Our understanding of the fundamental interactions of particles has come far in the last century, and is still pushing forward. As we build... Show moreOur understanding of the fundamental interactions of particles has come far in the last century, and is still pushing forward. As we build ever more powerful machines to probe higher and higher energies, we will need to develop new tools to not only understand the new physics objects we are trying to detect, but even to understand the environment that we are searching in. We examine methods of identifying both boosted objects and low energy jets which will be shrouded in a sea of noise from other pasts of the detector. We display the power of boosted-b tagging in a simulated W' search. We also examine the effetc of pile up on low energy jet reconstructions. For this purpose we develop a new priority-based jet algorithm, "p-jets", to cluster the energy that belongs together, but ignore the rest. Ph.D in Physics, May 2015 Show less
One of the strengths of the LHC is its capacity for the discovery of new physics. As a consequence of many BSM theories, W′ bosons make an... Show moreOne of the strengths of the LHC is its capacity for the discovery of new physics. As a consequence of many BSM theories, W′ bosons make an ideal particle to search for to constrain many models. One mode in particular has relatively low background: Single top quark production mediated by a W′ boson. For W′ masses less than 1500 GeV, all the decay products of the top quark are visible, and the strongest channel is the top’s decay into an electron or muon, with the associated neutrino and a bottom jet. As the W′ mass increases, the decay products from the highly boosted top and bottom quarks from the W′ appear as fat jets; boosted top tagging algorithms abound, and we propose a boosted bottom tag to set an exclusion limit of 2750 GeV for standard model-like couplings with existing 8 TeV data. Sponsorship: IIT College of Science, High Energy Physics Division of Argonne National Laboratory Show less
