Reconstruction of muons in the ATLAS detector and study of the production of boson pairs at the LHC

This dissertation presents some of my research activities, written in view of obtaining the 'Habilitation a diriger des recherches' delivered by the University of Paris VII. It retraces some of my contributions to the preparation of the ATLAS detector and to the analyses of production of pairs of vector bosons at the LHC on the data collected in the first phase of the LHC. I first introduce the LHC, the ATLAS detector and the problematic of the reconstruction of muons. Next I describe the work that has been done for the description of the detector, a crucial issue for the reconstruction. Then I discuss in some details the algorithms forming the STACO chain of the muon reconstruction which has been used by the main ATLAS Physics analyses. The performance of this chain on simulated and real data are presented. Finally the analyses of the production of pairs of ZZ, W Z, WW, W γ and Z γ are discussed. The cross sections measurements are compared to the theoretical predictions, and the limits on the anomalous Triple Gauge couplings to the limits from the previous generation colliders. The limits on the anomalous couplings are discussed in the Effective Field Theory framework. (author)