Neutral kaon femtoscopy in Pb-Pb collisions at p sNN = 2:76 TeV at the LHC with ALICE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Matthew Steinpreis, M.S., B.S. Graduate Program in Physics The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Professor Thomas Humanic, Advisor Professor Michael Lisa Professor Yuri Kovchegov Professor Klaus Honscheid ⃝c Copyright by Matthew Steinpreis 2014 Abstract Femtoscopy is an experimental method used to study the spatio-temporal characteristics of the particle-emitting \sources" of ultra-relativistic particle collisions. This method allows us to measure the size, shape, and lifetime of the kinetic freeze-out region of the particles created in the collisions as they are emitted from the expanding system. Studying these source regions allows us to investigate the dynamics of the system as it evolves from the hot, dense state of matter known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma into a dilute, free-streaming hadronic gas. The analysis of the extracted femtoscopic radii and their dependences on event centrality, momentum, and particle species can help put constaints on unknown quantities used in theoretical models such as time-scales and particle-particle scattering parameters. The femtoscopic tool is the two-particle relative momentum correlation function, which connects the final-state momentum distributions measured by the detector to the space- time distributions of particle emission, which are on the order of 10−15 m, or femtometers, and cannot be directly measured. These correlations are sensitive to the quantum statistics of identical particles as well as the strong and/or Coulomb interactions between particles. Neutral kaon femtoscopy acts as an excellent complement to similar analyses of other particle species. Kaon analyses are generally able to reach higher values of transverse mo- q 2 2 mentum (KT) and transverse mass (MT = KT + m ) than the more commonly studied pion analyses. The comparison of kaon radii with those of pions and protons allows us to check for universal MT-scaling, which is predicted by some hydrodynamic models. The study of neutral kaons also acts as a convenient consistency check for the charged kaon anal- ysis, as both analyses are expected to produce similar results while employing significantly different analysis methods, e.g. directly measured tracks vs. decay vertex reconstruction ii and Coulomb-dominated vs. strong-dominated final-state interactions. 0 0 This thesis will present KSKS femtoscopic correlations in Pb-Pb collisions at p sNN = 2:76 TeV at the LHC with ALICE. This analysis will be the first centrality- and 0 0 KT-differential study of KSKS correlations in heavy-ion collisions, presenting femtoscopic results for three centrality bins and four KT bins. This thesis will present results for both one-dimensional and three-dimensional femtoscopic analyses, the latter being the first of 0 0 its kind for the KSKS system. iii To my parents and grandparents. iv Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank my advisor, Tom Humanic, for his support, guidance, and patience over the past five years. I would also like to thank Mike Lisa for his additional support and guidance. I would like to thank Tom and Mike both for accepting me into their research group, for encouraging and critiquing my work when necessary, and for providing me with the opportunities and means to travel to CERN and to various conferences. I also thank the rest of the OSU Nuclear Physics group for their collaboration and the professors at The Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison for their tutelage. Next, I would like to thank my fellow researchers in the heavy-ion community, especially the ALICE collaboration and the ALICE femtoscopy group. I would especially like to thank Dhevan Gangadharan for helping me kickstart my analysis, providing daily guidance on all things experimental, theoretical, and computational, and accompanying me on our global travels. I would like to acknowledge financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant PHY-1307188 and computing support from the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Lastly, I would like to give special thanks to my friends and family. To my friends: thank you for your love, support, joviality, and shared interest in music, food, sports, and trivia contests, which have been extremely crucial to my sanity and enjoyment of life over the past six years. To my family: thank you for your undying love, support, and provision over the past thirty years. I could not have succeeded without you. v Vita September 5, 1984 . Born, Plymouth, Wisconsin June 2003 . Diploma, Plymouth High School, Plymouth, Wisconsin August 2008 . B.S., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin September 2008 - May 2010 . Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio December 2010 . M.S., Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio September 2010 - present . Graduate Research Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Publications Abelev, B. et al. [ALICE Collaboration] \Performance of the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC". Int. J. Mod. Phys A, 29(24):1430044, Sep. 2014. Abelev, B. et al. 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