The book discusses the recent experimental results obtained at the LHC that involve electroweak bosons. The results are placed into an appropriate theoretical and historical context. The work pays special attention to the rising subject of hadronically decaying bosons with high boosts, documenting the state-of-the-art identification techniques and highlighting typical results. The text is not limited to electroweak physics in the strict sense, but also discusses the use of electroweak vector-bosons as tool in the study of other subjects in particle physics, such as determinations of the proton structure or the search for new exotic particles. The book is particularly well suited for graduate students, starting their thesis work on topics that involve electroweak bosons, as the book provides a comprehensive description of phenomena observable at current accelerators as well as a summary of the most relevant experimental techniques.
This thesis describes the stand-alone discovery and measurement of the Higgs boson in its decays to two W bosons using the Run-I ATLAS dataset. This is the most precise measurement of gluon-fusion Higgs boson production and is among the most significant results attained at the LHC. The thesis provides an exceptionally clear exposition on a complicated analysis performed by a large team of researchers. Aspects of the analysis performed by the author are explained in detail; these include new methods for evaluating uncertainties on the jet binning used in the analysis and for estimating the background due to associated production of a W boson and an off-shell photon. The thesis also describes a measurement of the WW cross section, an essential background to Higgs boson production. The primary motivation of the LHC was to prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson. In 2012, CERN announced this discovery and the resultant ATLAS publication contained three decay channels: gg, ZZ, and WW.
This thesis presents the first experimental calibration of the top-quark Monte-Carlo mass. It also provides the top-quark mass-independent and most precise top-quark pair production cross-section measurement to date. The most precise measurements of the top-quark mass obtain the top-quark mass parameter (Monte-Carlo mass) used in simulations, which are partially based on heuristic models. Its interpretation in terms of mass parameters used in theoretical calculations, e.g. a running or a pole mass, has been a long-standing open problem with far-reaching implications beyond particle physics, even affecting conclusions on the stability of the vacuum state of our universe. In this thesis, this problem is solved experimentally in three steps using data obtained with the compact muon solenoid (CMS) detector. The most precise top-quark pair production cross-section measurements to date are performed. The Monte-Carlo mass is determined and a new method for extracting the top-quark mass from theoretical calculations is presented. Lastly, the top-quark production cross-sections are obtained – for the first time – without residual dependence on the top-quark mass, are interpreted using theoretical calculations to determine the top-quark running- and pole mass with unprecedented precision, and are fully consistently compared with the simultaneously obtained top-quark Monte-Carlo mass.
This thesis documents the measurement of lifetime, width, mass, and couplings to two electroweak bosons of the recently-discovered Higgs boson using data from the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Both on-shell (at the mass of around 125 GeV) and off-shell (above 200 GeV) Higgs boson production is studied and an excess of off-shell production with significance above two standard deviations is observed for the first time. The latter is a qualitative new way to study the Higgs field, responsible for generation of mass of all the known elementary particles. In addition, phenomenological tools have been developed with the Monte Carlo event generator and matrix element techniques for an optional analysis of LHC data. Optimization of the CMS data with careful alignment of the silicon tracker is also presented.
This thesis discusses searches for electroweakly produced supersymmetric partners of the gauge and the Higgs bosons (gauginos and higgsinos) decaying to multiple leptons, using pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV. The thesis presents an in-depth study of multiple searches, as well as the first 13 TeV cross section measurement for the dominant background in these searches, WZ production. Two searches were performed using 36.1/fb of data: the gaugino search, which makes use of a novel kinematic variable, and the higgsino search, which produced the first higgsino limits at the LHC. A search using 139/fb of data makes use of a new technique developed in this thesis to cross check an excess of data above the background expectation in a search using a Recursive Jigsaw Reconstruction technique. None of the searches showed a significant excess of data, and limits were expanded with respect to previous results. These searches will benefit from the addition of luminosity during HL-LHC; however, the current detector will not be able to withstand the increase in radiation. Electronics for the detector upgrade are tested and irradiated to ensure their performance.
The Black Book of Quantum Chromodynamics is an in-depth introduction to the particle physics of current and future experiments at particle accelerators. The book offers the reader an overview of practically all aspects of the strong interaction necessary to understand and appreciate modern particle phenomenology at the energy frontier. It assumes a working knowledge of quantum field theory at the level of introductory textbooks used for advanced undergraduate or in standard postgraduate lectures. The book expands this knowledge with an intuitive understanding of relevant physical concepts, an introduction to modern techniques, and their application to the phenomenology of the strong interaction at the highest energies. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, it also serves as a comprehensive reference for LHC experimenters and theorists. This book offers an exhaustive presentation of the technologies developed and used by practitioners in the field of fixed-order perturbation theory and an overview of results relevant for the ongoing research programme at the LHC. It includes an in-depth description of various analytic resummation techniques, which form the basis for our understanding of the QCD radiation pattern and how strong production processes manifest themselves in data, and a concise discussion of numerical resummation through parton showers, which form the basis of event generators for the simulation of LHC physics, and their matching and merging with fixed-order matrix elements. It also gives a detailed presentation of the physics behind the parton distribution functions, which are a necessary ingredient for every calculation relevant for physics at hadron colliders such as the LHC, and an introduction to non-perturbative aspects of the strong interaction, including inclusive observables such as total and elastic cross sections, and non-trivial effects such as multiple parton interactions and hadronization. The book concludes with a useful overview contextualising data from previous experiments such as the Tevatron and the Run I of the LHC which have shaped our understanding of QCD at hadron colliders.
The book gives a quite complete and up-to-date picture of the Standard Theory with an historical perspective, with a collection of articles written by some of the protagonists of present particle physics. The theoretical developments are described together with the most up-to-date experimental tests, including the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the measurement of its mass as well as the most precise measurements of the top mass, giving the reader a complete description of our present understanding of particle physics.
This book presents two analyses, the first of which involves the search for a new heavy charged gauge boson, a so-called W' boson. This new gauge boson is predicted by some theories extending the Standard Model gauge group to solve some of its conceptual problems. Decays of the W' boson in final states with a lepton (l± = e± , μ±) and the corresponding (anti-)neutrino are considered. Data collected by the ATLAS experiment in 2015 at a center of mass energy of √s =13 TeV is used for the analysis. In turn, the second analysis presents a measurement of the double-differential cross section of the process pp->Z/gamma^* + X -> l^+l^- + X, including a gamma gamma induced contribution, at a center of mass energy of sqrt{s} = 8 TeV. The measurement is performed in an invariant mass region of 116 GeV to 1500 GeV as a function of invariant mass and absolute rapidity of the l^+l^-- pair, and as a function of invariant mass and pseudorapidity separation of the l^+l^-- pair. The data analyzed was recorded by the ATLAS experiment in 2012 and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3/fb. It is expected that the measured cross sections are sensitive to the PDFs at very high values of the Bjorken-x scaling variable, and to the photon structure of the proton.
This book introduces the reader to the field of jet substructure, starting from the basic considerations for capturing decays of boosted particles in individual jets, to explaining state-of-the-art techniques. Jet substructure methods have become ubiquitous in data analyses at the LHC, with diverse applications stemming from the abundance of jets in proton-proton collisions, the presence of pileup and multiple interactions, and the need to reconstruct and identify decays of highly-Lorentz boosted particles. The last decade has seen a vast increase in our knowledge of all aspects of the field, with a proliferation of new jet substructure algorithms, calculations and measurements which are presented in this book. Recent developments and algorithms are described and put into the larger experimental context. Their usefulness and application are shown in many demonstrative examples and the phenomenological and experimental effects influencing their performance are discussed. A comprehensive overview is given of measurements and searches for new phenomena performed by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations. This book shows the impressive versatility of jet substructure methods at the LHC.
The research presented here includes important contributions on the commissioning of the ATLAS experiment and the discovery of the Higgs boson. The thesis describes essential work on the alignment of the inner tracker during the commissioning of the experiment and development of the electron identification algorithm. The subsequent analysis focuses on the search for the Higgs boson in the WW channel, including the development of a method to model the critical W+jet background. In addition, the thesis provides excellent introductions, suitable for non-specialists, to Higgs physics, to the LHC, and to the ATLAS experiment.
