Study and optimization of the performances of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter for the physics at LHC

The CMS experiment (Compact Muon Solenoid) is one of the two multi-purpose experiments of the proton-proton collider LHC (Large Hadron Collider). One of the main goals of CMS is the search for the Higgs boson. The collaboration has chosen an electromagnetic calorimeter made of about 75000 scintillating lead tungstate crystals PbWO4, at the same time fast, radiation hard, and extremely precise, especially in the energy range for the Higgs boson search, in the channel where it decays in 2 photons. The five first chapters of this thesis present the LHC, the CMS detector and notably the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL). The sixth chapter presents a test beam analysis realized in 2004 at CERN with an electron beam of different energies (20-250 GeV) incident on a part (1/36) of the calorimeter barrel called super-module. A study of the energy measurement variation within 9 (3*3) and 25 (5*5) crystals matrices as function of the impact position of the initial electron was done to infer a correction method of the energy measured as function of different parameters. This method has improved very significantly the energy resolution of the calorimeter in the test beam configuration. The last chapter of this thesis presents an application of this correction method for the electrons and photons in the full simulation chain of CMS. The energy reconstruction of photons and electrons is more complicated compared to the test beam case, because of an important amount of matter in front of the calorimeter and of the strong magnetic field in the central part of the CMS detector. The photons have a non negligible probability to convert into an electron-positron pair before the calorimeter, while the electrons (and positrons), whose trajectory is bent in the transverse plan, lose energy in the matter and can emit a random number of Bremsstrahlung photons. A reconstruction algorithm of the electrons and photons energy has been developed to take into account this issue and to apply the correction method studied in the test beam. This new algorithmic approach for an optimal reconstruction of the electromagnetic particles in the ECAL has been tested with physics events Z0 → e+e-, H → Z0Z0 → e+e-e+e- and H → γγ, simulated with a LHC luminosity of 1033 cm-2s-1. (author)