The thesis of Wade Fisher, entitled A search for anomalous heavy-flavor quark production in association with w bosons, has been placed on deposit.

Any member of the University wishing to read the thesis may do so. Any objections should be submitted to me in writing. The principal advisor for this work was Professor Christopher Tully.

ABSTRACT

The production of W bosons in association with jets at the Fermilab Tevatron provides an opportunity to test predictions for electroweak and QCD processes described by the standard model. Complicating this picture, evidence for anomalous production of heavy-flavor quarks (t, b, c) in association with W bosons was reported in Run I by the CDF collaboration. In this dissertation, I present an examination of the exclusive jet spectrum in the W+jets final state in which the heavy-flavor quark content has been enhanced by requiring at least one b-tagged jet in an event. For this measurement, W bosons have been selected in semileptonic decays (electron and muon). I also present a measurement of the exclusive jet spectrum for events which contain one jet tagged with more than one b-tagging algorithm. I compare data on e + jets (164.3 pb-1) and mu + jets (145.3 pb-1) channels, collected with the DO detector during Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron ppbar collider, to expectations from the standard model. The results of the search are used to set upper limits on anomalous production of such events.

Daniel Marlow
Chair, Dept. of Physics