Thesis title: Measurement of the Bhabha scattering cross section at the PADME Experiment
The PADME experiment was designed to search for dark photon production in the annihilation of a 430 MeV positron beam on a fixed target. If a dark photon exists with a mass of more than twice the mass of the electron, then it must be able to decay visibly into an e+e- pair. In this case, the final state would have an identical experimental signature to Bhabha scattering. Since the Bhabha scattering cross-section has not been measured at PADME energies since the 1950s, and since most measurements of Bhabha scattering were at high energies and measured the relative differential cross sections at wide angle and at small angle, the measurement of Bhabha scattering presented in this thesis provides a unique perspective on potential new physics. The value obtained was (3.90 ± 0.030stat ± 0.39sys) × 10^11 pb, in agreement within errors with the standard model.