Selection of LHCb results from Run I

At the eve of the second LHC data taking run, some of the most recent results obtained by the LHCb collaboration with Run I data are reviewed. Improved measurements on CP violation, unitary triangle and mixing parameters are shown. Recent progress on physics in the forward region is illustrated by examples picked up in the electroweak physics and beyond Standard Model searches.Comment: 7 pages, Contribution to the 10th Latin American Symposium on High Energy Physics (SILAFAE 2014

Improving the sensitivity of Higgs boson searches in the golden channel

Leptonic decays of the Higgs boson in the ZZ* channel yield what is known as the golden channel due to its clean signature and good total invariant mass resolution. In addition, the full kinematic distribution of the decay products can be reconstructed, which, nonetheless, is not taken into account in traditional search strategy relying only on measurements of the total invariant mass. In this work we implement a type of multivariate analysis known as the matrix element method, which exploits differences in the full production and decay matrix elements between the Higgs boson and the dominant irreducible background from q bar{q} -> ZZ*. Analytic expressions of the differential distributions for both the signal and the background are also presented. We perform a study for the Large Hadron Collider at sqrt{s}=7 TeV for Higgs masses between 175 and 350 GeV. We find that, with an integrated luminosity of 2.5 fb^-1 or higher, improvements in the order of 10 - 20 % could be obtained for both discovery significance and exclusion limits in the high mass region, where the differences in the angular correlations between signal and background are most pronounced.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figures. v2: Minus signs in definitions of angles corrected. Typos fixed. Reference added. Cosmetic changes to Figure 4. Additional sentence added for clarificatio

Search for the Higgs Boson Decays to a Photon and Two Leptons with Low Dilepton Invariant Mass

A search for a Higgs boson decay $H\to\gamma^*\gamma\to\ell\ell\gamma$ is presented. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS detector at the CERN LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb$^{-1}$. The selected events have an opposite-sign muon or electron pair and a high transverse momentum photon. No excess above background has been found in the three-body invariant mass range $120<m_{\ell\ell\gamma}<150$ GeV, and limits have been derived for the Higgs boson production cross section times branching fraction for the $H\to\gamma^*\gamma\to\ell\ell\gamma$ decay, where the dilepton invariant mass is less than 20 GeV. For a Higgs boson with $m_H=125$ GeV, a $95\%$ confidence level (CL) exclusion observed (expected) limit is 6.7 ($5.9^{+.2.8}_{-1.8}$) times the standard model prediction. Additionally, a search for $H\to(J/\Psi)\gamma\to\mu\mu\gamma$ process is presented, and an upper limit at $95\%$ CL on the branching fraction of the $H\to(J/\Psi)\gamma$ decay for the 125 GeV Higgs boson is set at $1.5\times10^{-3}$.Comment: PhD dissertation, Northwestern University. 151 pages, lots of figures, some table

Search for a Higgs boson decaying into γ*γ→ℓℓγ with low dilepton mass in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV

A search is described for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons, one of which has an internal conversion to a muon or an electron pair ( ℓℓγ ). The analysis is performed using proton–proton collision data recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb −1 . The events selected have an opposite-sign muon or electron pair and a high transverse momentum photon. No excess above background has been found in the three-body invariant mass range 12

Massively Parallel Computing at the Large Hadron Collider up to the HL-LHC

As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) continues its upward progression in energy and luminosity towards the planned High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) in 2025, the challenges of the experiments in processing increasingly complex events will also continue to increase. Improvements in computing technologies and algorithms will be a key part of the advances necessary to meet this challenge. Parallel computing techniques, especially those using massively parallel computing (MPC), promise to be a significant part of this effort. In these proceedings, we discuss these algorithms in the specific context of a particularly important problem: the reconstruction of charged particle tracks in the trigger algorithms in an experiment, in which high computing performance is critical for executing the track reconstruction in the available time. We discuss some areas where parallel computing has already shown benefits to the LHC experiments, and also demonstrate how a MPC-based trigger at the CMS experiment could not only improve performance, but also extend the reach of the CMS trigger system to capture events which are currently not practical to reconstruct at the trigger level.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings of 2nd International Summer School on Intelligent Signal Processing for Frontier Research and Industry (INFIERI2014), to appear in JINST. Revised version in response to referee comment