Probing the flavor of the top quark decay
The top quark sector is almost decoupled from lighter quark generations due to the fact that $V_{tb}\approx$~1. The current experimental measurements of $V_{tb}$ are compatible with the Standard Model expectations but are still dominated by experimental uncertainties. In this manuscript, a revision of the experimental methods used to measure $V_{tb}$ is given, and a simple method to probe heavy flavor content fraction of top quark events, $R=B(t\rightarrow Wb)/B(t\rightarrow Wq)$, is presented and discussed. Prospects for the measurements at the Large Hadron Collider based on generator level simulations are outlined.

title: Performance of tau-lepton reconstruction and identification in CMS
abstract: The performance of tau-lepton reconstruction and identification algorithms is studied using a data sample of proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 inverse picobarns collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The tau leptons that decay into one or three charged hadrons, zero or more short-lived neutral hadrons, and a neutrino are identified using final-state particles reconstructed in the CMS tracker and electromagnetic calorimeter. The reconstruction efficiency of the algorithms is measured using tau leptons produced in Z-boson decays. The tau-lepton misidentification rates for jets and electrons are determined.

title: Search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair in pp collisions at the LHC
abstract: A bstractA search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair is presented using data samples corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb−1 (5.1 fb−1) collected in pp collisions at the center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV (8 TeV). Events are considered where the top-quark pair decays to either one lepton+jets $ \left( {\mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}\to \ell \nu \mathrm{q}\overline{\mathrm{q}}\prime \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}} \right) $ or dileptons $ \left( {\mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}\to {\ell^{+}}\nu {\ell^{-}}\overline{\nu}\mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}} \right) $, ℓ being an electron or a muon. The search is optimized for the decay mode $ \mathrm{H}\to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}} $. The largest background to the $ \mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{H} $ signal is top-quark pair production with additional jets. Artificial neural networks are used to discriminate between signal and background events. Combining the results from the 7 TeV and 8 TeV samples, the observed (expected) limit on the cross section for Higgs boson production in association with top-quark pairs for a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV is 5.8 (5.2) times the standard model expectation.

title: Alignment of the CMS muon system with cosmic-ray and beam-halo muons
abstract: The CMS muon system has been aligned using cosmic-ray muons collected in 2008 and beam-halo muons from the 2008 LHC circulating beam tests. After alignment, the resolution of the most sensitive coordinate is 80 microns for the relative positions of superlayers in the same barrel chamber and 270 microns for the relative positions of endcap chambers in the same ring structure. The resolution on the position of the central barrel chambers relative to the tracker is comprised between two extreme estimates, 200 and 700 microns, provided by two complementary studies. With minor modifications, the alignment procedures can be applied using muons from LHC collisions, leading to additional significant improvements.

title: Performance of the CMS Drift Tube Chambers with Cosmic Rays
abstract: Studies of the performance of the CMS drift tube barrel muon system are described, with results based on data collected during the CMS Cosmic Run at Four Tesla. For most of these data, the solenoidal magnet was operated with a central field of 3.8 T. The analysis of data from 246 out of a total of 250 chambers indicates a very good muon reconstruction capability, with a coordinate resolution for a single hit of about 260 microns, and a nearly 100% efficiency for the drift tube cells. The resolution of the track direction measured in the bending plane is about 1.8 mrad, and the efficiency to reconstruct a segment in a single chamber is higher than 99%. The CMS simulation of cosmic rays reproduces well the performance of the barrel muon detector.

title: Data filtering in the readout of the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter
abstract: For an efficient data taking, the Electromagnetic Calorimeter data of the CMS experiment must be limited to 10% of the full event size (1MB). Other requirements limit the average data size to 2kB per data acquisition link. These conditions imply a reduction factor of close to twenty on the data collected. The data filtering in the readout of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter detector is discussed. Test beam data are used to study the digital filtering applied in the readout channels and a full detector simulation allows to estimate the energy thresholds to achieve the desired data suppression factor.

title: Gauge fixing methods and Gribov copies effects in lattice QCD
abstract: We compare two Landau gauge fixing methods, aiming to find the global maximum of the gauge fixing functional. Moreover, a systematic effect of Gribov copies in the gluon and ghost propagators computed in Landau gauge is presented and discussed.

title: LIMIT ON A HEAVY DIRAC NEUTRINO THROUGH OBLIQUE RADIATIVE CORRECTIONS
abstract: We compute the one-loop oblique corrections in a typical model with neutrino masses due to the seesaw mechanism. We verify that a Dirac neutrino mass up to 178 GeV is still allowed by the experimental data.

title: The Production and Qualification of Scintillator Tiles for the ATLAS Hadronic Calorimeter

title: Design, Construction and Installation of the ATLAS Hadronic Barrel Scintillator-Tile Calorimeter

title: What does low energy physics tell us about the zero momentum gluon propagator
abstract: The connection between QCD, a nonlocal Nambu–Jona-Lasinio type model and the Landau gauge gluon propagator is explored. This two point function is parameterized by a functional form which is compatible with Dyson–Schwinger and lattice QCD results. Demanding the nonlocal model to reproduce the experimental values for the pion mass, the pion decay constant, Γ π → γ γ and the light quark condensate we conclude that low energy physics does not distinguish between the so-called decoupling and scaling solutions of the Dyson–Schwinger equations. This result means that, provided that the model parameters are chosen appropriately, one is free to choose any of the above scenarios. Furthermore, the nonlocal Nambu–Jona-Lasinio quark model considered here is chiral invariant and satisfies the GMOR relation at the 1% level of precision.