2011 QCD and High Energy Interactions - Rencontres de Moriond ...

2 CMS and data taking
CMS 5 is a general purpose apparatus with a silicon tracker detector, a lead tungstate crystal
electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) and a brass scintillator hadron calorimeter (HCAL) enclosed
in a 3.8 T solenoidal magnetic field. The magnet is surrounded by an instrumented iron
return yoke which uses gaseous detectors made of three technologies: Drift Tubes (DT), Cathode
Strip Chambers (CSC), and Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC). In addition, CMS has forward
calorimeters which cover the pseudo–rapidity range 2.9 < |η| < 5.2 and allows for triggering
on PbPb collisions. The expected cross section for hadronic inelastic collisions is 7.65 barns,
while ultraperipheral collisions (UPC) with large impact parameters lead to the breakup of one,
or both, Pb nuclei with a much larger probability. Collisions in which the Pb nuclei interact
hadronically and can produce anywhere from just a few up to about 1600 particles per unit
pseudorapidity, depending on the impact parameter. As a result, more than 97% of these collisions
produce double-sided (coincident) trigger signals in the BSC (Beam Scintillator Counters),
and in the hadronic forward (HF) calorimeters. About 55 million minimum bias events have
been recorded, and a dedicated muon trigger has been used in this analysis. At the hardware
level (L1), two muon candidates in the muon spectrometer are required; at the software-based
higher-level (HLT), two reconstructed tracks in the muon detectors are required with pT of at
least 3 GeV/c each. In order to study the dimuon trigger efficiency, events are also collected
with a single-muon trigger, requiring pT > 20 GeV/c.
3 Signal extraction
The muon reconstruction in PbPb collisions with CMS is similar to the one used in pp collisions
described in 6 . We can distinguish two types of reconstructed muons: Stand Alone muons (STA),
reconstructed using information only from muon stations, and Global muons, reconstructed by
matching heavy-ion reconstructed tracks to muon station tracks. The latter are measured with
high resolution, (1-2% for pT up to 100 GeV/c) even in the high–multiplicity environment of
heavy ion collisions. In this analysis, the muon is required to be found with both algorithms –
a good consistency between tracker and muon detector measurements is essential to reduce the
contamination from muons produced by decays–in–flight of hadrons, from punch–through pions
and accidental matches due to noise, or due to background tracks or segments. The muons used
to construct the Z bosons are restricted to the pseudo-rapidity range η ∈ [−2.4, 2.4] and with
the requirement pT > 10 GeV/c, this removes only about 1% of the generated Z bosons, and
renders insignificant any trigger turn–on effects. In addition to those kinematic cuts, the global
muon must have at least one valid hit in the muon chamber and greater than 10 hits in the
inner tracker. In order to select good quality muons with high efficiency and reduce fake-rates,
the following selection cuts have been chosen:
• χ 2 / ndf