Graduation Semester and Year

2010

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Physics and Applied Physics

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Kaushik De

Abstract

The ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has collected a substantial amount of data to understand the Standard Model of particle physics at higher than previous center of mass energy available and to explore new physics beyond the Standard Model. This dissertation describes observations of charged particle multiplicity distributions in 7 TeV and 900 GeV data as well as searches for new physics with a signature of high energy jets and missing transverse energy using the first few months of data available at the LHC. Multiplicity distributions of charged particle tracks, one of the first observables in high energy collisions were made for a center of mass energy, sqrt{s} = 900 GeV as well as 7 TeV proton-proton collision data. Such distributions help to understand multi-particle production processes. One of the predicted features of multiplicity distribution and its moments is KNO scaling which implies that the shape and moments of the scaled multiplicity distribution is independent of the center-of-mass energy. Although a clear violation of KNO scaling is not observed within the error limits, an indication of such violation is noted. Different models of hadro-production to describe multiplicity distributions are also studied. The Negative Binomial Distribution (NBD) is an often used distribution modeling multiplicity distributions. It has been observed that NBD is satisfied in different types of collisions and over wide range of energies and it was observed that not only the full-phase-space multiplicity distribution can be successfully fitted by the NBD but also the distribution within central pseudo-rapidity intervals. Based on these findings, the model of cluster (or "clan") cascading type has been proposed. Although, a good NBD fit can be obtained, it is observed for hadronic interactions that the presence of two weighted NBD or Double NBD (DNBD) components, one corresponding to soft production and the other to semi-hard one (mini-jets) seems to fit the data better for broad pseudo-rapidity ranges. It was found that the soft component follows KNO scaling while the semi-hard component does not. The proton-proton collision data at LHC has been analyzed to test the NBD and DNBD parametrization and test the energy dependence of the fitted parameters. It is well understood that the Standard model of Particle physics in incomplete. Our knowledge of cosmology also leaves several crucial questions unanswered, one of them being the composition of the dark matter that has been indirectly observed through astronomical observations. The primary objectives for constructing the Large Hadron Collider has been to solve these problems through the discovery of the Higg's particle and to find new physics processes that predict the production of massive non-interacting stable particles. Searches of such new physics producing heavy stable particles in its final state has been performed. Finding such signals would provide direct observation of a dark matter candidate particle. The exclusive event topology of two high energy jets and missing transverse energy has been explored to perform the above search, using ATLAS detector data. A summary of results of these preliminary searches in comparison with theoretical predictions has been presented. In order to understand and discriminate any new physics, a clear and coherent understanding of the detector response is crucial. Moreover, a detailed knowledge of the behavior of known standard model phenomena is required. A detailed description of the ATLAS detector and several important calibration techniques is discussed and their results summarized. Estimates of Standard Model physics, contributing to irreducible backgrounds to dark matter searches is presented in detail. One such physics process constituting an irreducible background is the production of the Z boson decaying into two neutrinos (nu) with associated jets. The observation of these events directly from data is an impossible task due to the non-interacting nature of the neutrinos. An estimate of the production cross section of these process is estimated using observations of photon (gamma) plus jet events and theoretical predictions. Estimated numbers for the gamma plus 2,3,4 and more associated jets production with uncertainties has been summarized.

Disciplines

Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Physics

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

Download

Included in

Physics Commons

Share

COinS