Elementary Particles and Fields and String Theory Commons^™

Analysis Of The Energy Spectrum Of Michel Electrons In Microboone, Philip Griffith Kellogg

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

The MicroBooNE experiment at Fermilab was designed both to investigate results from anomalies seen in short-baseline experiments and to prototype technology for larger scale experiments. MicroBooNE hopes to investigate an excess of low-energy events seen in a preceding experiment, using improved detector resolution. The goal of this thesis was to perform a calibration of the MicroBooNE detector by determining the Michel electron energy spectrum inside the detector. Michel electrons result from the decay of muons, and have a very well understood energy spectrum. Muons from cosmic rays continually pass through the detector, roughly 1% of which will decay within the …

Meson Photo-Couplings From Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics, Christian J. P. Shultz

Physics Theses & Dissertations

We explore the calculation of three-point functions featuring a vector current insertion in lattice Quantum Chromodynamics. These three-point functions, in general, contain information about many radiative transition matrix elements simultaneously. We develop and implement the technology necessary to isolate a single matrix element via the use of optimized operators, operators designed to interpolate a single meson eigenstate, which are constructed as variationally optimized linear combination of meson interpolating fields within a large basis. In order to frame the results we also explore some well known phenomenology arising within the context of the constituent quark model before transitioning to a lattice …

Search For Contact Interactions And Large Extra Dimensions In Dimuon Events From Pp Collisions At √S = 8 Tev With The Atlas Detector, Tüli̇n Varol

Doctoral Dissertations

A search is conducted for non-resonant new phenomena in the dimuon final states, originating from either contact interactions or large extra spatial dimensions. The proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2012 at √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.5 fb^-1, is used. The dimuon invariant mass spectrum is a discriminating variable in both searches, with the contact interaction search additionally utilizing the dimuon forward-backward asymmetry. No significant deviations from the Standard Model expectation are observed. Lower limits are set on the new physics parameters of interest at 95% …

Multiple Dalitz Plot Analysis At Cleo-C, Mackenzie Smith

Wayne State University Dissertations

Dalitz Plot analysis is a standard technique for the study of weak hadronic 3-body decays. This technique allows us to extract the relative amplitudes, phases, and fit fractions of the resonances that are the primary product of such decays. A Dalitz analysis is complicated by the presence of two or more interfering resonances that appear at the same place on the plot. In this analysis I attempt to resolve the $K^{0}_{s} a_{0}(980)^{0}$ and $K^{0}_{s} f_{0}(980)$ in the decay of $D^{0} \to K^{0}_{s} K^{+} K^{-}$. Using the $K^{0}_{s} a_{0}(980)^{0}$ resonance found in $D^{0} \to K^{0}_{s} \pi^{0} \eta$, I compare equating a …

Search For Fully Reconstructed W Boson Decay, Sangeetha Baskaran

Wayne State University Theses

We have applied techniques used in reconstructing charm and bottom hadron decays to reconstruct W Boson decay. This technique can also be used for the study of other heavy Boson decays. We search for the decay of a W Boson to a D+ meson and a K*0 meson. Events are selected based on the topology of the displaced decay vertex of the D+ → K^- π^+ π^+ . The K*0 is reconstructed in its K^± π^∓ decay mode.

Identification Of High Energy Cosmic Ray Electrons Using Advanced Techniques In Calet And Fermi Lat, Aaron James Worley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Measurements of the cosmic ray electron spectrum have received much attention over the last decade as anomalies in both electron and positron observations have been detected independently by several experiments. The profound possible implications in the fields of high energy astrophysics and particle physics have allowed for many interpretations on the origin of these inconsistencies in the spectra. This research focuses on two space-borne cosmic radiation experiments at different stages in their mission lifetimes: the Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) and the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). We explore the proton-electron discriminating capabilities of the CALET instrument through Monte Carlo simulations. …

Gaussian Cosmology: A New Model For The Accelerated Expansion Of The Universe, Brian Robert Neils Strigel

Senior Projects Fall 2015

In this paper I lay the groundwork for an alternative model for the contemporary expansion of the universe. The current model states that the universe is growing exponentially due to the vacuum of space pulling on it. This model states that the growth rate of the universe is linear in time. However in 1998, researchers suggested that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating. This means the universe is not expanding logarithmically, not linearly. In my model, I lay the groundwork for future research and suggest that the universe develops in time in accordance to a Gaussian scale factor …

The Toric Approach To F-Theory Model Building, Herbie L. Smith

Honors Theses and Capstones

We describe the theoretical motivation for F-theory as a non-perturbative generalization of string theory. The four complex-dimensional compactification spaces of F-theory, called elliptically-fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds, consist of the six compact dimensions of string theory, plus a two-dimensional fiber that describes the string coupling field as a function of position on the string theory manifold. The methods of toric geometry are developed and applied to construct examples of elliptically-fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds. We analyze in detail models in which the fiber is free of singularities as a test bed for a more general analysis.

Phenomenology Of A Toy Model Inspired By The Spontaneous Reduction Of The Spectral Dimension In Quantum Gravity, Patrick A. Greene

Honors Theses and Capstones

Attempts to formulate a quantum theory of gravity have generated many sophisticated models. Though fundamentally different, they necessarily exhibit behaviors resembling experimental observations and standard theoretical expectations. Often, their similarities go no further. However many models unexpectedly predict a change in the spectral dimension of spacetime at very small scales (See [1] and references therein for examples). In particular, some of the models predict the spectral dimension changes from 4 to 2. This paper investigates the phenomenological consequences of a toy model that use Planck-scale 2D hypersurfaces, specifically triangles, embedded in 4D Minkowski spacetime. We randomly generated sequences of triangles …

Scattering Amplitudes In Flat Space And Anti-De Sitter Space, Savan Kharel

Doctoral Dissertations

We calculate gauge theory one-loop amplitudes with the aid of the complex shift used in the Britto- Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) recursion relations of tree amplitudes. We apply the shift to the integrand and show that the contribution from the limit of infinite shift vanishes after integrating over the loop momentum, with a judicious choice of basis for polarization vectors. This enables us to write the one-loop amplitude in terms of on-shell tree and lower-point one-loop amplitudes. Some of the tree amplitudes are forward amplitudes. We show that their potential singularities do not contribute and the BCFW recursion relations can be applied …

Effects Of Energetic Irradiation On Materials And Devices Based On Graphene And Topological Insulators, Isaac Childres

Open Access Dissertations

This report focuses on the optical and electronic properties of graphene and topological insulators and how these Dirac fermion systems interact with energetic irradiation. We first present data exploring the effects of electron-beam and oxygen plasma induced disorder on the electronic properties and Raman spectra of graphene. These initial investigations were important for relating Raman peak intensities and weak localization features to each other and to an average disorder length in graphene, L_D. ^ We then integrate gate-effect measurements into the Raman spectroscopy study to fully explore the relationships between carrier density, disorder and Raman spectrum signatures. We …

Beam-Induced Radiation Heating On The Superconducting Undulator At The Advanced Photon Source, Laura Elizabeth Boon

Open Access Dissertations

In January 2013 the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a 7 GeV synchrotron X-ray source, commissioned a Superconducting Undulator (SCU). The superconducting magnet is thermally isolated from the beam vacuum chamber, which absorbs the beam-induced heating. Previous beam induced heat load studies at other laboratories had not included a robust calculation of radiation heating from the upstream dipole magnet. The mitigation of the radiation heating mechanism, and production of photoelectrons to seed an electron cloud was studied for this thesis. ^ An analytical model was developed to predict the radiation heat load on the SCU chamber. This model was benchmarked with …

Studies Of Angular Correlations Of Jets With The Atlas Detector, Rajivalochan Subramaniam

Doctoral Dissertations

The strong force is one of the four fundamental forces and its strength is given by the coupling constant αs. The theory that describes the strong interaction is Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and it explains the interactions between quarks and gluons. The strong coupling constant is the only free parameter in the QCD Lagrangian if the quark masses are fixed. Determinations of αs provide direct tests of perturbative QCD calculations. The collimated sprays of particles originating from the quark and gluon interactions are called jets. The ratio of jet cross sections are sensitive to α s and are …

Direct Measurement Of The Pp Solar Neutrino Interaction Rate In Borexino, Keith Otis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents the first direct detection of pp solar neutrinos within Borexino, the underground liquid-scintilator detector located at the Gran Sasso National Labratory(LNGS) in Italy, designed to measure the interaction of neutrinos through neutrino-electron elastic scattering. The rate of scattering in Borexino from the pp solar neutrino spectrum is measured to be 155 +/- 16(stat) +/- 13(sys) counts per day per 100 tonnes. With this measurement we are able to rule out the no oscillation hypothesis at the 2-sigma C.L. and the results agree with Standard Solar Model predictions within 1.1-sigma. These neutrinos are from the keystone proton-proton fusion …

Search For New Physical Phenomena Via Displaced Muon Signatures With The Cms Detector At The Lhc, Melih Solmaz

Open Access Theses

The first search at the LHC for long-lived neutral particles decaying to pairs of muons by using only the muon chambers is presented. Events were collected by the CMS detector during pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV and selected from data samples corresponding to 20.5 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity. No background events are expected after the full analysis selection. Expected upper limits are derived for a model which predicts a heavy scalar decaying to two long-lived particles, each of which can decay to muon pairs. Combined expected upper limits with an analysis utilizing the CMS silicon tracker …

Investigation And Optimization Of A New Compact Superconducting Cavity For Deflecting And Crabbing Applications, Subashini Uddika De Silva

Physics Theses & Dissertations

Deflecting and crabbing structures have many applications in current accelerator systems. The primary use of a deflecting cavity is to separate a single beam into multiple beams. A crabbing cavity enables the head-on collision at the interaction point in particle colliders in order to increase the luminosity. The early uses of the deflecting structures have been in the early 1960s: these structures were disk loaded structures operating at room temperature. The crabbing structure which was installed at the NEK electron-positron collider was the first and only operational superconducting cavity of that kind. The most common design of superconducting deflecting and …

Analytic Evolution Of Singular Distribution Amplitudes In Qcd, Asli Tandogan

Physics Theses & Dissertations

Distribution amplitudes (DAs) are the basic functions that contain information about the quark momentum. DAs are necessary to describe hard exclusive processes in quantum chromodynamics. We describe a method of analytic evolution of DAs that have singularities such as nonzero values at the end points of the support region, jumps at some points inside the support region and cusps. We illustrate the method by applying it to the evolution of a flat (constant) DA, antisymmetric flat DA, and then use the method for evolution of the two-photon generalized distribution amplitude. Our approach to DA evolution has advantages over the standard …

Initial Conditions In High-Energy Collisions, Elena Petreska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is focused on the initial stages of high-energy collisions in the saturation regime. We start by extending the McLerran-Venugopalan distribution of color sources in the initial wave-function of nuclei in heavy-ion collisions. We derive a fourth-order operator in the action and discuss its relevance for the description of color charge distributions in protons in high-energy experiments. We calculate the dipole scattering amplitude in proton-proton collisions with the quartic action and find an agreement with experimental data. We also obtain a modification to the fluctuation parameter of the negative binomial distribution of particle multiplicities in proton-proton experiments. The result …

Yang-Mills Theories As Deformations Of Massive Integrable Models, Axel Cortes Cubero

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Yang Mills theory in 2+1 dimensions can be expressed as an array of coupled (1+1)-dimensional principal chiral sigma models. The SU(N) principal chiral sigma model in 1+1 dimensions is integrable, asymptotically free and has massive excitations. We calculate all the form factors and two- point correlation functions of the Noether current and energy-momentum tensor, in

't Hooft's large-N limit (some form factors can be found even at finite N). We use these new form factors to calculate physical quantities in (2+1)-dimensional Yang-Mills theory, generalizing previous SU(2) by P. Orland to SU(N). The anisotropic gauge theory is related to standard isotropic …

Direct Measurements Of Two Photon Exchange On Lepton-Proton Elastic Scattering Using Simultaneous Electron-Positron Beams In Clas, Dasuni Kalhari Adikaram

Physics Theses & Dissertations

The electric (GE) and magnetic ( GM) form factors of the proton are fundamental observables which characterize its charge and magnetization distributions. There are two methods to measure the proton form factors: the Rosenbluth separation method and the polarization transfer technique. However, the ratio of the electric and magnetic form factors measured by those methods significantly disagree at momentum transfer Q² > 1 GeV². The most likely explanation of this discrepancy is the inclusion of two-photon exchange (TPE) amplitude contributions to the elastic electron-proton cross section which significantly changes the extraction of GE from the …

Gauge/ Gravity Correspondence, Bulk Locality And Quantum Black Holes, Debajyoti Sarkar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this dissertation is threefold. We begin by the study of two parallel ideal cosmic strings in the presence of non-minimal scalar fields and spin- 1 gauge fields. We show that the contributions of the non-minimal term on the interaction energy between the strings are similar to that of the gauge field for a particular value of non-minimal coupling parameter. In this context we clarify some of the issues that arise when comparing the renormalization of black hole entropy and entanglement entropy using the replica trick.

In the second part of the dissertation we study the process of …

Search For Contact Interactions Using The Dimuon Mass Spectrum In P-P Collisions At Sqrt(S) = 8 Tev At Cms, Chamath Kottachchi

Wayne State University Dissertations

The mass hierarchy problem associated with the standard model suggests that there might be more fundamental particles in nature. If quarks and leptons have substructures, known as preons, the manifestation of compositeness can be a four-fermion contact interaction. The experimental signal for contact interactions is a non-resonant enhancement of the number of events in the high-mass region of the dimuon mass spectrum. This dissertation describes a detailed search strategy for contact interactions using the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment. The dimuon mass spectrum above 300 GeV has been studied using the data collected in 2012 at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV corresponding …

Determination Of Jet Transport Parameters And Their Temperature Dependence In Heavy-Ion Collisions, Karen Marie Burke

Wayne State University Theses

In the continuing effort to describe properties of the quark-gluon plasma, energy loss is studied through leading order higher twist calculations of high transverse momentum single hadron suppression. Input of several values for the jet transport parameter q ̂ were used at pT ranges of ~5-20 GeV at RHIC and ~10-100 GeV at LHC, with collision centrality of 0-5%. The results of the calculations are then compiled and compared with experimental data to determine the best fit value for q ̂.

Large-Angle Beamstrahlung: Simulation And Diagnostics, Ryan Stephen Gillard

Wayne State University Dissertations

LARGE-ANGLE BEAMSTRAHLUNG: SIMULATION AND DIAGNOSTICS

by

RYAN S. GILLARD

May 2014

Advisor: Dr. Giovanni Bonvicini

Major: Physics

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Luminosity is paramount in high energy physics research, therefore it is critical to optimize it. Particle beams are complex and orbit in a complicated fashion therefore they don't always collide as intended thus reducing our chance of discovery. Simulations and calculations of the beam-beam radiation or beamstrahlung can provide crucial insight into the collision geometry. Combined with an optics box that can collect and analyze this radiation, this could be an extremely valuable tool leading to correction of the …

Weak Decay Studies From An Effective Theory Standpoint, Aditya Yechan Gunja

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this doctoral dissertation I discuss the phenomenology of some weak interaction decays using a model independent approach by employing effective field theories. I discuss the soft photon contribution and background effect to the rare dimuonic decay of the neutral B meson. I also study some radiative exclusive W boson decays in the standard model in the context of pQCD and SCET. Additionally I invoke leptonic decays of charged mesons to constrain two general models of light dark matter.

Universal Constraints On 2d Cfts And 3d Gravity, Joshua D. Qualls

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

We study constraints imposed on a general unitary two-dimensional conformal field theory by modular invariance. We begin with a review of previous bounds on the conformal dimension Delta₁ of the lowest primary operator assuming unitarity, a discrete spectrum, modular invariance, c_L, c_R > 1, and no extended chiral algebra. We then obtain bounds on the conformal dimensions Delta₂, Delta₃ using no additional assumptions. We also show that in order to find a bound for Delta₄ or higher Delta_n, we need to assume a larger minimum value for c_tot that grows …

The Dijet Cross Section Measurement In Proton-Proton Collisions At A Center Of Mass Energy Of 500 Gev At Star, Grant D. Webb

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

Polarized deep inelastic scattering experiments play a vital role in the exploration of the spin structure of the proton. The polarized proton-proton collider at RHIC provides direct access to the gluon spin distribution through longitudinal double spin asymmetry measurements of inclusive jets, pions, and dijets. This thesis presents the measurement of the dijet double differential cross-section in proton-proton collisions at center of mass energies of √s = 500 GeV. The data represent an integrated luminosity of 8.7 pb^-1 recorded by the STAR detector during the 2009 RHIC run. A comprehensive jet analysis was performed to determine the ideal …

Time Dependent Holography, Diptarka Das

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

One of the most important results emerging from string theory is the gauge gravity duality (AdS/CFT correspondence) which tells us that certain problems in particular gravitational backgrounds can be exactly mapped to a particular dual gauge theory a quantum theory very similar to the one explaining the interactions between fundamental subatomic particles. The chief merit of the duality is that a difficult problem in one theory can be mapped to a simpler and solvable problem in the other theory. The duality can be used both ways.

Most of the current theoretical framework is suited to study equilibrium systems, or …

Probing New Physics Through Third Generation Leptons, Preet Sharma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of beyond standard model physics or new physics. The third generation charged lepton -the τ -is an excellent probe of new physics (NP) because of it being the heaviest lepton. As the heaviest lepton, it has the largest coupling ( among the leptons) to the Higgs boson in the Standard Model (SM). New physics contributions to the tau-neutrino nucleon scattering were considered. Charged Higgs and W' effects to the deep inelastic scattering ντ ( [special character omitted]τ) + N → τ− (τ+) + X in the neutrino-nucleon interactions has been studied. The neutrino detection process …

Photoproduction Of Π0 On Hydrogen With Clas From 1.1 Gev - 5.45 Gev Using E+E –Γ Decay, Michael C. Kunkel

Physics Theses & Dissertations

Photoproduction of the π⁰ meson was studied using the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility using tagged incident photon energies spanning the range E_γ = 1.1 GeV - 5.45 GeV. The measurement is performed on a liquid hydrogen target in the reaction γp → pe ⁺e^–(γ). The final state of the reaction is the sum of two subprocesses for π⁰ decay, the Dalitz decay mode of π⁰ → e ⁺e^–γ and conversion mode where one photon from π⁰ → γγ decay is converted into a …