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

Too often descriptions of detectors focus on the 'what' and not the 'why'. This volume aims to elucidate how the requirements of the physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) define the detector environment. In turn, the detector choices are made to adopt to that environment. The goal of LHC physics is to explore the mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking. Because of the minuscule cross-sections which need to be explored, 0.1 fb, the LHC needs to provide 100 fb-1/yr, or an instantaneous luminosity of 1034 / (cm2 sec). With a bunch crossing interval of 25 nsec, well matched to detector speeds, there will be 25 events occupying each bunch crossing.Thus the physics requires fast, finely segmented, low noise and radiation resistant detectors which provide redundant measurements of the rarely produced electrons and muons. To achieve those goals, new ground was broken in constructing the A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS (ATLAS) and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detectors in the vertex detectors, tracking systems, calorimetry, strong magnets, muon systems, front end electronics, trigger systems, and in the data acquisition methods used.

Tests of the current understanding of physics at the highest energies achievable in man-made experiments are performed at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. In the theory of the strong force within the Standard Model of particle physics - Quantum ChromoDynamics or QCD - confined quarks and gluons from the proton-proton scattering manifest themselves as groups of collimated particles. These particles are clustered into physically measurable objects called hadronic jets. As jets are widely produced at hadron colliders, they are the key physics objects for an early "rediscovery of QCD". This thesis presents the first jet measurement from the ATLAS Collaboration at the LHC and confronts the experimental challenges of precision measurements. Inclusive jet cross section data are then used to improve the knowledge of the momentum distribution of quarks and gluons within the proton and of the magnitude of the strong force.

Before any kind of new physics discovery could be made at the LHC, a precise understanding and measurement of the Standard Model of particle physics' processes was necessary. The book provides an introduction to top quark production in the context of the Standard Model and presents two such precise measurements of the production of top quark pairs in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV that were observed with the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC. The presented measurements focus on events with one charged lepton, missing transverse energy and jets. Using novel and advanced analysis techniques as well as a good understanding of the detector, they constitute the most precise measurements of the quantity at that time.