Isospin dependence of the Ar+Ni fusion-evaporation cross section

The fundamental goal of this thesis is the determination of the isospin dependence of the Ar+Ni fusion-evaporation cross section. Three Ar isotope beams, with energies of about 13AMeV, have been accelerated and impinged onto isotopically enriched Ni targets, in order to produce Pd nuclei, with mass number varying from 92 to 104. The measurements have been performed by the high performance 4pi detector INDRA, coupled with the magnetic spectrometer VAMOS. Even if the results are very preliminary, the obtained fusion-evaporation cross sections behaviour gives a hint at the possible isospin dependence of the fusion-evaporation cross sections.

Measurement of top quark pairs production cross-section in the semi-leptonic channel with the ATLAS experiment

This thesis is about three major aspects of the identification of top quarks. First comes the understanding of their production mechanism, their decay channels and how to translate theoretical formulae into programs that can simulate such physical processes using Monte Carlo techniques. In particular, the author has been involved in the introduction of the POWHEG generator in the framework of the ATLAS experiment. POWHEG is now fully used as the benchmark program for the simulation of ttbar pairs production and decay, along with MC@NLO and AcerMC: this will be shown in chapter one. The second chapter illustrates the ATLAS detectors and its sub-units, such as calorimeters and muon chambers. It is very important to evaluate their efficiency in order to fully understand what happens during the passage of radiation through the detector and to use this knowledge in the calculation of final quantities such as the ttbar production cross section. The last part of this thesis concerns the evaluation of this quantity deploying the so-called "golden channel" of ttbar decays, yielding one energetic charged lepton, four particle jets and a relevant quantity of missing transverse energy due to the neutrino. The most important systematic errors arising from the various part of the calculation are studied in detail. Jet energy scale, trigger efficiency, Monte Carlo models, reconstruction algorithms and luminosity measurement are examples of what can contribute to the uncertainty about the cross-section.

Measurement of low pT D0 meson production cross section at CDF II

In this thesis we present a study of the D0 meson (through one of its two-body decay channel, D0 → Kπ) collected by the CDF II experiment at the Tevatron pp ̄ collider at Fermilab. In particular we measured the differential production cross section as a function of the transverse momentum down to pT = 1.5 GeV/c.

Measurement of the ZZ production cross section and limits on anomalous neutral triple gauge couplings with ATLAS

The main work of this thesis concerns the measurement of the production cross section using LHC 2011 data collected at a center-of-mass energy equal to 7 TeV by the ATLAS detector and resulting in a total integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse fb. The ZZ total cross section is finally compared with the NLO prediction calculated with modern Monte Carlo generators. In addition, the three differential distributions (∆φ(l,l), ZpT and M4l) are shown unfolded back to the underlying distributions using a Bayesian iterative algorithm. Finally, the transverse momentum of the leading Z is used to provide limits on anoumalus triple gauge couplings forbidden in the Standard Model.

Measurement of the differential cross section of tt pairs in pp collision at sqrt(s) = 7TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

In this thesis three measurements of top-antitop differential cross section at an energy in the center of mass of 7 TeV will be shown, as a function of the transverse momentum, the mass and the rapidity of the top-antitop system. The analysis has been carried over a data sample of about 5/fb recorded with the ATLAS detector. The events have been selected with a cut based approach in the "one lepton plus jets" channel, where the lepton can be either an electron or a muon. The most relevant backgrounds (multi-jet QCD and W+jets) have been extracted using data driven methods; the others (Z+ jets, diboson and single top) have been simulated with Monte Carlo techniques. The final, background-subtracted, distributions have been corrected, using unfolding methods, for the detector and selection effects. At the end, the results have been compared with the theoretical predictions. The measurements are dominated by the systematic uncertainties and show no relevant deviation from the Standard Model predictions.

Measurements of ttbar Differential Cross Section at the ATLAS Experiment in pp Collisions at sqrt(s)=7TeV and sqrt(s)=8TeV

This PhD thesis presents two measurements of differential production cross section of top and anti-top pairs tt ̅ decaying in a lepton+jets final state. The normalize cross section is measured as a function of the top transverse momentum and the tt ̅ mass, transverse momentum and rapidity using the full 2011 proton-proton (pp) ATLAS data taking at a center of mass energy of √s=7 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of L=4.6 〖fb〗^(-1). The cross section is also measured at the particle level as a function of the hadronic top transverse momentum for highly energetic events using the full 2012 data taking at √s=8 TeV and with L=20 〖fb〗^(-1). The measured spectra are fully corrected for detector efficiency and resolution effects and are compared to several theoretical predictions showing a quite good agreement, depending on different spectra.

Radiative neutron capture cross section on 238U at the n_TOF CERN facility: a high precision measurement

The aim of this work is to provide a precise and accurate measurement of the 238U(n,gamma) reaction cross-section. This reaction is of fundamental importance for the design calculations of nuclear reactors, governing the behaviour of the reactor core. In particular, fast neutron reactors, which are experiencing a growing interest for their ability to burn radioactive waste, operate in the high energy region of the neutron spectrum. In this energy region inconsistencies between the existing measurements are present up to 15%, and the most recent evaluations disagree each other. In addition, the assessment of nuclear data uncertainty performed for innovative reactor systems shows that the uncertainty in the radiative capture cross-section of 238U should be further reduced to 1-3% in the energy region from 20 eV to 25 keV. To this purpose, addressed by the Nuclear Energy Agency as a priority nuclear data need, complementary experiments, one at the GELINA and two at the n_TOF facility, were scheduled within the ANDES project within the 7th Framework Project of the European Commission. The results of one of the 238U(n,gamma) measurement performed at the n_TOF CERN facility are presented in this work, carried out with a detection system constituted of two liquid scintillators. The very accurate cross section from this work is compared with the results obtained from the other measurement performed at the n_TOF facility, which exploit a different and complementary detection technique. The excellent agreement between the two data-sets points out that they can contribute to the reduction of the cross section uncertainty down to the required 1-3%.

La valutazione degli effetti delle politiche di coesione dell'Unione europea sulla crescita regionale

This PhD thesis aims at providing an evaluation of EU Cohesion policy impact on regional growth. It employs methodologies and data sources never before applied for this purpose. Main contributions to the literature concerning EU regional policy effectiveness have been extensively analysed. Moreover, having carried out an overview of the current literature on Cohesion Policy, we deduce that this work introduces innovative features in the field. The work enriches the current literature with regards to two aspects. The first aspect concerns the use of the instrument of Regression Discontinuity Design in order to examine the presence of a different outcome in terms of growth between Objectives 1 regions and non-Objective 1 regions at the cut-off point (75 percent of EU-15 GDP per capita in PPS) during the two programming periods, 1994-1999 and 2000-2006. The results confirm a significant difference higher than 0.5 percent per year between the two groups. The other empirical evaluation regards the study of a cross-section regression model based on the convergence theory that analyses the dependence relation between regional per capita growth and EU Cohesion policy expenditure in several fields of interventions. We have built a very fine dataset of spending variables (certified expenditure), using sources of data directly provided from the Regional Policy Directorate of the European Commission.