[en] Baryon production is one of the least understood areas of hadron production in electron positron collisions. Early models of hadronization predicted that very few baryons should be produced. However, experiments have shown a very substantial rate of baryon production, and many different models have been proposed to explain this. One way to test these models, and to further probe the hadronization process is to measure the production rates of different types of baryons. This dissertation presents measurements of the production rates of baryons with different strangeness and spin. The analyses presented here use data taken with the Mark II detector at the PEP storage ring, operating at a center of mass energy of 29 GeV. The Ξ^- production rate is measured to be 0.017 ± 0.004 ± 0.004 per hadronic event, Ω^- production is measured to be 0.014 ± 0.006 ± 0.004 per hadronic event, and Ξ^*0 production is less than 0.006 per hadronic event at a 90% confidence level. These measurements place strong constraints on models of baryon production. In particular, the unexpectedly high rate of Ω^- production is difficult to explain in any disquark based model. Semileptonic Λ_c⁺ decays have also been observed, with σ(e⁺e^- → Λ_cX) * Br(Λ_c → eΛX) = 0.0031 ± 0.0012 ± 0.0010 per hadronic event, and σ(e⁺e^- → Λ_cX) * Br(Λ_c → μΛX) = 0.0024 ± 0.0024 ± 0.0007 per hadronic event. Because neither the branching ratios nor the production rate are well known, it is difficult to interpret these results

[en] This dissertation presents measurements of the production rates of baryons with different strangeness and spin. The analyses presented here use data taken with the Mark III detector at the PEP storage ring, operating at a center of mass energy of 29 GeV. The Ξ/sup /minus// production rate is measured to be 0.017 +- 0.004 +- 0.004 per hadronic event, Ω/sup /minus// production is measured to be 0.014 +- 0.006 +- 0.004 per hadronic event, and Ξ*⁰ production is less than 0.006 per hadronic event at a 90% confidence level. These measurements place strong constraints on models of baryon production. In particular, the unexpectedly high rate of Ω/sup /minus// production is difficult to explain in any diquark based model. Semileptonic Λ/sub c/⁺ decays have also been observed. Because neither the branching ratios nor the production rate are well known, it is difficult to interpret these results. However, they do indicate that the branching ratio for Λ/sub c/⁺ → Λlν may be higher than previous experimental measurements. 85 refs., 45 figs., 12 tabs

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[en] Coherent vector meson production in peripheral nucleus-nucleus collisions is discussed. These interactions may occur for impact parameters much larger than the sum of the nuclear radii. Since the vector meson production is always localized to one of the nuclei, the system acts as a two-source interferometer in the transverse plane. By tagging the outgoing nuclei for Coulomb dissociation it is possible to obtain a measure of the impact parameter and thus the source separation in the interferometer. This is of particular interest since the life-time of the vector mesons are generally much shorter than the impact parameters of the collisions

[en] The cross section for charmed quark production in e + e^- annihilation is given by: σ = 86.8 nb (2/3) 2/E_cm 2(GeV). At 4.6 GeV, just above the Λ_c anti Λ_c production threshold, the cross section is 1.8 nb. At a luminosity of 10 33 cm-2 sec-1, the production rate is 1.8 Hz, or 36 million pairs per 2 x 10 7 second year. According to the traditional quark-diquark fragmentation picture, roughly 10% of these will turn into Λ_c anti Λ_c pairs. The Mark II at SPEAR measured a higher percentage, 20%, but he will use the lower rate. With it, 4 million Λ_c anti Λ_c pairs will be produced each year. The tagging efficiency will depend on the number of modes tagged, and the reconstruction efficiency

[en] IceCube is a 1 km³ neutrino detector now being built at the Amudsen-Scott South Pole Station. It consists of 4800 Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) which detect Cherenkov radiation from the charged particles produced in neutrino interactions. IceCube will observe astrophysical neutrinos with energies above about 100 GeV. IceCube will be able to separate ν_μ, ν_t, and ν_τ interactions because of their different topologies. IceCube construction is currently 50% complete

[en] The effect of shadowing on the early state of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions and transverse energy production is discussed. Results are presented for RHIC Au+Au collisions at √s_NN = 200 GeV and LHC Pb+Pb collisions at √s_NN = 5.5 TeV

[en] The effect of shadowing on the early state of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is investigated along with transverse energy and hard process production, specifically Drell-Yan, J/psi, and Upsilon production. We choose several parton distributions and parameterizations of nuclear shadowing, as well as the spatial dependence of shadowing, to study the influence of shadowing on relevant observables. Results are presented for Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV and Pb+Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) =5.5 TeV

[en] The Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) is a large acceptance detector now being built to study high energy heavy ion collisions. It detects charged particles with a large time projection chamber. The 136,600 TPC pads are instrumented with waveform digitizers, implemented in custom low noise preamplifier/shaper and switched capacitor array/ADCs ICs. The system is highly integrated with all analog functions mounted on small cards that plug into the TPC. Detector mounted readout boards multiplex data from 1,152 channels onto a 1.5 Gbit/sec fiber optic link to the data acquisition system