The CMS silicon strip tracker is the largest device of its type ever built. There are 24244 single-sided micro-strip sensors covering an active area of 198m2. Physics performance of the detector are being constantly assessed and optimized as new data comes. Members of UCL are playing a major role in the understanding of the silicon strip tracker and in the maintenance and development of the local reconstruction code.
External collaborators: CMS tracker collaboration.
Search for Higgs boson(s) within the Standard Model and beyond and also withing a minimal extension of the scalar sector (2HDM). The final state under study is a Z decaying into a lepton pair associated with two b-jets. This topology is sensitive to a light SM Higgs via the associate ZH production, as well as a middle mass range SM Higgs boson via the inclusive Higgs production followed by its decay into ZZ with one Z decaying into a lepton pair and the other into bbar. It is also very sensitive to the production of a non standard heavy Higgs boson decaying into Z plus A (pseudo scalar Higgs boson). Similar selection (but outside of the Z window) is also sensitive to H->aa->llbb, with "a" a generic light scalar.
External collaborators: CMS collaboration.
