Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-134).

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliographic note: leaves 323-327.

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-152).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 110-118. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-183).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 293-302).

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 177).

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-200).

The ultimate aim of this work is to develop a laboratory model of large area, xenon-filled, proportional counter, that has good spatial resolution in conjunction with optimum spectral resolution in the energy range 1 to 10 keV. The results of initial development on a 10cm x 10cm imaging counter are first described. The most important effect established in this work is the dependence of spatial resolution on the quench gas. This effect is also observed to be a function of detector size. The mechanism proposed is that secondary electrons liberated by UV photons from the avalanche cause fluctuations in the centroid position of the induced charge distribution. Space charge effects are also observed at the gains required for imaging, which implies that the detector is semi-proportional. This causes degraded energy resolution at the high gains that are used for imaging. The linearity of a xenon imaging counter is found to be poor in the axis perpendicular to the anode wire direction. The use of a long drift region and different quench gases are investigated together with their effect on linearity and spatial resolution in the axis perpendicular to the anode wire direction. Finally, the construction and evaluation of a large area counter 30cm square is described. It is shown that this device produces excellent results (spatial resolution of 1.2mm FWHM and an energy resolution of 27% at 6 keV). Methods of improving the performance of the instrument are also discussed.

In this thesis, we present the optical to X-ray scaling relations from the XMM Cluster Survey (XCS) and the red-sequence Matched-filter Probabilistic Percolation cluster finding algorithm (redMaPPer) cluster catalogs. XCS finds galaxy clusters in the XMM-Newton public archive and redMaPPer uses optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey eighth data release (SDSS-DR8) and the Dark Energy Survey first year data release (DES Y1). redMaPPer catalogs provide reliable photometric redshift estimations that have been calibrated with spectroscopic redshifts. The XCS temperature and luminosity pipelines need redshift information to calculate the X-ray observables. We introduced third generation of the XCS Post Processing Pipeline (XCS3P). A description of the previous versions is given, highlighting the modifications made for XCS3P-v3. This methodology was validated by comparing the LX - TX relation obtained from XCS3Pv1, XCS3P-v2 and the current version, the results are similar to XCS3P-v2 finding a self similar evolution. Samples of clusters are defined after several control filters, each cluster has optical and X-ray follow up, the sample has 327 unique clusters that span a redshift range of 0:08 < z < 0:8. Optical to X-ray scaling relations are obtained for the samples XCS-RM (SDSS DR8), XCS-RM (DES Y1) and XCS-RM (SDSS+DES Y1). Obtaining as a result, the most comprehensive examination of the TX - λ and LX - λ relations up to date, showing a clear correlation between the observables. This work confirms that it is possible to relate optical properties with the underlying mass. Cluster observables like the X-ray temperature, X-ray luminosity and the optical richness are well known mass tracers. The XCS3P-v3 methodology and the process followed to obtain the scaling relations are validated using four non-redMaPPer cluster catalogs, two from the optical (CAMIRA and GMBCG) and two from the millimiter (SPT and Planck). The results show a clear correlation between X-ray and optical and millimeter observables. This analysis is not a robust as for redMaPPer, thus further work is needed to present this results to the scientific community.