On the measurability of short-lived neutral B and short-lived neutral anti B meson mixing

This dissertation presents a study of the ability of the SLD detector located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center to measure the {dollar}Bsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} mixing parameter {dollar}xsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar}. A measurement of mixing for {dollar}Bsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} mesons tests the unitarity of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mass mixing matrix, an important feature of the charged weak interaction of the standard model of high energy physics. We determine the limits on the observability of mixing for {dollar}Bsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} mesons for the SLD detector by using various Monte Carlo programs to create ensembles of statistically independent simulated data samples. Each individual data sample is used to obtain a measurement of {dollar}xsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} which is compared to the input value of {dollar}xsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} used to construct the data sample. Three different methods of selecting decays of {dollar}Bsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} mesons are used to show the full range of possibilities available to the SLD experiment. The available statistics, the size of the backgrounds from {dollar}Bsb{lcub}u{rcub}{dollar} and {dollar}Bsb{lcub}d{rcub}{dollar} decays, and the input value of {dollar}xsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} are varied. We conclude that the SLD should be able to measure values of {dollar}xsb{lcub}s{rcub}{dollar} up to about ten with one million {dollar}Zsp0{dollar} decays.