The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has instrumented one cu-bic kilometer of ice by deploying digital optical modules (DOMs) in 86 drillholes, each containing a string of DOMs. So far IceCube has used the locationof the drill tower for the positions of DOMs in the transverse directions (x andy) to the vertical direction (z). Attempts to improve on this have so far failed.This thesis presents a new method for calibrating the positions of the DOMs.For a large selection of muon tracks, a maximum likelihood-based approach isused to determine the positions of DOMs. As a proof of concept, four centralstrings are studied to keep systematics uncertainties as low as possible. Themethod can find x and y (z) positions to 0.2m (0.5m) as found using simulationcorresponding to four days of data. In four days of real data we find that thereconstructed z position has a systematic offset of around 5m, which is not aphysical shift as the positions are known to 0.2m. For the x and y positions theresults are consistent with nominal positions except for string 36. As string 36is a string at the center of the IceCube array, it should be the most symmet-ric and an accurate estimate could indicate that the method has found a realdeviation.

There is by now compelling evidence that most of the matter in the universe is in the form of dark matter, a form of matter quite different from the matter we experience in every day life. The gravitational effects of this dark matter have been observed in many different ways but its true nature is still unknown. In most models dark matter particles can annihilate with each other into standard model particles. The direct or indirect observation of such annihilation products could give important clues for the dark matter puzzle. For signals from dark matter annihilations to be detectable, typically high dark matter densities are required. Massive objects, such as stars, can increase the local dark matter density both via scattering off nucleons and by pulling in dark matter gravitationally as the star forms. Dark matter annihilations outside the star would give rise to gamma rays and this is discussed in the first paper. Furthermore dark matter annihilations inside the star would deposit energy inside the star which, if abundant enough, could alter the stellar evolution. Aspects of this are investigated in the second paper. Finally, local dark matter overdensities formed in the early universe could still be around today; prospects of detecting gamma rays from such clumps are discussed in the third paper. / Introduktionsdelen till en sammanläggningsavhandling

QC 20100420

This thesis examines how the kinetic properties of pair-produced Higgs bosons depend on whether the process is mediated by particles in the Standard Model or a simplified supersymmetric model. The analysis is based on simulated data made using MadGraph. The examination within this thesis is split into two parts, one performed on the output of MadGraph (parton level) and the second performed on the output of a simplified simulation of the ATLAS detector response (reconstruction level). The first part also contains a section showing that the supersymmetric model results are consistent with the Standard Model results in cases where no supersymmetric particles are present in the di-Higgs production and decay, and a section detailing the minor differences in kinematics of the Higgs bosons depending on the mass of the supersymmetric partner of the top quark. The second part of the thesis covers the decay of the Higgs boson into bottom and anti-bottom quarks, and includes a section showing that there is no difference if the decay is done using the MadSpin module or the Pythia module for MadGraph, before exploring the kinematics of the jets produced. Both when studying Higgs bosons at the parton level and when studying b-jets at the reconstruction level, it is found that there are clear differences in the kinematics between the Standard Model and the supersymmetric model. At both levels, a neural network has been designed, trained and tested. For the parton level neural network 59 % of all events are classified correctly, while at the reconstruction level 51 % of all events are classified correctly. These neural network results show that it is possible to train a neural network to learn on data like this, and that with enough di-Higgs events detected, their kinematic properties could be used to indirectly infer the presence of physics beyond the Standard Model.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world in terms of collision energy and luminosity. This thesis presents a search for supersymmetric particles in proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment. A search for direct production of chargino and slepton pairs in a final state characterised by the presence of two leptons and missing transverse momentum is presented. This analysis is done using L = 20 fb-1 proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV collected in 2012. No significant excess over background is observed. Exclusion limits at 95% confidence level on chargino, neutralino and slepton production are set. In 2011-12 the LHC was providing collisions every 50 ns. This puts very strong requirements on the energy measurement in presence of energy deposits from different collisions in the same read-out window and in the same calorimeter channel (pile-up). A quality factor computed offline for each collision and for each channel in the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is studied. It is shown that the quality factor can be used to select channels that need a special treatment to account for large energy deposition from pile-up. Efficient criteria to detect pile-up in TileCal channels are proposed.

Characteristics of the electromagnetic calorimeter of PANDA (anti-Proton ANnihilations at DArmstadt), one of the key experiments at FAIR, have been measured at the tagged photon beam facility at MAX-lab for 61 energies in the range 12-63 MeV. The tested detector array consisted of 5x5 PbWO4 (lead tungstate) crystals designed for the forward end-cap. The array was cooled to -25 ºC and read out with conventional photomultiplier tubes. The measured energy resolution, σ/E, (for example 6 % at 20 MeV) shows that the current design meets the criterion of PANDA. The array is now ready to be equipped with vacuum phototriods designed for the forward end-cap.         As a part of the experiment, characteristics of the tagging spectrometer at MAX-lab were measured. This revealed a lowered performance in terms of resolution for low energies. A discrepancy between the nominal and the measured tagged energies was also discovered. Possible explanations to these observations are presented.

A study of photon-jets and their identification variables computed in the electromagnetic calorimeter of an in-house, ATLAS-like, detector model developed at Uppsala University for full-simulations is presented. The signal, which is based on the Composite Higgs Model, considers the pair production of vector-like top quarks, denoted t', with the successive decays t' to S and a Standard Model top quark and S to two photons, where S is a new pseudo-scalar boson. For clustering purposes, Topological Clustering was implemented and compared against the already implemented Sliding Window clustering algorithm. A modification to the Topological Clustering algorithm used in the ATLAS detector was made and compared against the original version. The performance test showed a significant mass reconstruction improvement with Topological Clustering. Furthermore, the performance test showed some improvement with the modifications in the Topological Clustering for photons in a collimated scenario. The signal is compared to Standard Model background consisting of one photon plus zero, one or two jets, and isolated photons from the Higgs boson decaying into two photons. Even though some discrimination could be found, the analysis showed that standard cut and count strategy won't work and hence, further analysis with machine learning should be tested.

Measuring lifetimes of excited nuclear states can give important information on the internal structure of the nucleus. This thesis is based on two experiments performed in Italy and in the USA in order to deduce the lifetimes of excited states in 165Lu and 107Cd. The lifetimes were measured using the Recoil Distance Method and the reduced transition probabilities between states have been calculated from the lifetimes in a model independent way. In the analysis of the data from the experiment on 165Lu, the shape of the nucleus is investigated using a collective rotational model to describe the observed excited states. A possibility of a triaxial shape of this nucleus is discussed. In the second experiment the obtained reduced transition probabilities for the nucleus 107Cd are compared to theoretical predictions for vibrational and rotational excitation modes / QC 20101108

The discovery of integrability in planar N=4 super Yang-Mills and ABJM has enabled a precise study of AdS/CFT. In the past decade integrability has been successfully applied to the spectrum of anomalous dimensions, which can now be obtained at any value of the coupling. However, in order to solve conformal field theories one also needs to understand their structure constants. Recently, there has been great progress in this direction with the all-loop proposal of Basso, Komatsu and Vieira. But there is still much to understand, as it is not yet possible to use that formalism to find structure constants of short operators at strong coupling. It is important to study wrapping corrections and resum them as the TBA did for the spectrum. It is also crucial to obtain perturbative data that can be used to check if the all-loop proposal is correct or if there are new structures that need to be unveiled. In this thesis we compute several structure constants of short operators at strong coupling, including the structure constant of Konishi with half-BPS operators. Still at strong coupling, we find a relation between the building blocks of superstring amplitudes and the tensor structures allowed by conformal symmetry. We also consider the case of extremal correlation functions and the relation of their poles to mixing with double-trace operators. We also study three-point functions at weak coupling. We take the OPE limit in a four-point function of half-BPS operators in order to shed some light on the structure of five-loop wrapping corrections of the Hexagon form factors. Finally, we take the first steps in the generalization of the Hexagon programme to other theories. We find the non-extremal setup in ABJM and the residual symmetry that it preserves, which we use to fix the two-particle form factor and constrain the four-particle hexagon. Finally, we find that the Watson equations hint at a dressing phase that needs to be further investigated.

A basic assumption in fundamental physics is that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created after the Big Bang. When particles and antiparticles collide, they annihilate, i.e. disappear and produce photons. Nevertheless, the universe consists mainly of matter today. To explain why all matter did not disappear, violation of CP symmetry beyond the Standard Model is required. CP symmetry means that the laws of physics are the same if particles are interchanged with antiparticles and spatial coordinates of all particles are mirrored. CP symmetry is relatively poorly tested in baryon decays. A new method to study CP symmetry in hyperon-antihyperon pairs has been developed at Uppsala University. Hyperons are baryons with one or more strange quarks. The method allows determining the decay asymmetry parameters of the hyperon and antihyperon separately if the hyperon-antihyperon pair is polarized. If any significant difference between the magnitudes of these parameters is found, the process is CP violating. The particle physics experiment BESIII in China is a suitable experiment to conduct this kind of measurements because it is a high precision experiment and has collected large data samples of hyperon-antihyperon pairs. The goal of this project was to study statistical precisions of the physics parameters that can be obtained with the new method in cases of J/ψ meson decaying into ΛΛ, Σ+Σ− and Σ0Σ0. High statistical precision is required to detect CP violation, because CP violating processes are, if they exist, expected to be rare. The main focus was to study the process e+e− → J/ψ → Σ0Σ0 → ΛγΛγ → pπ−γpπ+γ. In this process, CP symmetry can be tested in two decay processes: electromagnetic decay Σ0 → Λγ and weak decay Λ → pπ−. Only the asymmetry parameter of Λ → pπ− was studied. The study served as a validity check of the new method and ongoing analyses at BESIII. The statistical precision was studied by simulations: Monte Carlo data samples were created and then a maximum-log-likelihood fit was applied to the samples. An important component when determining the asymmetry parameters turned out to be the relative phase ∆φJ/ψ. The relative phase is one of the parameters used for determining the relation between the electric and magnetic form factors. ∆φJ/ψ is also related to the polarization of the hyperon-antihyperon pair. The study showed that the value of ∆φJ/ψ has a large impact on the uncertainties of the hyperon and antihyperon asymmetry parameters. A low value of ∆φJ/ψ resulted in high uncertainties and strong correlations between the asymmetry parameters. The formalism is different for different processes, which affects the uncertainties as well. The formalism used for the Σ0Σ0 process gives poorer parameter precision of the asymmetry parameter related to the Λ → pπ− decay than the formalism used for the ΛΛ process. Therefore, the ΛΛ process is a much more suitable process for CP studies of the Λ → pπ− decay. / Ett grundantagande inom den fundamentala fysiken är att lika stora mängder av materia och antimateria skapades efter Big Bang. När partiklar och antipartiklar kolliderar, annihilerar de, dvs försvinner och producerar fotoner. Trots detta består dagens universum huvudsakligen av materia. För att förklara varför all materia inte försvann krävs ett brott mot CP-symmetrin bakom standardmodellen. CP-symmetrin innebär att fysikens lagar är desamma om man byter partiklar mot antipartiklar och speglar partikelns rumsliga koordinater. CP-symmetri i baryonsönderfall är relativt dåligt testad. En ny metod för att studera CP-symmetrin har utvecklats vid Uppsala universitet för hyperon-antihyperon par. Hyperoner är baryoner med en eller fler särkvarkar. Metoden gör det möjligt att bestämma asymmetriparametrar hos hyperon- och antihyperonsönderfall separat om hyperonantihyperonparet är polariserat. Om en signifikant skillnad mellan värden av dessa parametrar upptäcks, är processen CP-brytande. Partikelfysikexperimentet BESIII i Kina är ett lämpligt experiment för sådana här mätningar eftersom det är ett högpresicionsexperiment och har dessutom samlat in stora mängder data av hyperon-antihyperonpar. Målet för detta projekt har varit att studera de statistiska precisioner av fysikparametrar som kan nås när man använder den nya metoden i de fall där J/ψ mesonen sönderfaller till ΛΛ, Σ+Σ− och Σ0Σ0. Hög statistisk precision behövs för att upptäcka CP-brott, eftersom CP-brytande processer, om de existerar, är relativt sällsynta. Huvudfokuset var att studera processen e+e− → J/ψ → Σ0Σ0 → ΛγΛγ → pπ−γpπ+γ. I denna process kan CP-symmetri testas för två sönderfallsprocesser: det elektromagnetiska sönderfallet Σ0 → Λγ och det svaga sönderfallet Λ → pπ−. I denna rapport studerades bara asymmetriparametrarna av Λ → pπ−. Detta arbete har fungerat som validitetskontroll av den nya metoden och pågående analyser på BESIII. Den statistiska precisionen undersöktes med simuleringar: Monte Carlo datamängder skapades och sedan en maximum-log-likelihood-anpassning av datan genomfördes. En viktig komponent i bestämningen av asymmetriparametrarna visade sig vara den relativa fasen, ∆φJ/ψ. Den relativa fasen är en av de parametrar som används för att bestämma relationen mellan de elektriska och magnetiska formfaktorer. ∆φJ/ψ är också relaterad till hyperonens hyperon-antihyperonparets polarisation. I forskningsprojektet visades att ∆φJ/ψ har en stor inverkan på osäkerheterna av hyperon- och antihyperonasymmetriparametrarna. Ett lågt värde av ∆φJ/ψ resulterade i stora osäkerheter och starka korrelationer mellan asymmetriparametrarna. Formalismen är annorlunda för olika processer, vilket också påverkar osäkerheterna. Formalismen som används för Σ0Σ0-processen ger sämre parameterprecision av asymmetriparametern kopplad till sönderfallet Λ → pπ− än formalismen som används för ΛΛ-processen. Därför är ΛΛ-processen en mycket lämpligare process för att testa CP-symmetrin i Λ → pπ− sönderfallet.