COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & SCIENCE

For this project, we will use lanthanides coordinated with organic ligands as scintillation materials to detect neutrons and study their effectiveness. Moreover, the complexes will be doped into a PMMA matrix. The design principles learned from these complexes will be used to develop new scintillation materials characterized by higher emissive yields, fast decay times, and simple production.

The strong interaction is the force responsible for binding quarks to form hadrons, such as protons and neutrons, and also for binding protons and neutrons to form the nuclei of atoms. The properties of the strong interaction can be studied in particle collisions from measurements of the production rates of collimated sprays of particles, called jets. In particular, the ratio of the number of collisions that produce three jets over the number of collisions that produce two jets is a direct measure of the strength of the strong interaction, which is quantified by the strong coupling constant. Determinations of the strong coupling constant from particle collider data require theoretical calculations. In this paper, a new approach for the theoretical calculations that differs from the commonly used approach is investigated. Computations of the results are presented for different ratio measurements performed at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The results of the two different approaches are compared to each other and to the results of the experimental measurements. It is discussed in which kinematical regions the two approaches agree and where they differ.