Measurements of $B^{\pm}$ Meson Production at LHCb and Characterisation of Hybrid Photon Detectors

LHCb is an experiment designed to make precision measurements of Charge-Parity violation in the B meson system. We report a measurement of the B$^{\pm}$ cross-section and production asymmetry, using B$^{\pm}\rightarrow$ J/$\psi$K$^{\pm}$ decays collected at the LHCb detector in 2010 and 2011. Using 27.6 pb$^{-1}$ of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy 7 TeV, we obtain a B$^{\pm}$ cross-section of [41.6 $\pm$ 0.6 (stat.) $\pm$ 3.0 (sys.) $\pm$ 4.2 (lumi.)] $\mu \mathrm{b}$ in the rapidity region 2 to 4.5. Using 371.1 pb$^{-1}$ of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy 7 TeV, we obtain a B$^{\pm}$ production asymmetry of [$-$2.09 $\pm$ 1.20 $\pm$ 0.8 (CP) ]% in the same rapidity region. The Ring Imaging Cherenkov system of LHCb uses Hybrid photon detectors (HPDs) for single photon detection. This thesis summarises the use of ion feedback measurements as indicators of HPD vacuum quality.