Top quark pair production and calorimeter energy resolution studies at a future collider experiment

Seidel, Katja (2012): Top quark pair production and calorimeter energy resolution studies at a future collider experiment. Dissertation, LMU München: Fakultät für Physik

Abstract

This thesis is focused on detector concepts and analyses investigated at a future linear electron positron collider. For precision measurements at such a collider, the CALICE collaboration develops imaging calorimeters, which are characterized by a fine granularity. CALICE has constructed prototypes of several design options for electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters and has successfully operated these detectors during combined test beam programs at DESY, CERN and Fermilab. To improve the hadronic energy reconstruction and energy resolution of a hadron calorimeter prototype with analog readout three software compensation techniques are presented in this thesis, of which one is a local and two are global software compensation approaches. One method is based on a neural network to optimize the energy reconstruction, while two are energy weighting techniques, depending on the energy density. Weight factors are extracted from and applied to simulated and test beam data and result in an average energy resolution improvement of 15 - 25 % compared to a reconstruction without software compensation. Whether such software compensation techniques are also applicable to a detector concept for a future linear electron positron collider is studied in the second part of this thesis. Simulated data, two different hadronic detector models and a local software compensation technique are used for this study. The energy resolutions for single hadrons and for jets are presented with and without software compensation. In the third part of this thesis, a study on top quark pair production at a center-of-mass energy of 500 GeV at the proposed electron positron collider CLIC is presented. The analysis is based on full detector simulations, including realistic background contributions dominated by two photon processes. The mass and width of the top quark are studied in fully-hadronic and semi-leptonic decays of top quark pairs using event samples of signal and Standard Model background processes, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 100 fb^-1. Statistical uncertainties of the top mass of 0.08 GeV and 0.09 GeV are obtained for the fully-hadronic and the semi-leptonic channels, respectively.

• Dokumententyp: Dissertationen (Dissertation, LMU München)
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik ; 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik
• Fakultäten: Fakultät für Physik
• Sprache der Hochschulschrift: Englisch
• Datum der mündlichen Prüfung: 27. März 2012
• 1. Bericht­erstatter:in: Kiesling, Christian