The recent observation of the Higgs boson has been hailed as the scientific discovery of the century and led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics. This book describes the detailed science behind the decades-long search for this elusive particle at the Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN and at the Tevatron at Fermilab and its subsequent discovery and characterization at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Written by physicists who played leading roles in this epic search and discovery, this book is an authoritative and pedagogical exposition of the portrait of the Higgs boson that has emerged from a large number of experimental measurements. As the first of its kind, this book should be of interest to graduate students and researchers in particle physics.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the field of Higgs boson physics. It offers the first in-depth review of the complete results in connection with the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and based on the full dataset for the years 2011 to 2012. The fundamental concepts and principles of Higgs physics are introduced and the important searches prior to the advent of the Large Hadron Collider are briefly summarized. Lastly, the discovery and first mensuration of the observed particle in the course of the CMS experiment are discussed in detail and compared to the results obtained in the ATLAS experiment.

The book gives a quite complete and up-to-date picture of the Standard Theory with an historical perspective, with a collection of articles written by some of the protagonists of present particle physics. The theoretical developments are described together with the most up-to-date experimental tests, including the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the measurement of its mass as well as the most precise measurements of the top mass, giving the reader a complete description of our present understanding of particle physics.

The first part of this thesis presents the measurement of the inclusive cross-section for electron production from heavy-flavour decays in the electron transverse momentum range 7 GeV

The research presented here includes important contributions on the commissioning of the ATLAS experiment and the discovery of the Higgs boson. The thesis describes essential work on the alignment of the inner tracker during the commissioning of the experiment and development of the electron identification algorithm. The subsequent analysis focuses on the search for the Higgs boson in the WW channel, including the development of a method to model the critical W+jet background. In addition, the thesis provides excellent introductions, suitable for non-specialists, to Higgs physics, to the LHC, and to the ATLAS experiment.

This first open access volume of the handbook series contains articles on the standard model of particle physics, both from the theoretical and experimental perspective. It also covers related topics, such as heavy-ion physics, neutrino physics and searches for new physics beyond the standard model. A joint CERN-Springer initiative, the "Particle Physics Reference Library" provides revised and updated contributions based on previously published material in the well-known Landolt-Boernstein series on particle physics, accelerators and detectors (volumes 21A, B1,B2,C), which took stock of the field approximately one decade ago. Central to this new initiative is publication under full open access