Observation of Diffractive W and Z Boson Production and Standard Model Higgs Boson Search in the H→WW→ℓνℓνH \to W W \to \ell \nu \ell \nu Channel in s\sqrt{s} = 7 TeV pp Collisions at CMS

In this thesis, two analyses using proton-proton (pp) collision data at a center of mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV, recorded with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), are presented: The first analysis, using an integrated luminosity of 36 pb$^{=1}$ of low pile-up data recorded in 2010, uses the forward energy flow and the central charged particle multiplicity in events with leptonically decaying W and Z bosons to study the effects of the underlying event model. None of the studied Monte Carlo simulations describes the observed distributions from data sufficiently. Weak boson events with no significant energy deposits in one of the forward calorimeters are observed. This corresponds to a large pseudorapidity gap (LRG) of at least 1.9 units. The fraction of W(Z) events having a LRG is found to be 1.46 $\pm$ 0.09(stat.) $\pm$ 0.38(syst.)% (1.57 $\pm$ 0.25(stat.) $\pm$ 0.42(syst.)%). The majority of the charged leptons from these W/Z decays are found in the hemisphere opposite to the gap. This gives a strong indication of a diffractive component in the weak boson production, and the fraction of diffractively produced W bosons is found to be 0.73 $\pm$ 0.34% which is in agreement with observations from the Tevatron. The second analysis presents the search for the SM Higgs boson decaying to a pair of W bosons in the fully leptonic final state. The pp collision data corresponding to a luminosity of 4.9 fb$^{-1}$ recorded in 2011 are used. The $W^+ W^−$ event candidates are selected by requiring exactly two oppositely charged leptons and large missing transverse momentum from the escaping neutrinos. The shapes of the distributions of a multivariate discriminator are used to calculate upper limits on the SM Higgs production cross section. Different systematic uncertainties are studied in detail and included in the limit setting procedure using the 2011 dataset. The SM Higgs boson is excluded in the mass range of 134–211 GeV at the 95% confidence level. This is a slightly smaller range than the expected exclusion range of 125–230 GeV. An excess of about 2$\sigma$ significance is observed in the low mass region below 140 GeV, consistent with a SM Higgs boson with a mass around 125 GeV

Partitioning European grassland net ecosystem CO2 exchange into gross primary productivity and ecosystem respiration using light response function analysis

Tower CO2 flux measurements from 20 European grasslands in the EUROGRASSFLUX data set covering a wide range of environmental and management conditions were analyzed with respect to their ecophysiological characteristics and CO2 exchange (gross primary production, Pg, and ecosystem respiration, Re) using light-response function analysis. Photosynthetically active radiation (Q) and top-soil temperature (Ts) were identified as key factors controlling CO2 exchange between grasslands and the atmosphere at the 30-min scale. A nonrectangular hyperbolic light-response model P(Q) and modified nonrectangular hyperbolic light–temperature-response model P(Q, Ts) proved to be flexible tools for modeling CO2 exchange in the light. At night, it was not possible to establish robust instantaneous relationships between CO2 evolution rate rn and environmental drivers, though under certain conditions, a significant relationship rn=r0 ekTTs was found using observation windows 7–14 days wide. Principal light-response parameters—apparent quantum yield, saturated gross photosynthesis, daytime ecosystem respiration, and gross ecological light-use efficiency, = Pg/Q, display patterns of seasonal dynamics which can be formalized and used for modeling. Maximums of these parameters were found in intensively managed grasslands of Atlantic climate. Extensively used semi-natural grasslands of southern and central Europe have much lower production, respiration, and light-use efficiency, while temperate and mountain grasslands of central Europe ranged between these two extremes. Parameters from light–temperature-response analysis of tower data are in agreement with values obtained using closed chambers and free-air CO2 enrichment. Correlations between light-response and productivity parameters provides the possibility to use the easier to measure parameters to estimate the parameters that are more difficult to measure. Gross primary production (Pg) of European grasslands ranges from 1700 g CO2 m−2 year−1 in dry semi-natural pastures to 6900 g CO2 m−2 year−1 in intensively managed Atlantic grasslands. Ecosystem respiration (Re) is in the range 1800 2400 g CO2 m−2 year−1) to significant release (<−600 g CO2 m−2 year−1), though in 15 out of 19 cases grasslands performed as net CO2 sinks. The carbon source was associated with organic rich soils, grazing, and heat stress. Comparison of Pg, Re, and NEE for tower sites with the same characteristics from previously published papers obtained with other methods did not reveal significant discrepancies. Preliminary results indicate relationships of grassland Pg and Re to macroclimatic factors (precipitation and temperature), but these relationships cannot be reduced to simple monofactorial models

Transverse momentum and pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in pp collisions at (s)\sqrt(s) = 0.9 and 2.36 TeV

Measurements of inclusive charged-hadron transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity distributions are presented for proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 0.9 and 2.36 TeV. The data were collected with the CMS detector during the LHC commissioning in December 2009. For non-single-diffractive interactions, the average charged-hadron transverse momentum is measured to be 0.46 +/- 0.01 (stat.) +/- 0.01 (syst.) GeV/c at 0.9 TeV and 0.50 +/- 0.01 (stat.) +/- 0.01 (syst.) GeV/c at 2.36 TeV, for pseudorapidities between -2.4 and +2.4. At these energies, the measured pseudorapidity densities in the central region, dN(charged)/d(eta) for |eta| < 0.5, are 3.48 +/- 0.02 (stat.) +/- 0.13 (syst.) and 4.47 +/- 0.04 (stat.) +/- 0.16 (syst.), respectively. The results at 0.9 TeV are in agreement with previous measurements and confirm the expectation of near equal hadron production in p-pbar and pp collisions. The results at 2.36 TeV represent the highest-energy measurements at a particle collider to date

Measurement of Dijet Angular Distributions and Search for Quark Compositeness in pp Collisions at sqrts=7sqrt{s} = 7 TeV

Dijet angular distributions are measured over a wide range of dijet invariant masses in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, at the CERN LHC. The event sample, recorded with the CMS detector, corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 36 inverse picobarns. The data are found to be in good agreement with the predictions of perturbative QCD, and yield no evidence of quark compositeness. With a modified frequentist approach, a lower limit on the contact interaction scale for left-handed quarks of Lambda = 5.6 TeV is obtained at the 95% confidence level