Physics Commons^™

Search For Production Of A Higgs Boson And A Single Top Quark In Multilepton Final States In Pp Collisions At √S = 13 Tev, Jose Andres Monroy Montanez

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The exciting work in high energy physics includes not only the analysis of the data taken by the experiment but also the development of detection systems. In this thesis, the results of a search for the production of a Higgs boson in association with a single top quark (tH) are presented. This process is of particular interest due to its sensitivity to the relative sign of the top-Higgs coupling and the vector bosons-Higgs coupling. The focus is on leptonic signatures provided by the H → W W , H → τ τ , and H → ZZ decay modes.

The …

Investigations Of Novel Sources Of Spin-Polarized Electrons, Evan Brunkow

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Using a pulsed laser, we investigated the spin-polarization of electrons emitted from bulk GaAs, Ti and Pd chiral nanostructures, and electro-chemically thinned GaAs. Standard sources of spin-polarized electrons from GaAs can have polarizations of approximately 30%, while state-of-the-art spin-polarized electron sources using GaAs cathodes can have as high as 85% spin polarization. Drawbacks for these sources are that they require constant upkeep, have strict vacuum requirements, and are very difficult to learn how to use. For these reasons, we investigated new methods through a different emission process and different materials to see if we could measure a spin-polarization from these …