Collective Thomson scattering from ion-acoustic waves at 266nm is used to obtain spatially resolved, two-dimensional electron density, sound speed, and radial drift profiles of a collisional laser plasma. An ultraviolet diagnostic wavelength minimizes the complicating effects of inverse bremsstrahlung and refractive turning in the coronal region of interest, where the electron densities approach n{sub c}/10. Laser plasmas of this type are important because they model some of the aspects of the plasmas found in high-gain laser-fusion pellets irradiated by long pulse widths where the laser light is absorbed mostly in the corona. The experimental results and LASNEX simulations agree within a percent standard deviation of 40% for the electron density and 50% for the sound speed and radial drift velocity. Thus it is shown that the hydrodynamics equations with classical coefficients and the numerical approximations in LASNEX are valid models of laser-heated, highly collisional plasmas. The versatility of Thomson scattering is expanded upon by extending existing theory with a Fokker-Planck based model to include plasmas that are characterized by (0 {le} k{sub ia}{lambda}{sub ii} {le} {infinity}) and ZT{sub e}/T{sub i}, where k{sub ia} is the ion- acoustic wave number, {lambda}{sub ii} is the ion-ion mean free path, Z is the …

This thesis consists of two independent parts; development of Cherenkov Ring Imaging Detector (CRID) system and analysis of high-statistics data of strange meson reactions from the LASS spectrometer. Part 1: The CRID system is devoted to charged particle identification in the SLAC Large Detector (SLD) to study e{sup +}e{sup {minus}} collisions at {radical}s = m{sub Z{sup 0}}. By measuring the angles of emission of the Cherenkov photons inside liquid and gaseous radiators, {pi}/K/p separation will be achieved up to {approximately}30 GeV/c. The signals from CRID are read in three coordinates, one of which is measured by charge-division technique. To obtain a {approximately}1% spatial resolution in the charge-division, low-noise CRID preamplifier prototypes were developed and tested resulting in <1000 electrons noise for an average photoelectron signal with 2 {times} 10{sup 5} gain. To help ensure the long-term stability of CRID operation at high efficiency, a comprehensive monitoring and control system was developed. Part 2: Results from the partial wave analysis of strange meson final states in the reactions K{sup {minus}}p {yields} K{sup {minus}}{omega}p and K{sup {minus}}p {yields} {bar K}{sup 0}{phi}n are presented. The analyses are based on data from a 4.1 event/nb exposure of the LASS spectrometer in K{sup {minus}}p interactions …