Part I of this thesis is a theoretical background to parts II and III. Part II treats the phenomenon of decreased visibility through a glazing due to external water condensation, dew, on the external surface. Some simulations are presented where it is shown that under certain circumstances condensation can be expected. A combination of coatings on the external surface is suggested to overcome the problem of external condesation. It consists of both a coating which decreases the emissivity of the surface and a hydrophilic coating which reduces the detrimental effects to the view through the window. Fresnel calculations of the optical properties are used to discuss the feasibility of using different coatings. A new test box was used to verify that the proposed window coatings perform as expected. Part III is a study on the angular dependence of solar absorptance in windows. Optical properties vary with the angle of incidence of the incoming light. The variation is different from one window pane to another. A model is proposed to approximate the angular variation of the solar absorptance in window panes. The model is semi-empirical and involves dividing the wide range of windows into nine groups. To which group a window belongs, depends on how many panes it has and on the features of the outer pane. The strength of the model is that it can be used without knowing the exact optical properties of each pane of the window. This makes it useful in the many cases when these data are not given by the manufacturer and Fresnel calculations to get the optical properties of the window are not feasible. The model is simple and can be added as an appendix to existing standards for measuring optical properties of windows.

This thesis summarizes my work at the University of Victoria to design and evaluate a proof-of-concept instrument called the Confocal Acoustic Holography Microscope (CAHM). The instrument will be able to measure small changes in temperature and composition in a fluid specimen, which can be indirectly measured via small fluctuations in the speed of sound. The CAHM combines concepts of confocal microscopy, interferometry, and ultrasonic imaging. This recent work in confocal acoustic holography has progressed from our previous research in confocal laser holography. The prototype CAHM design uses a frequency of 2.25 MHz, and can measure sound speed changes of 16 m/s, temperature changes of 5°C, with a spatial resolution of 660 μm. With future improvements to the CAHM, utilizing the latest technologies such as 2D array detectors, MEMS, and acoustic lenses, we expect resolutions of 1 m/s, 0.5°C, and 150 μm. The design of the CAHM involved the production of a 3D CAD layout of the optomechanical components and ray tracing simulations using Zemax optical design software. Simulated acoustic holograms and fringe shifts were produced and they were found to match up very well with theoretical calculations. A simplified acoustic holography instrument was built and tested. Speed of sound measurements were made for several test specimens, while keeping temperature constant. Specimens of ethanol, isopropanol, acetic acid, glycerine, and mineral oil were measured. Holograms were collected for acetic acid and mineral oil and were compared to the reference case (distilled water). The fringe spacing and phase shifts measured experimentally matched up well with the Zemax simulations and the theoretical calculations. Hence, the popular Zemax optical software can be effectively used to design acoustic instruments. To our knowledge, this is the first use of Zemax for acoustic designs. Based on the successful results of the simulations and experiments, the CAHM is expected to have many useful applications, especially in medical diagnostics where it could be used to measure density and temperature within the human body. Phase contrast images could also be used to help identify suspicious lesions, such as those found in prostate or breast tissue. Other applications include non-destructive testing of electronic and mechanical parts, measurements of fluid samples, material science experiments, and microgravity experiments, where non-invasive examination is required.

We use a global fit to determine the form factor slopes and branching fractions of the decays B --> Dlnu and B --> D*lnu. We reconstruct Dl pairs and construct a 3-dimensional distribution binned in lepton momentum, D momentum and cosTheta(B-Dl). These kinematic variables provide good separation between the signal and background. We fit electron and muon samples separately and combine them after calculating systematic uncertainties. The form factor slopes, rhoD^2 for B --> Dlnu and rho^2 for B --> D*lnu decays, are measured to be rhoD^2 = 1.22 +- 0.04 +- 0.07 and rho^2 = 1.21 +- 0.02 +- 0.07, where the errors are statistical and systematic, respectively. Branching fractions are fitted to be B(B+ --> D0lnu) = (2.36 +- 0.03 +- 0.12) % and B(B^+ --> D*0lnu) = (5.37 +- 0.02 +- 0.21) %. We use these results to determine the products, G(1)|Vcb| = (43.8 +- 0.8 +- 2.3)*10^{-3} and F(1)|Vcb| = (35.7 +- 0.2 +- 1.2)*10^{-3} of the form factors at zero recoil and the CKM matrix element |Vcb|, from which |Vcb| can be extracted using theoretical input.

Using data collected with the BABAR detector at the SLAC PEP-II electron-positron storage ring operating at a centre-of-mass energy near 10.58 GeV, the branching fractions $B(\tau^- \to \pi^-\pi^-\pi^+\nu_\tau) =(8.83\pm0.01\pm0.13)\%$, $B(\tau^- \to K^-\pi^-\pi^+\nu_\tau) =(0.273\pm0.002 \pm 0.009)\%$, $B(\tau^- \to K^-\pi^-K^+\nu_\tau) =(0.1346 \pm 0.0010 \pm 0.0036)\%$, and $B(\tau^- \to K^-K^-K^+\nu_\tau) =(1.58 \pm 0.13 \pm 0.12)\times10^{-5}$ are measured where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively. The invariant mass distribution for the $\tau^- \to \pi^-\pi^-\pi^+\nu_\tau$, $\tau^- \to K^-\pi^-\pi^+\nu_\tau$, $\tau^- \to K^-\pi^-K^+\nu_\tau$, and $\tau^- \to K^-K^-K^+\nu_\tau$ decays are unfolded to correct for detector effects. A measurement of $B(\tau^- \to \phi\pi^-\nu_\tau)=(3.42\pm0.55\pm0.25)\times10^{−5}$, a measurement of $B(\tau^- \to \phi^-K^-\nu_\tau) =(3.39\pm0.20\pm0.28)\times10^{−5}$ and an upper limit on $B(\tau^- \to K^-K^-K^+\nu_\tau [ex.\phi]) < =2.5\times10^{−6}$@90\%CL are determined from a binned maximum likelihood fit of the $\tau^- \to K^-\pi^-K^+\nu_\tau$ and $\tau^- \to K^-K^-K^+\nu_\tau$ $K^+K^−$ invariant mass distributions. The branching ratio $B(\tau^- \to K^-\nu_\tau)/B(\tau^- \to\pi^-\nu_\tau)$ is measured to be $(6.531\pm0.056\pm0.093)\times10^{−2}$ from which $|V_{us}|$ is determined to be $0.2255 \pm 0.0023$. The branching ratio $B(\tau^- \to \mu^-\nu_\tau\bar{\nu}_\mu)/B(\tau^- \to e^-\nu_\tau\bar{\nu}_e) =(9.796 \pm 0.016 \pm 0.035)\times10^{−1}$ is measured enabling a precision test of the Standard Model assumption of charged current lepton universality, $g_{\mu}/g_{e}=1.0036 \pm 0.0020$. The branching ratios $B(\tau^- \to K^-\nu_\tau)/B(\tau^- \to e^-\nu_\tau\bar{\nu}_e)=(3.882 \pm 0.032 \pm 0.056)\times10^{−2}$, and $B(\tau^- \to\pi^-\nu_\tau)/B(\tau^- \to e^-\nu_\tau\bar{\nu}_e)=(5.945 \pm 0.014 \pm 0.061)\times10^{−1}$ are measured which provide additional tests of charged current lepton universality, $(g_{\tau}/g_{\mu})_{\pi}= 0.9856 \pm 0.0057$ and $(g_{\tau}/g_{\mu})_{K}= 0.9827 \pm 0.0086$ which can be combined to give $(g_{\tau}/g_{\mu})_{\pi/K}= 0.9850 \pm 0.0054$. Any deviation of these measurements from the expected Standard Model values would be an indication of new physics.

We study the structure and substructure of Lambda-CDM halos using a suite of high-resolution cosmological N-body simulations. Our analysis of the substructure population of dark matter halos focuses on their mass and peak circular velocity functions, as well as their spatial distribution and dynamics. In our analysis, we consider the whole population of subhalos physically associated with the main halo, defined as those that have, at some time, crossed within the virial radius of the main progenitor. We find that this population extends beyond 3 times the virial radius and includes objects on unorthodox orbits, several of which travel at velocities approaching the nominal escape speed from the system. We trace the origin of these unorthodox orbits to the tidal dissociation of bound groups, which results in the ejection of some systems along tidal streams. This process primarily influences low-mass systems leading to clear mass-dependent biases in their spatial distribution and kinematics: the lower the subhalo mass at accretion time the more concentrated and kinematically hotter their descendant population. When quantified in terms of present day subhalo mass these trends disappear, presumably due to the increased effect of dynamical friction and tidal stripping on massive systems. We confirm several of these results using the ultra-high resolution Aquarius simulations, which extend the dynamic range of the subhalo mass function by nearly 3 orders of magnitude. Using these simulations we confirm that the substructure mass function follows a power-law, $dN/dM\propto M^{-1.9}$, and exhibits very little halo-to-halo scatter. This implies that the total mass in substructure within a given halo is bounded to a small fraction of the total halo mass, with the smooth component dominating the halo inner regions. Using the Aquarius simulations we study the structure of galaxy-sized Lambda-CDM halos. We find that the spherically averaged density profiles become increasingly shallow toward the halo center, with no sign of converging to an asymptotic power-law; a radial dependence accurately described by the Einasto profile. In our highest resolution run we resolve scales approaching 100 pc, at which point the maximum asymptotic slope is $\approx -0.89$, confidently ruling out recent claims for cusps as steep as $r^{-1.2}$. We find that the spherically averaged density and velocity dispersion profiles are not universal, but rather show subtle but significant deviations from self-similarity. Intriguingly, departures from self-similarity are minimized when cast in terms of the phase-space density profile, $\rho/\sigma^3$, suggesting an intimate scaling between densities and velocity dispersions across the system. The phase-space density profiles follow a power-law with radius, $r^{-1.875}$, identical to that of Bertschinger's similarity solution for self-similar infall onto a point mass in an otherwise unperturbed Einstein-de Sitter universe.

The ATLAS experiment pushes the leading edge of experimental particle physics. Increasingly complex hardware, however, brings increasingly complex problems which manifest themselves not only in the detector, but also within the software which drives the detector. The magnitude of the expected interaction rate, too, adds enormous stress to the detector system and the software trigger. In order to prepare the software for these challenges, various detector quantities are considered which may provide debugging handles and robustness against detector problems arising in the ATLAS calorimeter trigger. The effect of electronics noise suppression on these quantities is studied and a brief study of the software trigger performance is followed by recommendations for the implementation of robustness checks.

The use of beamlets as a dose calculation tool in Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) treatment planning is widespread and well documented. A beamlet can simply be defined as the contribution of radiation passing through a particular geometrically defined subdivision of a given linear accelerator's emerging radiation field. The most common classes of algorithms used today to calculate the dose distributions deposited by beamlets are the pencil beam convolution and col-lapsed cone classes of algorithms. Using BEAMnrc [1], a Monte Carlo (MC) based radiation transport simulation software package, this thesis presents a novel method of calculating MC beamlet dose distributions with a level of accuracy not achievable using the above analytic dose calculation methods. In a first application, the MC beamlet dose distributions generated in this thesis are used to fine-tune the output of the MC or "virtual" linear accelerator from which they are produced. This is achieved through the adjustment of individual beamlet weights to align the output of the virtual accelerator to the experimentally measured output of the modeled accelerator in water. In a second application, MC beamlets are used to derive corrections to particular Multileaf Collimator (MLC) leaf sequences of IMRT treatment plans that have been miscalculated by a convolution-based dose calculation algorithm. These calculation inaccuracies (up to as much as 15%) arise due to the well known fact that convolution-based algorithms do not accurately model dose deposition in inhomoge¬neous media, such as lung [2] [3] [4]. In a final application, the MC beamlet generation method described in this thesis is implemented into a direct aperture optimization (DAO) algorithm. The implementation of MC beamlet generation in DAO forms the basis for a purely MC based inverse treatment planning system.

The study of the muon decay process μ+ → e+νeν ̄μ is a powerful constraint on the behaviour of the weak interaction, without contamination of the other, stronger, fundamental interactions. The spectrum measured from the momentum and angles of the decay positrons is parametrized using a set of four decay parameters. The purpose of the TWIST experiment is to measure these decay parameters to an unprecedented precision; an order of magnitude improvement in the uncertainties over measurements completed before the TWIST experiment. Measurements of the muon decay parameters constrain the values of a series of 19 weak coupling constants. In the standard model, V-A weak interaction, 18 of these constants are 0, while the remaining constant describes interactions between left handed particles, gV_LL= 1.The decay parameter ρ quantifies the behaviour of the spectrum with respect to momentum. According to the standard model the value of this parameter is 3/4. TWIST measured a value of ρ = 0.74991±0.00009(stat)±0.00028(sys). The measurement is limited by its systematic uncertainty, so a large focus of the experiment was on the determination and control of these uncertainties. The systematic uncertainties are derived from uncertainties in the detector construction and uncertainties in the biases generated by differences between the data and a matching Monte Carlo. Muon decay also limits the possibility of family symmetry breaking interactions. TWIST can be used to search for the possibility of muons decaying into a positron and a single unidentified neutral particle μ+ → e+X0 that does not otherwise interact with normal matter. The large momentum and angle acceptance of the TWIST spectrometer allows for searches of two body decays for masses of the X0 boson mX0 ∈ [0,80] MeV/c, with a variety of behaviours with respect to the angle of the positron track. Upper limits on massive and mass-less X0 decays are set with a 90% confidence level separately at parts per million for massive decays and parts in 10000 for mass-less decays.

In recent years, the interest for miniaturization of spaceborne instruments and subsystems has increased steadily, as this enables development of small and lightweight satellite classes as well as more versatile payloads on traditional spacecraft. In essence, this thesis work is an investigation of the applicability of magnetoresistive technology to a magnetometer intended for space. Two types of magnetoresistive sensors, promising with respect to performance competiveness also after considerable miniaturization, were developed and evaluated, namely magnetic tunnel junctions and planar Hall effect bridge sensors. In the case of the magnetic tunnel junctions, much effort was put on the micromanufacturing process. Two schemes were developed and evaluated for sensor contouring: one employing focused ion beam processes for rapid prototyping, and the other combining sputtering and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy for precise etch depth monitoring during ion etching. For the former, the resulting implantation damages were investigated with chemical analysis and correlated to the sensor properties. In the latter, the depth of the etching was monitored live with a resolution sufficient to stop the etching in the 1 nm thick tunneling barrier. The effect and extent of redeposition were investigated by transmission electron microscopy and micromagnetic analysis. With the knowledge so gained, the tunneling magnetoresistance of the manufactured junctions could be improved significantly and their inherent noise could be reduced. As a step in space flight qualification, the magnetic tunnel junctions were subjected to both g and particle radiation, leaving them unaffected by the first, but rendering them a reduced tunneling magnetoresistance ratio and an increased coercivity by the latter. In the case of the planar Hall effect bridge sensors, their inherent noise was thoroughly investigated, revealing both electric and magnetic 1/f noise at low frequencies along with thermal noise at higher frequencies. In addition, an analytical model of the magnetic properties of the planar Hall effect bridges was developed, and a design process, based on the model, was established to optimize the bridges for a particular application. In conclusion, both types of sensors show great promises for use in space. Of the two, the planar Hall effect bridge sensors had a better detection limit at low frequencies, whereas the magnetic tunnel junctions were more precise at higher frequencies. However, both sensors had a bandwidth greatly exceeding that of traditional spaceborne magnetometers. A magnetometer employing the magnetic tunnel junctions from this work is currently included as payload onboard the Vietnamese satellite F-1 scheduled for launch this year. A magnetometer using magnetoresistive sensors – planar Hall effect sensors, magnetic tunnel junctions, or both – enables a mass reduction of more than two orders of magnitudes compared with traditional systems.

We use a global fit to determine the form factor slopes and branching fractions of the decays B --> Dlnu and B --> D*lnu. We reconstruct Dl pairs and construct a 3-dimensional distribution binned in lepton momentum, D momentum and cosTheta(B-Dl). These kinematic variables provide good separation between the signal and background. We fit electron and muon samples separately and combine them after calculating systematic uncertainties. The form factor slopes, rhoD^2 for B --> Dlnu and rho^2 for B --> D*lnu decays, are measured to be rhoD^2 = 1.22 +- 0.04 +- 0.07 and rho^2 = 1.21 +- 0.02 +- 0.07, where the errors are statistical and systematic, respectively. Branching fractions are fitted to be B(B+ --> D0lnu) = (2.36 +- 0.03 +- 0.12) % and B(B^+ --> D*0lnu) = (5.37 +- 0.02 +- 0.21) %. We use these results to determine the products, G(1)|Vcb| = (43.8 +- 0.8 +- 2.3)*10^{-3} and F(1)|Vcb| = (35.7 +- 0.2 +- 1.2)*10^{-3} of the form factors at zero recoil and the CKM matrix element |Vcb|, from which |Vcb| can be extracted using theoretical input.