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The top quark pair production cross section measurement in the lepton+jets channel with b-tagging algorithm is described. About 900 pb{sup -1} data collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron are used for this analysis. In this thesis, event selection, background estimation, and cross section calculation are discussed in detail. In addition, calibration of the Luminosity Monitor readout electronics and a new b-tagging algorithm, the SLTNN tagger, are also discussed in this thesis.

This thesis presents a measurement of the t{bar t} cross section in the all-jets channel, measured in p{bar p} collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV, using data collected with the D0 detector. The dataset used for this analysis has an integrated luminosity equivalent to L = 162.5 {+-} 10.6 pb{sup -1}. A t{bar t} cross section measurement is a test of the Standard Model predictions for heavy quark production, and the first step towards measurements of the mass and other properties of the top quark. The presented measurement of the cross section for the process p{bar p} {yields} t{bar t} uses the decay channel where both top quarks decay to quarks. The top quark first decays to a b quark and a W boson, and then, for this particular channel, the W boson decays hadronically. Hence, events with six energetic quarks are expected, which ideally leads to events with six jets. These so called all-jets events have a significantly larger branching fraction than other t{bar t} decay channels. The large branching fraction in the all-jets channel means that a significant sample of t{bar t} candidates can be extracted, which can subsequently be used for studies of …

This thesis presents two measurements of the to pquark using 230 pb{sup -1} of data recorded with the D0 detector at the Tevatron accelerator. The first measurement determines the top pair production cross section at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV in proton-antiproton collisions. In the standard model of particle physics the top quark decays almost exclusively into a W boson and a b quark. Candidate events are selected by requiring that at least one jet in the event is tagged with the secondary vertex algorithm.

Hadron production cross sections are calculated in the perturbative QCD frame work. Parton distribution functions are obtained from a strip-soliton model. The fragmentation functions are derived from the Lund model of string breaking.

The high performance computing community has experienced an explosive improvement in distributed-shared memory hardware. Driven by increasing real-world problem complexity, this explosion has ushered in vast numbers of new systems. Each new system presents new challenges to programmers and application developers. Part of the challenge is adapting to new architectures with new performance characteristics. Different vendors release systems with widely varying architectures that perform differently in different situations. Furthermore, since vendors need only provide a single performance number (total MFLOPS, typically for a single benchmark), they only have strong incentive initially to optimize the API of their choice. Consequently, only a fraction of the available APIs are well optimized on most systems. This causes issues porting and writing maintainable software, let alone issues for programmers burdened with mastering each new API as it is released. Also, programmers wishing to use a certain machine must choose their API based on the underlying hardware instead of the application. This thesis argues that a flexible, extensible translator for distributed-shared memory APIs can help address some of these issues. For example, a translator might take as input code in one API and output an equivalent program in another. Such a translator could provide instant …

The availability of high power, spectrally and spatially coherent soft x-rays (SXR) would facilitate a wide variety of experiments as this energy region covers the primary resonances of many magnetic and biological materials. Specifically, there are the carbon and oxygen K-edges that are critical for biological imaging in the water window and the L-edges of iron, nickel, and cobalt for which imaging and scattering studies can be performed. A new coherent soft X-ray branchline at the Advanced Light Source has begun operation (beamline 12.0.2). Using the third harmonic from an 8 cm period undulator, this branch delivers coherent soft x-rays with photon energies ranging from 200eV to 1keV. This branchline is composed of two sub-branches one at 14X demagnification and the other 8X demagnification. The former is optimized for use at 500eV and the latter at 800eV. Here the expected power from the third harmonic of this undulator and the beamline design and characterization is presented. The characterization includes measurements on available photon flux as well as a series of double pinhole experiments to determine the coherence factor with respect to transverse distance. The first high quality Airy patterns at SXR wavelengths are created with this new beamline. The operation …

The author presents new measurements of the type Ia SN rate from the SDSS-II Supernova Survey. The SDSS-II Supernova Survey was carried out during the Fall months (Sept.-Nov.) of 2005-2007 and discovered {approx} 500 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia with densely sampled (once every {approx} 4 days), multi-color light curves. Additionally, the SDSS-II Supernova Survey has discovered several hundred SNe Ia candidates with well-measured light curves, but without spectroscopic confirmation of type. This total, achieved in 9 months of observing, represents {approx} 15-20% of the total SNe Ia discovered worldwide since 1885. The author describes some technical details of the SN Survey observations and SN search algorithms that contributed to the extremely high-yield of discovered SNe and that are important as context for the SDSS-II Supernova Survey SN Ia rate measurements.

The top quark is generally produced in quark and anti-quark pairs. However, the Standard Model also predicts the production of only one top quark which is mediated by the electroweak interaction, known as 'Single Top'. Single Top quark production is important because it provides a unique and direct way to measure the CKM matrix element V{sub tb}, and can be used to explore physics possibilities beyond the Standard Model predictions. This dissertation presents the results of the observation of Single Top using 2.3 fb{sup -1} of Data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The analysis includes the Single Top muon+jets and electron+jets final states and employs Boosted Decision Tress as a method to separate the signal from the background. The resulting Single Top cross section measurement is: (1) {sigma}(p{bar p} {yields} tb + X, tqb + X) = 3.74{sub -0.74}{sup +0.95} pb, where the errors include both statistical and systematic uncertainties. The probability to measure a cross section at this value or higher in the absence of signal is p = 1.9 x 10{sup -6}. This corresponds to a standard deviation Gaussian equivalence of 4.6. When combining this result with two other analysis methods, the resulting …

We study the behavior of charged particles produced in association with Drell-Yan lepton-pairs in the region of the Z-boson in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV. We use the direction of the Z-boson in each event to define 'toward', 'away', and 'transverse' regions. For Drell-Yan production (excluding the leptons) both the 'toward' and 'transverse' regions are very sensitive to the 'underlying event', which is defined as everything except the two hard scattered components. The data are corrected to the particle level and are then compared with several PYTHIA models (with multiple parton interactions) and HERWIG (without multiple parton interactions) at the particle level (i.e. generator level). The data are also compared with a previous analysis on the behavior of the 'underlying event' in high transverse momentum jet production. The goal is to produce data that can be used by the theorists to tune and improve the QCD Monte-Carlo models of the 'underlying event' that are used to simulate hadron-hadron collisions.

This paper presents the Virtual Reality Furnace (VRFurnace) application, an interactive 3-D visualization platform for pulverized coal furnace analysis. The VRFurnace is a versatile toolkit where a variety of different CFD data sets related to pulverized coal furnaces can be studied interactively. The toolkit combines standard CFD analysis techniques with tools that more effectively utilize the 3-D capabilities of a virtual environment. Interaction with data is achieved through a dynamic instructional menu system. The application has been designed for use in a projection-based system which allows engineers, management, and operators to see and interact with the data at the same time. Future developments are discussed and will include the ability to combine multiple power plant components into a single application, allow remote collaboration between different virtual environments, and allow users to make changes to a flow field and see the results of these changes as they are made creating a complete virtual power plant.

Groundwater irrigation is critical to food production and, in turn, to humankind's relationship with its environment. The development of groundwater in Santa Clara Valley, California during the early twentieth century is instructive because (1) responses to unsustainable resource use were largely successful; (2) the proposals for the physical management of the water, although not entirely novel, incorporated new approaches which reveal an evolving relationship between humans and the hydrologic cycle; and (3) the valley serves as a natural laboratory where natural (groundwater basin, surface watershed) and human (county, water district) boundaries generally coincide. Here, I investigate how water resources development and management in Santa Clara Valley was influenced by, and reflective of, a broad understanding of water as a natural resource, including scientific and technological innovations, new management approaches, and changing perceptions of the hydrologic cycle. Market demands and technological advances engendered reliance on groundwater. This, coupled with a series of dry years and laissez faire government policies, led to overdraft. Faith in centralized management and objective engineering offered a solution to concerns over resource depletion, and a group dominated by orchardists soon organized, fought for a water conservation district, and funded an investigation to halt the decline of well …

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.

Semiconductor nanocrystals are a system which has been the focus of interest due to their size dependent properties and their possible use in technological applications. Many chemical and physical properties vary systematically with the size of the nanocrystal and thus their study enables the investigation of scaling laws. Due to the increasing surface to volume ratio as size is decreased, the surfaces of nanocrystals are expected to have a large influence on their electronic, thermodynamic, and chemical behavior. In spite of their importance, nanocrystal surfaces are still relatively uncharacterized in terms of their structure, electronic properties, bonding, and reactivity. Investigation of nanocrystal surfaces is currently limited by what techniques to use, and which methods are suitable for nanocrystals is still being determined. This work presents experiments using x-ray and electronic spectroscopies to explore the structure, reactivity, and electronic properties of semiconductor (CdSe, InAs) nanocrystals and how they vary with size. Specifically, x-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy (XANES) in conjunction with multiple scattering simulations affords information about the structural disorder present at the surface of the nanocrystal. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and ultra-violet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) probe the electronic structure in terms of hole screening, and also give information about band …

A key question for the understanding of photosynthetic water oxidation is whether the four oxidizing equivalents necessary to oxidize water to dioxygen are accumulated on the four Mn ions of the oxygen evolving complex (OEC), or whether some ligand-centered oxidations take place before the formation and release of dioxygen during the S{sub 3} {r_arrow} [S{sub 4}] {r_arrow} S{sub 0} transition. Progress in instrumentation and flash sample preparation allowed us to apply Mn K{beta} X-ray emission spectroscopy (Kb XES) to this problem for the first time. The K{beta} XES results, in combination with Mn X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) data obtained from the same set of samples, show that the S{sub 2} {r_arrow} S{sub 3} transition, in contrast to the S{sub 0} {r_arrow} S{sub 1} and S{sub 1} {r_arrow} S{sub 2} transitions, does not involve a Mn-centered oxidation. This is rationalized by manganese {mu}-oxo bridge radical formation during the S{sub 2} {r_arrow} S{sub 3} transition. Using extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy, the local environment of the Mn atoms in the S{sub 0} state has been structurally characterized. These results show that the Mn-Mn distance in one of the di-{mu}-oxo-bridged Mn-Mn moieties increases from 2.7 …