No description available.

Measurements of atomic parity violation provide important cross-tests of the standard model of electroweak interactions by probing these interactions in the domain of low energies. The effects of parity nonconservation in atoms, both dependent and not dependent on nuclear spin, have been successfully measured in experiments. The existence of permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of a quantum particle requires that fundamental parity (P) and time-reversal (T) symmetries are violated. By the CPT theorem, this would mean violation of the combined CP (charge conjugation-parity) symmetry as well. Studies of T and CP violation in nature provide valuable information for theories of baryogenesis, and for understanding of fundamental interactions in general. Recently, a new wave of experiments has been initiated to measure the effects of P and T violation in solid state materials. The possibility to substantially increase the experimental sensitivity lies in the larger number of particles compared to the atomic experiments and in the specific collective effects in solids. The downside is the typically larger level of systematics. In the present work, the following effects due to violation of T and P at fundamental level in solids are considered: (a) effects due to the nuclear weak charge (violation of P) in rare-earth trifluorides, a possibility exists to measure the Weinberg angle with high precision; (b) effects due to the nuclear anapole moment (nuclear spin-dependent violation of P) in praseodymium and thulium garnets, the NMR-type experiments can possibly be used to measure nuclear anapole moments of Pr and Tm; (c) effects due to the electron EDM in gadolinium garnets, increase of the experimental sensitivity to the electron EDM of several orders of magnitude is possible; (d) effects due to the nuclear Schiff moment of 207Pb in ferroelectric lead-titanate; this possibility looks particularly promising, offering a potential 10 orders of magnitude increase of sensitivity to the nuclear Schiff moment, which puts the standard model prediction for this value within experimental reach. Also discussed are several other possibilities for experimental observation of these effects and the impact of some possible systematic effects on the proposed measurements.

Le premier chapitre contient un bref rappel sur la physique des saveurs lourdes dans le Modèle Standard, et conclut par une description succinte de l'approche statistique utilisée dans CKMfitter.<br /> Le chapitre suivant évoque la violation de CP dans le secteur des kaons : sont traitées les contraintes sur la matrice CKM provenant des mesures de εK, ε′/ε, ainsi que l'´état des lieux et les perspectives sur la recherche des modes rares K+→π+νν et<br />KL→π0νν ; ce chapitre conclut par une étude prospective pour estimer le potentiel de<br />physique des kaons dans le cadre du modèle CKM. <br />Suivent deux chapitres décrivant des analyses de physique dans l'expérience BaBar : est d'abord présentée en détail l'analyse en amplitudes du mode B0 → K+π−π0 ; suit un état des lieux plus succint sur l'analyse en amplitudes dépendantes du temps du mode<br />B0 → K0π+π−, qui a déj`a fourni des résultats préliminaires à l'été 2007. La discussion est ensuite complétée par une description qualitative sur un projet d'étude combinée des contraintes sur la matrice CKM provenant des modes B → Kππ.

No description available.

No description available.

The present study investigated the relationship between religiousness, conservatism and traffic behaviour. It was shown that, intrinsic religious orientation significantly predicted ordinary violations of both the drivers and the pedestrians. Religiousness seems to have a positive effect by orienting the individual to obey the rules and to refrain from risk taking behaviour. Moreover, components of conservatism (conservation of values and resistance to change) were found to affect the aggressive violations and the positive behaviours of the drivers. While conservation of values decreased aggressive violations of the drivers, it increased the positive behaviours. On the contrary, resistance to change decreased positive behaviours and increased aggressive violations. These contrary results were accounted for by using Wilson&rsquo / s (1973) explanations of these dimensions. To conclude, variables distal to traffic context were shown to influence traffic behaviour differentially.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

A search for B decays to quasi two-body charmless final states involving a pseudoscalar η′ meson recoiling against a K∗ vector meson is described. This thesis primarily describes the analysis of two of the six possible decay channels, with the other four channels necessarily included as the subdecay modes are combined to give an overall branching fraction measurement. The method of analysis is a multivariate maximum likelihood fit for each subdecay channel. The likelihood curves for both modes are then combined, firstly with two other charged modes to yield an overall charged result, and finally the four charged modes are combined with two neutral modes to give an overall branching fraction and significance for the decay channel B → η′K∗. All results use the full Run 1 to Run 4 datasets, comprising 210.5 fb−1 of data, equivalent to 232 million BB pairs, gathered by the BABAR detector at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, California. The measured branching fractions and upper limits at 90% confidence limit (CL) are: B(B+ → η′ηππK∗+ K+π0) < 9.5 × 10−6B(B+ → η′ργK∗+ K+π0) < 22 × 10−6.The four-mode combined fit determined the branching fraction for the decay B+ → η′K∗+: B(B+ → η′K∗+) < 7.9 × 10−6. The six-mode combined fit determined the branching fraction for the decay B → η′K∗: B(B → η′K∗) = (4.1 ± 1.0 ± 0.5) × 10−6 at a significance of 5.6 standard deviations.

It is astonishing both how little and how much we know about neutrinos. On one hand, the neutrino is the second most abundant particle in our Universe. Neutrinos may be created in the Sun, core collapse supernovae, cosmic rays, geological background radiation, supernova remnants and in the Big Bang. On the other hand, they have unimaginably small masses and are unwilling to react with their surroundings. Because of their abundance and their inclination to show us physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, neutrinos are hoped to carry yet unknown information of the Universe. However, it will take some effort and time to persuade the neutrinos to tell us what they know. Among the things we do not yet know of the neutrinos, is the -phase in the neutrino mixing matrix. If is in fact non-zero, neutrino flavour oscillations violate CP-symmetry. Also, if neutrino masses are introduced in the standard model through the See-Saw mechanism and if leptogenesis is a valid theory, CP-violation in neutrino oscillations could help explain why our Universe has no antimatter even though equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created at the Big Bang. In this thesis, we investigate the flavour evolution of supernova neutrinos. We present the full Hamiltonian in the flavour basis for our system and identify how the different contributions affect the evolution and in which environment. We also present a theoretical motivation from [1, 2] as to how a non-zero -phase affects the flavour evolution and the final energy spectra. The analytical conclusion is that it has no impact under the assumptions made in our analysis. Thus, the -phase may not be measurable from supernova neutrinos.

Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.