A Measurement of Inclusive Jet Production at Tevatron

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the gauge theory that governs the strong interactions between quarks and gluons inside hadrons like, for example, protons and neutrons. At the Tevatron at Fermilab, protons and antiprotons collide at very high energy. In those collisions, collimated jets of hadrons are produced along the direction of struck quarks and gluons in the final state. The measurement of the inclusive jet production cross section for central jets constitutes one of the cornerstones of the jet physics program since it provides a stringent test of pQCD predictions over almost nine orders of magnitude. This Doctoral Thesis presents a measurement of the inclusive jet production cross section using the data collected by the CDF experiment in Run II. The longitudinally invariant Kt algorithm, infrared safe to all orders in pQCD, has been used in order to search for jets in the final state. This measurement is compared to pQCD NLO calculations where non-perturbative effects from the underlying event and the fragmentation of partons into jets of hadrons have been taken into account. Olga Norniella received her Ph.D. in physics from Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona. She presently studies fundamental particle interactions at the Fermilab Tevatron as a postdoc for UIUC. Her current focus is on improving the ability of the CDF experiment to trigger on rare physics events in high luminosity environments.