Subject Area

Physics

Abstract

As the LHC experiments increase their statistics and reduce their systematics, it is in- creasingly important to reduce the theoretical uncertainties so we can perform precision com- parisons. The parton distribution functions (PDFs) which describe the hadronic structure of protons and nuclei are the critical link between the experimental data and the proposed theoretical models; hence, a better understanding of the PDFs is essential for improved pre- dictions. Nuclear PDFs, in particular, have proven valuable in this regard, especially for flavor differentiation. I introduce ”nCTEQ+LHC,” the first PDF set fit using the nCTEQ formalism to include data from the LHC. This PDF set also represents the first results of the new (C++ based) ”nCTEQ++” fitting code. To incorporate many new LHC processes into nCTEQ++, I developed and tested a novel way of uniting various theory tools in a modular framework to enable fast PDF fitting of complex higher-order theory calculations using modern grid techniques. This combination of tools provides a foundation for a wide variety of future analysis involving both proton and nuclear data.

Degree Date

Spring 5-19-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Physics

Advisor

Fredrick Olness

Number of Pages

333

Format

.pdf

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25172/td.1683116348

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