The Black Book of Quantum Chromodynamics is an in-depth introduction to the particle physics of current and future experiments at particle accelerators. The book offers the reader an overview of practically all aspects of the strong interaction necessary to understand and appreciate modern particle phenomenology at the energy frontier. It assumes a working knowledge of quantum field theory at the level of introductory textbooks used for advanced undergraduate or in standard postgraduate lectures. The book expands this knowledge with an intuitive understanding of relevant physical concepts, an introduction to modern techniques, and their application to the phenomenology of the strong interaction at the highest energies. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, it also serves as a comprehensive reference for LHC experimenters and theorists. This book offers an exhaustive presentation of the technologies developed and used by practitioners in the field of fixed-order perturbation theory and an overview of results relevant for the ongoing research programme at the LHC. It includes an in-depth description of various analytic resummation techniques, which form the basis for our understanding of the QCD radiation pattern and how strong production processes manifest themselves in data, and a concise discussion of numerical resummation through parton showers, which form the basis of event generators for the simulation of LHC physics, and their matching and merging with fixed-order matrix elements. It also gives a detailed presentation of the physics behind the parton distribution functions, which are a necessary ingredient for every calculation relevant for physics at hadron colliders such as the LHC, and an introduction to non-perturbative aspects of the strong interaction, including inclusive observables such as total and elastic cross sections, and non-trivial effects such as multiple parton interactions and hadronization. The book concludes with a useful overview contextualising data from previous experiments such as the Tevatron and the Run I of the LHC which have shaped our understanding of QCD at hadron colliders.

This book presents two analyses, the first of which involves the search for a new heavy charged gauge boson, a so-called W' boson. This new gauge boson is predicted by some theories extending the Standard Model gauge group to solve some of its conceptual problems. Decays of the W' boson in final states with a lepton (l± = e± , μ±) and the corresponding (anti-)neutrino are considered. Data collected by the ATLAS experiment in 2015 at a center of mass energy of √s =13 TeV is used for the analysis. In turn, the second analysis presents a measurement of the double-differential cross section of the process pp->Z/gamma^* + X -> l^+l^- + X, including a gamma gamma induced contribution, at a center of mass energy of sqrt{s} = 8 TeV. The measurement is performed in an invariant mass region of 116 GeV to 1500 GeV as a function of invariant mass and absolute rapidity of the l^+l^-- pair, and as a function of invariant mass and pseudorapidity separation of the l^+l^-- pair. The data analyzed was recorded by the ATLAS experiment in 2012 and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3/fb. It is expected that the measured cross sections are sensitive to the PDFs at very high values of the Bjorken-x scaling variable, and to the photon structure of the proton.

Experiments over the last decade at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have yielded evidence for the formation of the new state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Normally, quarks (and their associated gluons) are found only in colorless doublets (mesons) or triplets (baryons), but when raised above the cross-over threshold at a temperature of ∼ 175 MeV, a strongly-coupled partonic medium of asymptotically free quarks and gluons is expected to form. The focus of heavy-ion physics at both the RHIC and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments has been to study physical processes that allow for a better grasp of the properties of this medium. Because of the large center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair ([squareroot]s(NN)) of 2.76 TeV in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC and substantial delivered integrated luminosities, the study of new processes in nucleus-nucleus collisions has become possible. One of those processes is Z-boson production, which due to it not interacting strongly, being produced in hard collisions and having a decay channel that does not interact with the QGP, can act as a control in understanding the cold nuclear matter effects present in heavy-ion collisions. This dissertation presents the measurement of the production of Z bosons in the dimuon and dielectron decay channels in Pb+Pb and p+p collisions at [squareroot]s(NN) of 2.76 TeV obtained by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The analysis is based on the data sample collected during the Pb+Pb run in 2011, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 150 [mu]b−1 and on the p+p data sample collected in 2013, at the same center-of-mass energy, with an integrated luminosity of 5.4 pb−1. The ratio of Pb+Pb to p+p yields, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions, R(AA), is expected to be equal to unity if there are no nuclear effects modifying the production of the Z boson in the Pb+Pb collisions. The R(AA) for centrality-integrated Z-boson production is found to be 1.06 ± 0.05 (stat) ± 0.08 (syst) in the dimuon channel and 1.02 ± 0.08 (stat) ± 0.15 (syst) in the dielectron channel, and shows no nuclear modification across the rapidity, transverse momentum and centrality bins measured. This result demonstrates that the binary-collision scaling is seen to hold in the kinematic region studied, which is expected for a colorless probe that is unaffected by a deconfined QGP. It also opens avenues to study processes that are strongly modified by the QGP, by using Z production as a control.

We present a search for exclusive Z boson production in proton-antiproton collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV, using the CDF II detector at Fermilab. We observe no exclusive Z → l+l− candidates and place the first upper limit on the exclusive Z cross section in hadron collisions, [sigma]{sub excl}(Z) 0.96 pb at 95% confidence level. In addition, we observe eight candidate exclusive dilepton events from the quantum electrodynamic process p{bar p} → p[gamma][gamma]{bar p} → pl+l− {bar p}, and measure the cross section for M{sub l{ell}} 40 GeV=c2 and.

With this research, the ATLAS Collaboration measures the inclusive production of Z bosons via their decays into electron and muon pairs in p + Pb collisions at \(\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.02\) TeV at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurements are made using data corresponding to integrated luminosities of 29.4 and 28.1 nb-1 for Z → ee and Z → [mu][mu], respectively. The results from the two channels are consistent and combined to obtain a cross section times the Z → ll branching ratio, integrated over the rapidity region