Leptonic and Semileptonic Decays of Charm and Bottom Hadrons

We review the experimental measurements and theoretical descriptions of leptonic and semileptonic decays of particles containing a single heavy quark, either charm or bottom. Measurements of bottom semileptonic decays are used to determine the magnitudes of two fundamental parameters of the standard model, the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements $V_{cb}$ and $V_{ub}$. These parameters are connected with the physics of quark flavor and mass, and they have important implications for the breakdown of CP symmetry. To extract precise values of $|V_{cb}|$ and $|V_{ub}|$ from measurements, however, requires a good understanding of the decay dynamics. Measurements of both charm and bottom decay distributions provide information on the interactions governing these processes. The underlying weak transition in each case is relatively simple, but the strong interactions that bind the quarks into hadrons introduce complications. We also discuss new theoretical approaches, especially heavy-quark effective theory and lattice QCD, which are providing insights and predictions now being tested by experiment. An international effort at many laboratories will rapidly advance knowledge of this physics during the next decade.Comment: This review article will be published in Reviews of Modern Physics in the fall, 1995. This file contains only the abstract and the table of contents. The full 168-page document including 47 figures is available at http://charm.physics.ucsb.edu/papers/slrevtex.p

MODELING OF INTERACTION LAYER GROWTH BETWEEN U-Mo PARTICLES AND AN Al MATRIX

Interaction layer growth between U-Mo alloy fuel particles and Al in a dispersion fuel is a concern due to the volume expansion and other unfavorable irradiation behavior of the interaction product. To reduce interaction layer (IL) growth, a small amount of Si is added to the Al. As a result, IL growth is affected by the Si content in the Al matrix. In order to predict IL growth during fabrication and irradiation, empirical models were developed. For IL growth prediction during fabrication and any follow-on heating process before irradiation, out-of-pile heating test data were used to develop kinetic correlations. Two out-of-pile correlations, one for the pure Al matrix and the other for the Al matrix with Si addition, respectively, were developed, which are Arrhenius equations that include temperature and time. For IL growth predictions during irradiation, the out-of-pile correlations were modified to include a fission-rate term to consider fission enhanced diffusion, and multiplication factors to incorporate the Si addition effect and the effect of the Mo content. The in-pile correlation is applicable for a pure Al matrix and an Al matrix with the Si content up to 8 wt%, for fuel temperatures up to 200 °C, and for Mo content in the range of 6 – 10wt%. In order to cover these ranges, in-pile data were included in modeling from various tests, such as the US RERTR-4, -5, -6, -7 and -9 tests and Korea's KOMO-4 test, that were designed to systematically examine the effects of the fission rate, temperature, Si content in Al matrix, and Mo content in U-Mo particles. A model converting the IL thickness to the IL volume fraction in the meat was also developed