Effective field theories for the LHC

In this thesis I study applications of effective field theories to understand aspects of QCD jets and their substructure at the Large Hadron Collider. In particular, I introduce an observable, D2 , which can be used for distinguishing boosted W/Z/H bosons from the QCD background using information about the radiation pattern within the jet, and perform a precision calculation of this observable. To simplify calculations in the soft collinear effective theory, I also develop a helicity operator basis, which facilitates matching calculations to fixed order computations performed using spinor-helicity techniques, and demonstrate its utility by computing an observable relevant for studying the properties of the newly discovered Higgs boson.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Moult, Ian James

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• lain W. Stewart.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/104527

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/104527