ii Copyright 2008 Leah Welty-Rieger ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii Acknowledgements The road to a PhD isn't easy for anyone. Along that road one meets several people that provide support and guidance. Without them, the path would definitely be rockier and might just lead one off a cliff. First of all I must thank my adviser, Rick Van Kooten. I made the decision to come back to Indiana University for graduate school with the specific goal to work with Rick for the duration of the program. That has

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... n to be one of the better decisions I have made in my lifetime. There were several times during this analysis when there was not even a flicker of light at the end of that proverbial tunnel (if there was even a tunnel at all). During those times I thought the thesis you are about to read would never come to fruition, but Rick was always able to work with me on the next step or the next thing to try. Eventually all the components came together and the analysis started falling into place and before I knew it...Bob's your uncle. iv Abstract Using approximately 1.3 fb −1 of data collected by the DØ detector between 2002 and 2006, the lifetime of the B ± c meson is studied in the B ± c → J/ψµ ± + X final state. Using an unbinned likelihood simultaneous fit to J/ψ + µ invariant mass and lifetime distributions, a signal of 810 ± 80 (stat.) candidates is estimated and a lifetime measurement made of: τ (B ± c ) = 0.448 +0.038 −0.036 (stat) ± 0.032 (sys) ps. viii