Digital Commons Network^™

Lepton Flavor Violation And Effective Field Theories, Renae Conlin

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Standard Model is believed to be a low energy effective theory of some completetheory at higher energies. This is already evidenced in the observation of neutrino oscillations. Standard Model processes conserve the lepton flavor quantum numbers. Adding massive neutrinos to the Standard Model, the branching ratios of lepton flavor violating processes are found to be incredibly small. For example, a process μ → eγ has a branching ratio order ∼ 10^−54. These tiny branching ratios of lepton flavor violating processes indicate that they are especially clean areas to look for beyond the Standard Model physics. Any observed flavor violation …

Correlations And Dynamic Fluctuations In High Energy Collisions, Zoulfekar Mazloum

Wayne State University Dissertations

Is thermalization necessary for hydrodynamic flow in nuclear collisions? The discovery of flow-like azimuthal correlations in pA and high-multiplicity pp collisions raises profound questions about the onset of collective flow and its relation to hydrodynamics. We seek independent experimental information on the degree of thermalization in order to identify those hydrodynamic collision systems in which flow is sensitive to equilibrium QCD properties. We aim to develop a protocol for identifying the degree of thermalization using a combination of momentum and multiplicity correlation. To study the effect ofthermalization on these correlations, we use Boltzmann equation in the relaxation time approximation with …

Photophysics Of Metalloporphyrins Strongly Coupled To Cavity Photons, Aleksandr Avramenko

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation will discuss the photophysics of metalloporphyrins, mainly CuTPP, ZnTPP, and H2TPP under strong light-matter coupling conditions. Strong light-matter coupling was achieved by embedding the previously mentioned chromophores into a spun coated PMMA polymer coating which is then incorporated as a spacer layer in a FabryPérot nano-cavity. The cavity thickness is chosen so that the cavity photon is of similar energy as the B, or Soret transition (2nd excited state) of the porphyrin molecule. The exchange of energy between the cavity photon and the molecular mode leads to the formation of polariton states.

Increasing the concentration of the molecules …

Jet Substructure Measurements In Proton-Proton And Proton-Gold Collisions, Isaac Arthur Mooney

Wayne State University Dissertations

Observing a modification of high-energy probes in the hot nuclear environment created by ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions is critical for understanding the microscopic structure of the QCD medium. However, before a modification can be observed, the probes must be calibrated. For this reason, measurements of jet observables in vacuum (pp collisions) and in the presence of cold nuclear matter (pAu collisions) are presented, which will allow for future comparison of jet substructure measurements in AuAu to these baseline measurements. \parData from the STAR detector on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory are used for both analyses. The pp …

Non-Perturbative Processes In Standard Model \& New Physics: From Standard Calculations To Machine Learning, Cody Michael Grant

Wayne State University Dissertations

I calculated non-perturbative processes to study the Standard Model and probe areas of new physics. I found that invisible decays of heavy mesons are not dominated by the leading order contribution in the Standard Model. I argue that this affects neutrino mass constraints and avenues for discovering new physics, such as dark photons. In addition to this, I used a novel approach to approximate a semileptonic form factor with an artificial neural network (ANN). Comparing the results from the ANN to common phenomenological parameterizations, and using it to set a lower bound constraint on the CKM matrix element, $V_{cd}$. Finally, …

Study Of Zyomogen Granule Movement Along Actin Filaments Using A Single Beam Optical Trap, Justin James Raupp

Wayne State University Dissertations

Zymogen granules are enzymatic vesicles in the pancreas. The surface of these zymogen granules (ZGs) has several different kinds of myosin molecules, such as myosin 1c, 6, 5c, and 7b. These molecular motors may contribute to ZG transportation in cells. To understand the molecular motors involved in the vesicle trafficking, we observed the in vitro motility of purified ZGs from rat pancreas and examined the stepping behavior and force that is generated using a single beam optical trap. To be involved in trafficking, molecular motors have certain characteristics, a high duty ratio and the ability to move continuously along actin …

Study Of The Decay B^± → K^0_S Π^± Π^0 At The Belle Experiment, Suravinda Janaka Kumara Kospalage

Wayne State University Dissertations

Belle is a particle physics experiment based at the KEK laboratory in Tsukuba Japanwhich ran from 1999 to 2010 and collected 1ab−1 of data. The Belle experiment is focused on studying the properties of particles called B mesons which are produced by accelerating and colliding electron and positron beams. These B mesons show the biggest differences between the properties of matter and anti-matter of any known particles. One of the main goals of the Belle experiments is to understand the differences between matter and anti-matter, specifically violations of charge-parity symmetry (CP violation) and how anti-matter vanished and we come to …

Optical Signal Processing With Discrete-Space Metamaterials, Mohammad Moein Moeini

Wayne State University Dissertations

As digital circuits are approaching the limits of Moore’s law, a great deal of efforthas been directed to alternative computing approaches. Among them, the old concept of optical signal processing (OSP) has attracted attention, revisited in the light of metamaterials and nano-photonics. This approach has been successful in realizing basic mathematical operations, such as derivatives and integrals, but it is difficult to be applied to more complex ones. Inspired by digital filters, we propose a radically new OSP approach, able to realize arbitrary mathematical operations over a nano-photonic platform. We demonstrate this concept for the case of spatial differentiation, image …