The study of the Z boson transverse momentum spectrum recorded by the Compact Muon Solenoid from 2010 Large Hadron Collider data

This dissertation describes the full details of 2 studies of Z0 bosons performed using the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at the Large Hadron Collider of proton on proton collisions with center of mass energy of 7TeV. The first study searches for physics beyond the Standard Model by looking for an excess in production of Z0 bosons by examining the Z 0pT spectrum. As no excess is found, limits on new physics models are presented as a function of mass and other free parameters. The second study focuses on a precision measurement of the Z 0pT distribution, and is compared to theoretical calculations for the purposes of testing high order QCD calculations in addition to probing the predictions of various tunes of the underlying event. (Full text of this dissertation may be available via the University of Florida Libraries web site. Please check http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/etd.html).