Books

Particle accelerators are sophisticated scientific facilities that require precise but time-consuming optimisation to achieve optimal performance. Considering benchmark tasks at the ARES and LCLS facilities, this dissertation proposes methods to deploy simulation-trained reinforcement learning (RL) policies for accelerator tuning zero-shot to the real world and novel tuning tasks, while comparing their performance to traditional methods. [...]

This thesis presents two research works carried out within the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC): the system validation of the scintillator section of the High Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL), and a search for a heavy resonance coupling to top quarks and produced in association with top quark pairs in proton–proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 13 and 13.6 TeV. For the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) phase, the endcap calorimeters of CMS will be replaced by the HGCAL, a high-precision sampling calorimeter designed to cope with the extreme radiation and pileup conditions expected at the HL-LHC. [...]

This dissertation presents a study of the spin-dependent production of the $\Lambda$ hyperon and the mechanisms of quark fragmentation, with a particular focus on data obtained from the HERMES experiment at DESY. The research explores the role of longitudinal spin effects in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. [...]

The rare decays B → Kν ¯ν represent a class of flavor-changing neutral current processes that are highlysuppressed in the Standard Model and thus serve as sensitive probes for new physics. These decays aretheoretically clean, with uncertainties primarily stemming from hadronic form factors, and their branchingfractions are predicted with high precision. [...]

Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) are a promising technology to build compact andcost-efficient accelerators for a variety of applications. To realize this promise, thereliability and long-term stability of the accelerated electrons have to be improved.Much of this improvement relates to the stability of the drive laser. [...]

Water is one of the most common materials on Earth and in everyday life. However, with its many anomalies which in many cases get further amplified when supercooled, it is still poorly understood. [...]