Department of Physics

Lorentz and CPT symmetry stand among the deepest principles in all of physics. Yet, some theories attempting to unify quantum mechanics and gravity suggest that one or both of these symmetries may succumb to small violations detectable in high-precision experiments. The general framework enabling the search for violations of Lorentz and CPT symmetry is known as the Standard-Model Extension. Analyses based on this framework have led to hundreds of constraints on the coefficients for Lorentz violation. However, the strongly interacting sector of the SME remains comparatively unexplored.

 This thesis aims to address some of this unexplored terrain by considering Lorentz- and CPT-violating effects on quarks. As quarks are confined in hadrons, direct access to the coefficients modifying the propagation and interactions of quarks in hadrons is made possible by high-energy probes mediating lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron collisions. To study these collisions, a Lorentz- and CPT-violating version of the parton model is developed and investigated. The model is applied to deep inelastic scattering and the Drell-Yan process, resulting in real and simulated constraints using data from existing and future colliders.