Yes! I finally graduated!

I defended my thesis in June, 1995 at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor).

This page is dedicated to the presentation of my thesis. You can download the PDF version of my dissertation. The abstract, containing a quick summary of the results, is provided below.

Abstract
Frontispiece

Measurement of Sigma × Br( W --> tau + nu + jets) Via Precision Tracking in Proton-Antiproton Collisions at Sqrt{s}=1.8 TeV



by
Robert Andrew Dunn


The identification of hadronic tau decays at hadron collider experiments has been problematic due to the large background from QCD processes. The Silicon Vertex Detector, as part of the Collider Detector at Fermilab, has sufficient resolving power in the plane transverse to the beamline to observe the systematically larger impact parameters of tracks from the decay of high-Pt tau leptons. This thesis discusses the development and use of an impact parameter--based algorithm by which jets from hadronic tau decays are preferentially selected. Application of the tau--tagging algorithm to the data sample obtained from the 1992-93 run at CDF yields the measurement of the cross-section times branching ratio for the production of W bosons plus associated jets for events in which the W produces a hadronically decaying tau. Given as a function of the associated jet multiplicity, we find sigma × Br(W --> tau + nu_tau + n jets) = 1731 ± 177 pb, 427 ± 132 pb, 68 ± 41 pb, and 33 ± 33 pb for jet multiplicities of n = 0,1,2, and 3, respectively.

The following quotation appeared as the frontispiece of my thesis.

What does it mean to be human?

What does it mean to be human? I cannot help but suspect that at one time in the history of thinking that people believed that it meant that we were spiritual and that we could make choices and were capable of aspiring to higher ideals... like maybe loyalty or maybe faith...or maybe even love. But now we are told by people who think they know that we vary from the amoeba only in the complexity of our makeup and not in what we essentially are. They would have us think as Dysart said that we are forever bound up in certain genetic reigns -- that we are merely products of the way things are and not free, not free to be the people who make them that way. ... Well who are they? They are the few that sit at the top of the heap -- dung heap though it is -- and who say it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. Well I do not know that we can have a Heaven here on earth, but I am sure that we need not have a Hell here either.

What does it mean to be human?

I cannot help but believe that it means that we are spiritual -- that we are responsible and that we are free. That we are responsible to be free.

- Rich Mullins, "Intro to Higher Education" from the album Never Picture Perfect