Using new experimental techniques, the spectra of $gamma$-rays from the capture of neutrons by $sup 181$Ta were measured at the Livermore 100-MeV linac for neutrons from 2 eV to 9 x 10$sup 4$ eV with a (Ge(Li)-NaI) three-crystal spectrometer. Individual primary $gamma$-ray lines were resolved to 1778-keV excitation in $sup 182$Ta. Neutron resonances were resolved to 200-eV neutron energy. Data analysis techniques and codes were developed to extract positions and intensities of resolved transitions from the large data matrices accumulated in this experiment. Techniques were developed to unfold the unresolved $gamma$- ray spectra using the simple response of the three-crystal spectrometer. The resolved transition data were used to place 110 states with spin and parity assignments in the $sup 182$Ta level diagram below 1780-keV excitation. A set of 1240 E1 transition strengths were analyzed to extract 1.38 +- 0.11 degrees of freedom for the most likely chisquared fit to the distribution of widths. The E1 strength function was extracted for E/sub gamma/ = 4 to 6 MeV and compared with previous results. The $gamma$-ray spectra for E/sub gamma/ = 1.5 to 6.1 MeV were unfolded for neutron energy groups between 20 and 9 x 10$sup 4$ eV. Below 5-MeV $gamma$-ray …

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 …

Search engines, such as Google, assign scores to news articles based on their relevancy to a query. However, not all relevant articles for the query may be interesting to a user. For example, if the article is old or yields little new information, the article would be uninteresting. Relevancy scores do not take into account what makes an article interesting, which would vary from user to user. Although methods such as collaborative filtering have been shown to be effective in recommendation systems, in a limited user environment there are not enough users that would make collaborative filtering effective. I present a general framework for defining and measuring the ''interestingness'' of articles, called iScore, incorporating user-feedback including tracking multiple topics of interest as well as finding interesting entities or phrases in a complex relationship network. I propose and have shown the validity of the following: 1. Filtering based on only topic relevancy is insufficient for identifying interesting articles. 2. No single feature can characterize the interestingness of an article for a user. It is the combination of multiple features that yields higher quality results. For each user, these features have different degrees of usefulness for predicting interestingness. 3. Through user-feedback, a …

We present a search for B{sub S}{sup 0} oscillations using semileptonic B{sub S} {yields} D{sub s}{mu}X (D{sub S} {yields} K{sub S}{sup 0}K). The data were collected using the D0 detector from events produced in {radical}s = 1.96 TeV proton-antiproton collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron. The Tevatron is currently the only place in the world that produces B{sub S}{sup 0} mesons and will be until early 2008 when the Large Hadron Collider begins operating at CERN. One of the vital ingredients for the search for B s oscillations is the determination of the flavor of the B{sub S}{sup 0} candidate (B{sub S}{sup 0} or {bar B}{sub S}{sup 0} ) at the time of its production, called initial state flavor tagging. We develop an likelihood based initial state flavor tagger that uses objects on the side of the event opposite to the reconstructed B meson candidate. To improve the performance of this flavor tagger, we have made it multidimensional so that it takes correlations between discriminants into account. This tagging is then certified by applying it to sample of semimuonic B{sup (0,+)} decays and measuring the well-known oscillation frequency {delta}m{sub d}. We obtain {delta}m{sub d} = 0.486 {+-} 0.021 ps{sup -1}, consistent …

The objective of this work is to investigate the thick diffusion limit of various spatial discretizations of the one-dimensional, steady-state, monoenergetic, discrete ordinates neutron transport equation. This work specifically addresses the two lowest order nodal methods, AHOT-N0 and AHOT-N1, as well as reconsiders the asymptotic limit of the Diamond Difference method. The asymptotic analyses of the AHOT-N0 and AHOT-N1 nodal methods show that AHOT-N0 does not possess the thick diffusion limit for cell edge or cell average fluxes except under very limiting conditions, which is to be expected considering the AHOT-N0 method limits to the Step method in the thick diffusion limit. The AHOT-N1 method, which uses a linear in-cell representation of the flux, was shown to possess the thick diffusion limit for both cell average and cell edge fluxes. The thick diffusion limit of the DD method, including the boundary conditions, was derived entirely in terms of cell average scalar fluxes. It was shown that, for vacuum boundaries, only when {sigma}{sub t}, h, and Q are constant and {sigma}{sub a} = 0 is the asymptotic limit of the DD method close to the finite-differenced diffusion equation in the system interior, and that the boundary conditions between the systems will …

We present a measurement of the mass of the top quark using data from proton-antiproton collisions recorded at the CDF experiment in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron. Events are selected from the single lepton plus jets final state (t{bar t} {yields} W{sup +}bW{sup -}{bar b} {yields} {ell}{nu}bq{bar q}{prime}{bar b}). The top quark mass is extracted using a calculation of the probability density for a t{bar t} final state to resemble a data event. This probability density is a function of both top quark mass and energy scale of calorimeter jets, constrained in situ with the hadronic W boson mass. Using 167 events observed in 955 pb{sup -1} integrated luminosity, we achieve the single most precise measurement of top quark mass to date of 170.8 {+-} 2.2 (stat.) {+-} 1.4 (syst.) GeV/c{sup 2}, where the quoted statistical uncertainty includes uncertainty from the determination of the jet energy scale.

Since the X(3872) was discovered by the Belle Collaboration in August 2003, it's interpretation through the Standard Model has been difficult. Many possible interpretations have been proposed due to its close proximity to the D{bar D}* mass threshold, ranging from a new state in the charmonium spectrum to a 4-quark state to a weakly bound meson molecule. Probing the X(3872) is also made difficult due to low statistical samples at e{sup +}e{sup -} colliders and large combinatoric backgrounds at hadron colliders such as the Tevatron. This paper presented the results of probes of this state performed at the D0 detector.

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.

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.

Images of the Bullet Cluster of galaxies in visible light, X-rays, and through gravitational lensing confirm that most of the matter in the universe is not composed of any known form of matter. The combined evidence from the dynamics of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the cosmic microwave background, big bang nucleosynthesis, and other observations indicates that 80% of the universe's matter is dark, nearly collisionless, and cold. The identify of the dar, matter remains unknown, but weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are a very good candidate. They are a natural part of many supersymmetric extensions to the standard model, and could be produced as a nonrelativistic, thermal relic in the early universe with about the right density to account for the missing mass. The dark matter of a galaxy should exist as a spherical or ellipsoidal cloud, called a 'halo' because it extends well past the edge of the visible galaxy. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) seeks to directly detect interactions between WIMPs in the Milky Way's galactic dark matter halo using crystals of germanium and silicon. Our Z-sensitive ionization and phonon ('ZIP') detectors simultaneously measure both phonons and ionization produced by particle interactions. In order to find …

The WARP code is a robust electrostatic particle-in-cell simulation package used to model charged particle beams with strong space-charge forces. A fundamental operation associated with seeding detailed simulations of a beam transport channel is to generate initial conditions where the beam distribution is matched to the structure of a periodic focusing lattice. This is done by solving for periodic, matched solutions to a coupled set of ODEs called the Kapchinskij-Vladimirskij (KV) envelope equations, which describe the evolution of low-order beam moments subject to applied lattice focusing, space-charge defocusing, and thermal defocusing forces. Recently, an iterative numerical method was developed (Lund, Chilton, and Lee, Efficient computation of matched solutions to the KV envelope equations for periodic focusing lattices, Physical Review Special Topics-Accelerators and Beams 9, 064201 2006) to generate matching conditions in a highly flexible, convergent, and fail-safe manner. This method is extended and implemented in the WARP code as a Python package to vastly ease the setup of detailed simulations. In particular, the Python package accommodates any linear applied lattice focusing functions without skew coupling, and a more general set of beam parameter specifications than its predecessor. Lattice strength iteration tools were added to facilitate the implementation of problems with …

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.

We present a search for the production of neutral Higgs bosons in association with bottom quarks in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. The cross section for this process is enhanced in many extensions of the Standard Model (SM), such as in its Minimal Supersymmetric extension (MSSM) at large tan {beta}. The data, corresponding to a recorded integrated luminosity of 1 fb{sup -1}, were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. In the absence of a signal a 95% C.L. limit is set on the production cross section times branching ratio, and the results are also interpreted in the MSSM.

The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment based at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) in Chicago, Illinois. MINOS measures neutrino interactions in two large iron-scintillator tracking/sampling calorimeters; the Near Detector on-site at FNAL and the Far Detector located in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota. The Near Detector has recorded a large number of neutrino interactions and this high statistics dataset can be used to make precision measurements of neutrino interaction cross sections. The cross section for charged-current quasi-elastic scattering has been measured by a number of previous experiments and these measurements disagree by up to 30%. A method to select a quasi-elastic enriched sample of neutrino interactions in the MINOS Near Detector is presented and a procedure to fit the kinematic distributions of this sample and extract the quasi-elastic cross section is introduced. The accuracy and robustness of the fitting procedure is studied using mock data and finally results from fits to the MINOS Near Detector data are presented.

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This Ph.D. thesis presents the measurement of inclusive jet cross sections in Z/{gamma}* {yields} e{sup +}e{sup -} events using 1.7 fb{sup -1} of data collected by the upgraded CDF detector during the Run II of the Tevatron. The Midpoint cone algorithm is used to search for jets in the events after identifying the presence of a Z/{gamma}* boson through the reconstruction of its decay products. The measurements are compared to next-to-LO (NLO) pQCD predictions for events with one and two jets in the final state. The perturbative predictions are corrected for the contributions of non-perturbative processes, like the underlying event and the fragmentation of the partons into jets of hadrons. These processes are not described by perturbation theory and must be estimated from phenomenological models. In this thesis, a number of measurements are performed to test different models of underlying event and hadronization implemented in LO plus parton shower Monte Carlo generator programs. Chapter 2 is devoted to the description of the theory of strong interactions and jet phenomenology at hadron colliders. Chapter 3 contains the description of the Tevatron collider and the CDF detector. The analysis is described in detail in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 shows the measurement of …

We present the first evidence for electroweak single top quark production using nearly 1 fb{sup -1} of Tevatron Run II data at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. We select single-top-like data events in the lepton+jets decay channel and separate them from backgrounds using the matrix element analysis method. This technique uses leading order matrix elements to compute an event probability for both signal and background hypotheses. Using the expected signal acceptance, background, and observed data we measure the single top quark cross section: {sigma}(p{bar p} {yields} tb + tqb + X) = 4.6{sub -1.5}{sup +}1.8 pb. The probability for the background to have fluctuated up to give at least the cross section measured in this analysis is 0.21%, which corresponds to a Gaussian equivalent significance of 2.9{sigma}.

This thesis presents the results on a search for the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons decaying to tau pairs, with least one of these taus decays leptonically. The search was performed with a sample of 1.8 fb{sup -1} of proton-antiproton collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV provided by the Tevatron and collected by CDF Run II. No significant excess over the Standard Model prediction was found and a 95% confidence level exclusion limit have been set on the cross section times branching ratio as a function of the Higgs boson mass. This limit has been translated into the MSSM Higgs sector parameter plane, tan{beta} vs. M{sub A}, for the four different benchmark scenarios.

We constrain the apex of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa unitarity triangle with measurements of B {yields} K*{pi} amplitudes from analyses of B{sup 0} {yields} K{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0} and B{sup 0} {yields} K{sub S}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} decays. This constraint is consistent with the world average. The B{sup 0} {yields} K{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0} decay mode is reconstructed from a sample of 454 million B{sup 0}{bar B}{sup 0} events collected by the BABAR detector at SLAC. We measure direct CP violation in B{sup 0} {yields} K*{sup +}{pi}{sup -} decays at the level of 3{sigma} when measurements from both B{sup 0} {yields} K{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0} and B{sup 0} {yields} K{sub S}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} decays are combined.

This thesis presents the first measurement of the differential production cross section of a heavy flavor (bottom or charm) jet and direct photon at the Fermilab Tevatron. These measurements were performed using data recorded with the D0 detector from proton-antiproton collisions at a center of mass energy of {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. These results probe a kinematic range for the photon transverse momentum of 30 < p{sub T}{sup {gamma}} < 150 GeV and rapidity of |y{sup {gamma}}| < 1.0 and for jet transverse momentum p{sub T}{sup jet} > 15 GeV and rapidity of |y{sup jet}| < 0.8. These results are compared to next-to-leading-order theoretical calculations.

The past decade is one of the most exciting period in the history of physics and astronomy. The discovery of cosmic acceleration dramatically changed our understanding about the evolution and constituents of the Universe. To accommodate the new acceleration phase into our well established Big Bang cosmological scenario under the frame work of General Relativity, there must exist a very special substance that has negative pressure and make up about 73% of the total energy density in our Universe. It is called Dark Energy. For the first time people realized that the vast majority of our Universe is made of things that are totally different from the things we are made of. Therefore, one of the major endeavors in physics and astronomy in the coming years is trying to understand, if we can, the nature of dark energy. Understanding dark energy cannot be achieved from pure logic. We need empirical evidence to finally determine about what is dark energy. The better we can constrain the energy density and evolution of the dark energy, the closer we will get to the answer. There are many ways to constrain the energy density and evolution of dark energy, each of which leads to …

This report presents an analysis of the technical performance and cost effectiveness of nine small wind energy conversion systems (SWECS) funded during FY 1979 by the U.S. Department of Energy. Chapter 1 gives an analytic framework with which to evaluate the systems. Chapter 2 consists of a review of each of the nine projects, including project technical overviews, estimates of energy savings, and results of economic analysis. Chapter 3 summarizes technical, economic, and institutional barriers that are likely to inhibit widespread dissemination of SWECS technology.

SUBMITTED AS A DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN COMPLETION OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF ED.D THROUGH WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY. The overall purpose of this action research study was to explore the experiences of ten middle school science teachers involved in a three-year partnership program between scientists and teachers at a Department of Energy national laboratory, including the impact of the program on their professional development, and to improve the partnership program by developing a set of recommendations based on the study’s findings. This action research study relied on qualitative data including field notes recorded at the summer academies and data from two focus groups with teachers and scientists. Additionally, the participating teachers submitted written reflections in science notebooks, participated in open-ended telephone interviews that were transcribed verbatim, and wrote journal summaries to the Department of Energy at the end of the summer academy. The analysis of the data, collaboratively examined by the teachers, the scientists, and the science education specialist acting as co-researchers on the project, revealed five elements critical to the success of the professional development of science teachers. First, scientist-teacher partnerships are a unique contribution to the professional development of teachers of science that is not replicated in other …

The goal of Jefferson Lab experiment E01-004 (F?-2) was the measurement of the longitudinal and transverse cross sections via pion electroproduction from hydrogen and deuterium for the purpose of extracting the charged pion form factor using pole dominance. The data were taken at two values of Q2 (1.60 and 2.45 GeV/c)2. In order to attain full coverage in R?, charged pions were detected in parallel kinematics (along the direction of momentum transfer, q), and at ±3 degrees off the direction of momentum transfer. For each Q2 data were taken for two values of the virtual photon polarization, ?, respectively. All data were taken at a fixed center of mass energy, W=2.22 GeV. The longitudinal and transverse pieces of the cross section were separated using the Rosenbluth separation method.