Studies of high energy lepton-nucleon scattering

The first part of this thesis is related to the problem of detecting charmed particles. A new technique for observing very short decay paths in nuclear emulsions is developed and applied on a sample of neutrino induced reactions. Techniques for producing thick pellicles of nuclear track emulsion are also developed. In the second part, phenomenological investigations of deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering are made. Monte Carlo computer programs, based on the parton model and perturbative QCD for the initial hard process and the Lund model for the following soft hadronization, are used to simulate these reactions and thereby obtain explicit results. Generally good agreement is found when comparing these with experimental data, thus supporting this basic framework. Predictions to test QCD are made. Transverse momentum properties are studied in detail, in particular effects from soft gluon emission. The properties of a model for baryon production, both from the target remnant and the colour force field, are discussed and the results found to agree with data. It is shown that, at the presently available energies, the observable energy flow is not due to QCD, but arises from the baryon production in the target fragmentation. In a model to explain the observed Λ polarization, a connection between the confinement of quarks and these polarization phenomena is suggested. (Auth.)