Transverse-Energy Production and Fluctuations over Centrality and Acceptance in Relativistic Heavy-Ion and Nucleon-Nucleon Collisions: Quark versus Nucleon Interactions and a Search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma

The collision systems studied in this thesis are 200 GeV protons with protons(p+p), deuterons with Au ions (d+Au), 62.4GeV and 200GeV gold ions with gold ions (Au+Au). We report the mean E_T in collision centrality, E_T fluctuations in collision centrality and the E_T fluctuations in geometric acceptance.