Grid computing for LHC and methods for W boson mass measurement at CMS

Two methods for measuring the W boson mass with the CMS detector have been presented in this thesis. Both methods use similarities between W boson and Z boson decays. Their statistical and systematic precisions have been determined for W → μν; the statistics corresponds to one inverse femtobarn of data. A large number of events needed to be simulated for this analysis; it was not possible to use the full simulation software because of the enormous computing time which would have been needed. Instead, a fast simulation tool for the CMS detector was used. Still, the computing requirements for the fast simulation exceeded the capacity of the local compute cluster. Since the data taken and processed at the LHC will be extremely large, the LHC experiments rely on the emerging grid computing tools. The computing capabilities of the grid have been used for simulating all physics events needed for this thesis. To achieve this, the local compute cluster had to be integrated into the grid and the administration of the grid components had to be secured. As this was the first installation of its kind, several contributions to grid training events could be made: courses on grid installation, administration and grid-enabled applications were given. The two methods for the W mass measurement are the morphing method and the scaling method. The morphing method relies on an analytical transformation of Z boson events into W boson events and determines the W boson mass by comparing the transverse mass distributions; the scaling method relies on scaled observables from W boson and Z boson events, e.g. the transverse muon momentum as studied in this thesis. In both cases, a re-weighting technique applied to Monte Carlo generated events is used to take into account different selection cuts, detector acceptances, and differences in production and decay of W boson and Z boson events. (orig.)