QCD uncertainties at the LHC and the implications of HERA

Strong interaction physics will be ubiquitous at the Large Hadron Collider since the colliding beams consist of confined quarks and gluons. Although the main purpose of the LHC is to study the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and to search for physics beyond the Standard Model, to maximise the precision and sensitivity of such anaylses it is necessary to understand in detail various perturbative, semi-perturbative and non-perturbative QCD effects. Many of these effects have been extensively studied at HERA and will be studied further at HERA II. We discuss the impact of the knowledge thus gained on physics at the LHC.Comment: Contributed to the Proceedings of DIS04, Strbske Pleso, Slovaki

Long Range Beam-beam Effects in the LHC

We report on the experience with long-range beam--beam effects in the LHC, in dedicated studies as well as the experience from operation. Where possible, we compare the observations with the expectations.Comment: Presented at the ICFA Mini-Workshop on Beam-Beam in Hadron Colliders, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, 18-22 March 201

Status and Commissioning of the CMS Experiment

After a brief overview of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, the status of construction and installation is described in the first part of the note. The second part of the document is devoted to a discussion of the general commissioning strategy of the CMS experiment, with a particular emphasis on trigger, calibration and alignment. Aspects of b-physics, as well as examples for early physics with CMS are also presented. CMS will be ready for data taking in time for the first collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in late 2007.Comment: Talks given at the 11th Intl. Conference on B-Physics at Hadron Machines BEAUTY 2006, Oxford (UK), September 200

Direct Higgs production and jet veto at the Tevatron and the LHC in NNLO QCD

We consider Higgs boson production through gluon--gluon fusion in hadron collisions, when a veto is applied on the transverse momenta of the accompanying hard jets. We compute the QCD radiative corrections to this process at NLO and NNLO. The NLO calculation is complete. The NNLO calculation uses the recently evaluated NNLO soft and virtual QCD contributions to the inclusive cross section. We find that the jet veto reduces the impact of the NLO and NNLO contributions, the reduction being more sizeable at the LHC than at the Tevatron.Comment: 22 pages, 12 postscript figure

Commissioning of the CMS High Level Trigger

The CMS experiment will collect data from the proton-proton collisions delivered by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at a centre-of-mass energy up to 14 TeV. The CMS trigger system is designed to cope with unprecedented luminosities and LHC bunch-crossing rates up to 40 MHz. The unique CMS trigger architecture only employs two trigger levels. The Level-1 trigger is implemented using custom electronics, while the High Level Trigger (HLT) is based on software algorithms running on a large cluster of commercial processors, the Event Filter Farm. We present the major functionalities of the CMS High Level Trigger system as of the starting of LHC beams operations in September 2008. The validation of the HLT system in the online environment with Monte Carlo simulated data and its commissioning during cosmic rays data taking campaigns are discussed in detail. We conclude with the description of the HLT operations with the first circulating LHC beams before the incident occurred the 19th September 2008

Direct Higgs production and jet veto at hadron colliders

We consider Higgs boson production through gluon--gluon fusion in hadron collisions, when a veto is applied on the transverse momenta of the accompanying hard jets. We compute the QCD corrections to this process at NLO and NNLO, and present numerical results at the Tevatron and the LHC.Comment: 5 pages, 4 ps figures, presented at the XXXVIIth Rencontres de Moriond, QCD and Hadronic interactions, Les Arc1800, Franc

Top quark pair and single top production at Tevatron and LHC energies

I present the latest calculations of total and differential cross sections for top-antitop pair production and single top quark production via all main partonic channels. Higher-order corrections from the resummation of soft gluons are added through NNLL accuracy. Detailed numerical results are presented for approximate NNLO cross sections and top quark transverse momentum distributions at the Tevatron and LHC colliders.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; presented at ICHEP 2010, Paris, France, July 22-28, 201

A Beta Beam complex based on the machine upgrades for the LHC

The Beta Beam CERN design is based on the present LHC injection complex and its physics reach is mainly limited by the maximum rigidity of the SPS. In fact, some of the scenarios for the machine upgrades of the LHC, particularly the construction of a fast cycling 1 TeV injector (``Super-SPS''), are very synergic with the construction of a higher $\gamma$ Beta Beam. At the energies that can be reached by this machine, we demonstrate that dense calorimeters can already be used for the detection of $\nu$ at the far location. Even at moderate masses (40 kton) as the ones imposed by the use of existing underground halls at Gran Sasso, the CP reach is very large for any value of $\theta_{13}$ that would provide evidence of $\nu_e$ appearance at T2K or NO$\nu$A ($\theta_{13}\geq 3^\circ$). Exploitation of matter effects at the CERN to Gran Sasso distance provides sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy in significant areas of the $\theta_{13}-\delta$ plane

Direct photons ~basis for characterizing heavy ion collisions~

After years of experimental and theoretical efforts, direct photons become a strong and reliable tool to establish the basic characteristics of a hot and dense matter produced in heavy ion collisions. The recent direct photon measurements are reviewed and a future prospect is given.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, Invited plenary talk at Quark Matter 200