Electroweak physics and evidence for a Higgs boson decaying to a pair of tau leptons with the CMS detector
Name
1006756029-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
22.08 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8509ca0b84a31322796e34f2e371c999
Author(s)
Apyan, Aram
Advisor(s)
Markus Klute.
Date Issued
2017
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
.Studies of the electroweak interactions using final states with leptons in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at [square root of] s = 7 TeV, [square root of] s = 8 TeV, and [square root of] s = 13 TeV center-of-mass energies are described. Measurements of total inclusive and fiducial W and Z boson production cross sections and their ratios are performed. The W and Z bosons are observed via their decays to electrons and muons. An indirect determination of the total width of the W boson and the B(W --> lv) from the measured cross section ratios is described. The discovery of a new boson with a mass of 125 GeV at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 sheds a new light on understanding the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking. A question of great significance is whether the new field couples to fermions through a Yukawa coupling interaction predicted in the standard model of particles. Evidence of the 125 GeV Higgs boson decay to a pair of tau leptons with an observed significance of 3.1 standard deviations is established. The nature of the Higgs sector is probed through searches for neutral resonances decaying to a pair of tau leptons in gluon-fusion and b-quark associated production modes with no observation of a significant excess. In addition, the feasibility of measuring the standard model Higgs boson self-coupling with an expected data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb-1 is studied.
Description
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2017.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-170).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
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