Measurement of the Inclusive Electron Cross-Section from Heavy-Flavour Decays and Search for Compressed Supersymmetric Scenarios with the ATLAS Experiment

The first part of this thesis presents the measurement of the inclusive cross-section for electron production from heavy-flavour decays in the electron transverse momentum range 7 GeV < pT < 26 GeV using 1.3 pb1 of 7 TeV proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in 2010. The measured value of the cross-section within the fiducial range of the analysis is _e^HF = 0.946 ± 0.020(stat.) ± 0.146(syst.) ± 0.032(lumi.) b. Theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the measurement. The second part of this thesis is a search for compressed supersymmetric scenarios in events with missing transverse energy, jets and one isolated low-pT lepton in the final state using 4.7 fb-1 of ATLAS data collected at 7 TeV center-of-mass energy in 2011. No significant excess of events over the Standard Model expectation is observed and exclusion limits are derived for a number of supersymmetric models.

Nominated as an outstanding Ph.D. thesis by University of Geneva, Switzerland Presents the first LHC results on compressed super symmetry with low pT leptons in the final state Describes the first measurement of the inclusive cross-section for electron production from heavy flavour decays at ATLAS Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
The author began his undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Hamburg, Germany. During a study-abroad year at the University of Melbourne, Australia, he specialized in experimental particle physics and subsequently concluded his Diploma in Physics with a study on background estimation in searches for Supersymmetry with the ATLAS experiment. During his PhD studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, he performed a measurement of the inclusive electron cross-section from heavy-flavour decays and a search for compressed super symmetric scenarios with ATLAS. At present he is employed as fellow at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Inhalt
Theoretical Background.- Experimental Setup.- Data Acquisition and Data Processing.- Measurement of the Inclusive Electron Cross-Section from Heavy-Flavour Decays with 2010 Data.- Search for Compressed Supersymmetry with 2011 Data.