The standard model of particle physics provides a coherent description of highenergy physics processes and has been hugely successful in providing experimental predictions. Among its long list of achievements, the most significant is arguably that of the discovery of the Higgs boson half a century after being theorised, providing the last cornerstone needed for the standard model to become fully consistent. Despite huge successes, the standard model still suffers from major shortcomings. On the path leading towards a better understanding of particle physics, an in-depth study of the Higgs boson is key. This relentless work of characterising the properties of the Higgs boson is currently being undertaken at the Large Hadron Collider, where high-energy proton collisions are being recorded by dedicated detectors, providing a continuous improvement to the understanding of the standard model. Amid tremendous achievements, some processes, remain too weak to be detected with the current installations. One such measurement is the combined production of two Higgs bosons allowing for a direct handle on the Higgs self-coupling parameter of the standard model. To maximise the physics reach of the collider, it will be subjected to a major upgrade, allowing for a strong increase in luminosity. Such a dramatic change will bring major challenges to the experiments recording these collisions and upgrades are required if they are to maintain their outstanding performance. This thesis explores the upgrade of the CMS silicon strip detector, centred around the in-beam characterisation of detector module prototypes and discusses the physics reach of the upgraded machine, with an emphasis on Higgs boson pair production in the bbWW(l) final state.

This second open access volume of the handbook series deals with detectors, large experimental facilities and data handling, both for accelerator and non-accelerator based experiments. It also covers applications in medicine and life sciences. 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

This book collects the Proceedings of the Workshop "Incontri di Fisica delle Alte Energie (IFAE) 2006, Pavia, 19-21 Aprile 2006". The workshop is the fifth edition of a series of workshops on fundamental research in particle physics, as carried on at the most important international laboratories, and possible fallouts in medical and technological applications. Researches in this field aim at identifying the most elementary constituents of matter.

The work described in this PhD thesis is a study of a real implementation of a track-finder system which could provide reconstructed high transverse momentum tracks to the first-level trigger of the High Luminosity LHC upgrade of the CMS experiment. This is vital for the future success of CMS, since otherwise it will be impossible to achieve the trigger selectivity needed to contain the very high event rates. The unique and extremely challenging requirement of the system is to utilise the enormous volume of tracker data within a few microseconds to arrive at a trigger decision. The track-finder demonstrator described proved unequivocally, using existing hardware, that a real-time track-finder could be built using present-generation FPGA-based technology which would meet the latency and performance requirements of the future tracker. This means that more advanced hardware customised for the new CMS tracker should be even more capable, and will deliver very significant gains for the future physics returns from the LHC.

The exploration of the subnuclear world is done through increasingly complex experiments covering a wide range of energies and in a large variety of environments — from particle accelerators and underground detectors to satellites and space laboratories. For these research programs to succeed, novel techniques, new materials and new instrumentation need to be used in detectors, often on a large scale. Hence, particle physics is at the forefront of technological advancement and leads to numerous applications. Among these, medical applications have a particular importance due to the health and social benefits they bring. This volume reviews the advances made in all technological aspects of current experiments in the field.

This thesis presents innovative contributions to the CMS experiment in the new trigger system for the restart of the LHC collisions in Run II, as well as original analysis methods and important results that led to official publications of the Collaboration. The author's novel reconstruction algorithms, deployed on the Field-Programmable Gate Arrays of the new CMS trigger architecture, have brought a gain of over a factor 2 in efficiency for the identification of tau leptons, with a very significant impact on important H boson measurements, such as its decays to tau lepton pairs and the search for H boson pair production. He also describes a novel analysis of HH → bb tautau, a high priority physics topic in a difficult channel. The original strategy, optimisation of event categories, and the control of the background have made the result one of the most sensitive concerning the self-coupling of the Higgs boson among all possible channels at the LHC.