The authors present a measurement of the {bar p}p {yields} W{gamma} + X {yields} e{nu}{gamma} + X production cross section using data form the Collider Detector at Fermilab. The p{bar p} collisions were provided by the Tevatron Collider at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV. Electroweak theory includes the trilinear vector boson coupling, WW{gamma}, which contributes to the e{nu}{gamma} final state. The electron decay channel of the W provides a clean sample to study the production of diboson pairs. The measurement of the production cross section tests the structure of the non-Abelian character of Electroweak theory.

The D0 experiment, located at the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory in the US, is used to study proton-anti-proton collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The experiment's data acquisition system is based on a sophisticated trigger system used to select potentially interesting events. The Level 2 Silicon Track Trigger (L2STT) is part of the trigger system that provides precise reconstruction of charged particle tracks allowing the selection of events that contain the decays of long lived particles. For example, such particles appear in the decay of the Higgs boson into a pair of bottom quarks. The design of the L2STT preprocessor has greatly benefited from recent advances in electronics technology. The preprocessor has been recently installed and will be used to further optimize the triggering strategy of the experiment. Leptoquarks would mediate hypothetical new interactions between the quarks and leptons of the Standard Model. The existence of such particles would be evidence for physics beyond that model. In this thesis, a direct search for leptoquarks is performed in the jets and missing transverse energy final state. For this analysis, a trigger had to be developed along with a tool to precisely determine its efficiency. An analysis of …

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This dissertation describes a direct measurement of the W boson total decay width, {Lambda}{sub W}, using the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The measurement uses an integrated luminosity of 177.3 pb{sup -1} data, collected during the 2002-2003 run. The width is determined from the shape of the transverse mass distribution, M{sub T}, by fitting the data in the tail region 100 < M{sub T} < 200 GeV. The result if {Lambda}{sub W} = 2.011 {+-} 0.093(stat) {+-} 0.107(syst) GeV.

Experiments and direct numerical simulations (DNS) have been performed to examine the effects of initial conditions on the dynamics of a Rayleigh-Taylor unstable mixing layer. Experiments were performed on a water channel facility to measure the interfacial and velocity perturbations initially present at the two-fluid interface in a small Atwood number mixing layer. The experimental measurements have been parameterized for use in numerical simulations of the experiment. Two- and three-dimensional DNS of the experiment have been performed using the parameterized initial conditions. It is shown that simulations implemented with initial velocity and density perturbations, rather than density perturbations alone, are required to match experimentally-measured statistics and spectra. Data acquired from both the experiment and numerical simulations are used to examine the role of initial conditions on the evolution of integral-scale, turbulence, and mixing statistics. Early-time turbulence and mixing statistics are shown to be strongly-dependent upon the early-time transition of the initial perturbation from a weakly-nonlinear to a strongly-nonlinear flow.

Magnetic monopoles are highly ionizing and curve in the direction of the magnetic field. A new dedicated magnetic monopole trigger at CDF, which requires large light pulses in the scintillators of the time-of-flight system, remains highly efficient to monopoles while consuming a tiny fraction of the available trigger bandwidth. A specialized offline reconstruction checks the central drift chamber for large dE/dx tracks which do not curve in the plane perpendicular to the magnetic field. We observed zero monopole candidate events in 35.7 pb{sup -1} of proton-antiproton collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. This implies a monopole production cross section limit {sigma} < 0.2 pb for monopoles with mass between 100 and 700 GeV, and, for a Drell-Yan like pair production mechanism, a mass limit m > 360 GeV.

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Lithium ion insertion into electrode materials is commonly used in rechargeable battery technology. The insertion implies changes in both the crystal structure and the electronic structure of the electrode material. Side-reactions may occur on the surface of the electrode which is exposed to the electrolyte and form a solid electrolyte interface (SEI). The understanding of these processes is of great importance for improving battery performance. The chemical and physical properties of water and alcohols are complicated by the presence of strong hydrogen bonding. Various experimental techniques have been used to study geometrical structures and different models have been proposed to view the details of how these liquids are geometrically organized by hydrogen bonding. However, very little is known about the electronic structure of these liquids, mainly due to the lack of suitable experimental tools. In this thesis examples of studies of lithium battery electrodes and liquid systems using soft x-ray emission spectroscopy will be presented. Monochromatized synchrotron radiation has been used to accomplish selective excitation, in terms of energy and polarization. The electronic structure of graphite electrodes has been studied, before and after lithium intercalation. Changes in the electronic structure upon lithiation due to transfer of electrons into the graphite …

This thesis presents evidence for the decay mode B{sup {+-}} {yields} {phi}K{sup {+-}} in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV using (120 {+-} 7)pb{sup -1} of data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). This signal is then used to measure the branching ratio relative to the decay mode B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}}. The measurement starts from reconstructing the two decay modes: B{sup {+-}} {yields} {phi}K{sup {+-}}, where {phi} {yields} K{sup +}K{sup -} and B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}}, where J/{psi} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{mu}{sup -}. The measurement yielded 23 {+-} 7 B{sup {+-}} {yields} {phi}K{sup {+-}} events, and 406 {+-} 26 B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}} events. The fraction of B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}} events where the J/{psi} subsequently decayed to two muons (as opposed to two electrons) was found to be f{sub {mu}{mu}} = 0.839 {+-} 0.066. The relative branching ratio of the two decays is then calculated based on the equation: BR(B{sup {+-}} {yields} {phi}K{sup {+-}})/BR(B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}}) = N{sub {phi}K}/N{sub {psi}K} {center_dot}f{sub {mu}{mu}} BR(J/{psi} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{mu}{sup -})/BR({phi} {yields} K{sup +}K{sup -}) {epsilon}{sub {mu}{mu}}K/{epsilon}KKK R({epsilon}{sub iso}). The measurement finds BR(B{sup {+-}} {yields} {phi}K{sup {+-}})/BR(B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}}) = 0.0068 …