# Abstract/Details

## Phenomenology of heavy quarks and quarkonium

1998 1998

Other formats: Order a copy

### Abstract (summary)

In this thesis, we study the phenomenology of heavy quarks and heavy quarkonium. We study the strong decays of heavy mesons using an effective Lagrangian which incorporates heavy quark symmetry as well as spin-symmetry breaking corrections. Our predictions for the decay rates of excited D mesons are in much better agreement with experiment than previous calculations which included only leading order terms in the heavy quark expansion. We study perturbative QCD corrections to top quark decay, focusing on the problem of resolving scale ambiguities in leading order QCD calculations. The commonly used scale setting method of Brodsky, Lepage, and MacKenzie (BLM) gives misleading results when applied to the decay of top quarks into heavy bosons. We find that by performing an all order summation of higher order corrections, we achieve a better understanding of these top quark decays. Finally, we study the production of $J/\psi$ in collider experiments. The failure of traditional methods for calculating production cross sections of $J/\psi$ at hadron colliders has led to a newly hypothesized color-octet mechanism for quarkonium production. We calculate color-octet contributions to production of $J/\psi +\gamma$ in photon-proton collisions, and production of $J/\psi$ in lepton-proton collisions. Both processes provide clean signals for color-octet mechanisms which can be used to test quarkonium production theory.

### Indexing (details)

Subject
Particle physics
Classification
0798: Particle physics
Identifier / keyword
Pure sciences; quantum chromodynamics
Title
Phenomenology of heavy quarks and quarkonium
Author
Mehen, Thomas Carlos
Number of pages
117
Publication year
1998
Degree date
1998
School code
0098
Source
DAI-B 59/01, Dissertation Abstracts International
Place of publication
Ann Arbor
Country of publication
United States
ISBN
9780591729092, 0591729091
University/institution
The Johns Hopkins University
University location
United States -- Maryland
Degree
Ph.D.
Source type
Dissertations & Theses
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
9821167
ProQuest document ID
304419830
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Document URL
http://search.proquest.com/docview/304419830
Access the complete full text

You can get the full text of this document if it is part of your institution's ProQuest subscription.

Try one of the following:

• Connect to ProQuest through your library network and search for the document from there.
• Request the document from your library.
• Go to the ProQuest login page and enter a ProQuest or My Research username / password.