Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-170). / .Studies of the electroweak interactions using final states with leptons in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at [square root of] s = 7 TeV, [square root of] s = 8 TeV, and [square root of] s = 13 TeV center-of-mass energies are described. Measurements of total inclusive and fiducial W and Z boson production cross sections and their ratios are performed. The W and Z bosons are observed via their decays to electrons and muons. An indirect determination of the total width of the W boson and the B(W --> lv) from the measured cross section ratios is described. The discovery of a new boson with a mass of 125 GeV at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 sheds a new light on understanding the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking. A question of great significance is whether the new field couples to fermions through a Yukawa coupling interaction predicted in the standard model of particles. Evidence of the 125 GeV Higgs boson decay to a pair of tau leptons with an observed significance of 3.1 standard deviations is established. The nature of the Higgs sector is probed through searches for neutral resonances decaying to a pair of tau leptons in gluon-fusion and b-quark associated production modes with no observation of a significant excess. In addition, the feasibility of measuring the standard model Higgs boson self-coupling with an expected data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb-1 is studied. / by Aram Apyan. / Ph. D.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/112081 |
Date | January 2017 |
Creators | Apyan, Aram |
Contributors | Markus Klute., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics. |
Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Source Sets | M.I.T. Theses and Dissertation |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Thesis |
Format | 170 pages, application/pdf |
Rights | MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 |
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