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Inclusive jet cross sections in photoproduction for events containing a D* meson have been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 78.6 pb_1. The events were required to have a virtuality of the incoming photon, Q2, of less than 1 GeV2, and a photon-proton centre-of-mass energy in the range 130 < Wlp < 280 GeV. The measurements are compared with next-to-leading-order (NLO) QCD calculations. Good agreement is found with the NLO calculations over most of the measured kinematic region. Requiring a second jet in the event allowed a more detailed comparison with QCD calculations. The measured dijet cross sections are also compared to Monte Carlo (MC) predictions which incorporate leading-order matrix elements, followed by parton showers and hadronisation. The NLO QCD predictions are in general agreement with the data although differences have been isolated to regions where extra parton radiation is present. The MC models give a better description of the shape of the measured cross sections. This thesis ends with a look at the first HERA II data. The decay of D mesons were studied and for the first time the newly installed micro vertex detector (MVD) was used to tag charm mesons using secondary vertices arising from the decay of (c * D or b * c * D). This shows that the MVD will be a powerful tool in the future analyses of heavy quark production at ZEUS.

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This thesis presents several studies of data collected at the LHCb detector during its first two years of operation. A detector upgrade study is first presented, using simulated events at an increased luminosity. A second study involves radiation damage to the silicon sensors of the LHCb Vertex Locator. During 2010 and 2011the silicon sensors were exposed to a range of fluences, with sensors in the mostactive regions exposed to fluences of up to approximately 45x10^12 1MeV neutron equivalent (1MeV neq). The first observation of n+-on-n sensor type inversion at the Large Hadron Collider is reported, occurring at a fluence of around (10-15)x10^12 of 1MeV neq. The effective depletion voltages of the only n+-on-p sensors in use at the Large Hadron Collider have also been studied, with decreases of around 25V observed after initial irradiation. Following this, the effective depletion voltage inn+-on-p type sensors is observed to increase at a comparable rate to type inverted n+-on-n type sensors. A reduction in the charge collection efficiency due to an unexpected effect involving the sensor readout lines is also observed. A third study relates to CP violation in neutral B-meson mixing, by the measurement of the flavour-specific asymmetry. In the Standard Model, CP violation from this source is expected to be of order 10^-4. Any measured enhancement of this would be a strong indication of new physics. The DØ collaboration has measured the flavour specific asymmetry from B0 and B0s mixing, and found it to be inconsistent with the Standard Model at a confidence level of 3.9 standard deviations, thus motivating an independent measurement from the LHCb experiment. Using the full 2011 LHCb dataset, corresponding to 1.0 fb^-1 of recorded luminosity, the B0s-meson component of the flavour-specific asymmetry is measured to be afs_s = (-0.12 +/- 0.48 +/- 0.34)%, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. This is the single most accurate measurement of afs_s, and is consistent with both the DØ measurement and the Standard Model prediction.

Two analyses are performed using data collected by the LHCb experiment during 2011. Both consider decays of charged B mesons reconstructed in the π±μ+μ− final state. Decays involving dimuons provide an experimentally clean signature, even in the high-background environment of the √s = 7 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The first analysis measures the CP asymmetry of B±→Ψπ± decays using 0.37 fb-1 of data, where the dimuon decays of two resonances are considered, J/ψ→μ+μ− and ψ(2S)→μ+μ−. The branching fraction is measured relative to the Cabibbo favoured B±→ΨK± mode. The second analysis uses 1 fb-1 of data to make the first observation of the non-resonant B±→π±μ+μ− decay. The branching fraction is measured relative to that of B±→K±μ+μ−, and measurements of the CP asymmetry and the ratio of CKM matrix elements Vtd/Vts are obtained. The branching fractions of the decays of interest are found to be B(B±→J/ψ π±) = (3.88 ± 0.11 ± 0.15) x 10-5, B(B±→ψ(2S) π±) = (2.52 ± 0.26 ± 0.15) x 10-5 and B(B±→π±μ+μ−) = (2.48 + 0.57 −0.52 ± 0.17) x 10-8, where the first uncertainty is related to the statistical size of the sample and the second quantifies systematic effects. The measured CP asymmetries in these modes are A CP (J/ψ π) = 0.005 ± 0.027 ± 0.011, A CP (ψ(2S) π) = 0.048 ± 0.090 ± 0.011 and A CP (μμπ) = -0.045 ± 0.220 ± 0.066, with no evidence of direct CP violation seen. The ratio of matrix elements is measured as Vtd/Vts = 0.274 + 0.031 − 0.028 ± 0.008, which is in agreement with previous results.