the mean properties of galaxies of increasingly narrow parameter ranges. The other route taken is to look for rare objects which open up for exploration new areas in galaxy parameter space. The crux of this thesis is revisiting the classical Kennicutt method for inferring the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from the integrated light properties of galaxies. A large data set ({approx} 10{sup 5} galaxies) from the SDSS DR4 is combined with more in-depth modeling and quantitative statistical analysis to search for systematic IMF variations as a function of galaxy luminosity. Galaxy H{alpha} equivalent widths are compared to a broadband color index to constrain the IMF. It is found that for the sample as a whole the best fitting IMF power law slope above 0.5 M{sub {circle_dot}} is {Lambda} = 1.5 {+-} 0.1 with the error dominated by …

Supersymmetry is one of the most natural extensions of the Standard Model. At low energy it may consist in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model which is the framework chosen to perform the search of the stop with 350 pb{sup -1} of data collected by D0 during the RunIIa period of the TeVatron. They selected the events with an electron, a muon, missing transverse energy and non-isolated tracks, signature for the stop decay in 3-body ({bar t} {yields} bl{bar {nu}}). Since no significant excess of signal is seen, the results are interpreted in terms of limit on the stop production cross-sections, in such a way that they extend the existing exclusion region in the parameter space (m{sub {bar t}},m{sub {bar {nu}}}) up to stop masses of 168 (140) GeV for sneutrino masses of 50 (94) GeV. Finally because of the crucial role of the electromagnetic calorimeter, a fine calibration was performed using Z {yields} e{sup +}e{sup -} events, which improved significantly the energy resolution.

A RANS/DES numerical procedure with an extended Lax-Wendroff control-volume scheme and turbulence model is described for the accurate simulation of internal/external axisymmetric flow with and without strong rotation. This new procedure is an extension, from Cartesian to cylindrical coordinates, of (1) a second order accurate multi-grid, control-volume integration scheme, and (2) a k-{omega} turbulence model. This paper outlines both the axisymmetric corrections to the mentioned numerical schemes and the developments of techniques pertaining to numerical dissipation, multi-block connectivity, parallelization, etc. Furthermore, analytical and experimental case studies are presented to demonstrate accuracy and computational efficiency. Notes are also made toward numerical stability of highly rotational flows.

We present the results of a search for B{sup +} meson decays into {gamma}{ell}{sup +}{nu}{sub {ell}}, where {ell} = e,{mu}. We use a sample of 232 million B{bar B} meson pairs recorded at the {Upsilon}(4S) resonance with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II B factory. We measure a partial branching fraction {Delta}{beta} in a restricted region of phase space that reduces the effect of theoretical uncertainties, requiring the lepton energy to be in the range 1.875 and 2.850 GeV, the photon energy to be in the range 0.45 and 2.35 GeV, and the cosine of the angle between the lepton and photon momenta to be less than -0.36, with all quantities computed in the {Upsilon}(4S) center-of-mass frame. We find {Delta}{Beta}(B{sup +} {yields} {gamma}{ell}{sup +}{nu}{sub {ell}}) = (-0.3{sub 1.5}{sup +1.3}(statistical){sub -0.6}{sup +0.6}(systematic) {+-} 0.1(theoretical)) x 10{sup -6}, under the assumption of lepton universality. Interpreted as a 90% confidence-level Bayesian upper limit, the result corresponds to 1.7 x 10{sup -6} for a prior at in amplitude, and 2.3 x 10{sup -6} for a prior at in branching fraction.

This dissertation describes a search for the associated production of the supersymmetric particles, the chargino and the neutralino, through their R-parity conserving decays to three leptons and missing energy. This search is carried out using the data collected at the CDF experiment at the Tevatron {radical}s = 1.96 TeV p{bar p} collider at Fermilab. The results are obtained by combining five independent channels with varying signal to background ratio. Overall, a total of 6.4 {+-} 1.1 background events from standard model processes and 11.4 {+-} 1.1 signal events for a particular choice of mSUGRA model parameters are expected. The observation of 7 events in data is consistent with the standard model background expectation, and the mSUGRA model is constrained. Limits are set on the cross section of Chargino-Neutralino pair production, and a limit on the mass of the chargino is extracted. A method of obtaining model-independent results is also discussed.