Comparative studies of Monte Carlo event generation in leading order and next-to-leading order for the CMS collaboration

The topic of this master thesis will be the modelling of the pp → tt̄ and the pp → tt̄H pro- cesses in particle collisions in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by event generation. It is part of the research of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration. Event generation is the most powerful tool for validating the Standard Model of particle physics by predicting how particles and physics processes should behave if our current concept of nature is accurate. The comparison of simulation data generated with event generators with data from real particle detectors leads both to better understanding of the physics processes under study themselves and to either a verification or extension of the Standard Model. Emphasis in this thesis lies on event generation studies using Monte Carlo (MC) methods and on comparisons of event generation done in leading order (LO) and next-to-leading order (NLO) of perturbation theory. Different Monte Carlo event generators and various parameter sets were employed in this context. In many cases the tools of the CMS software framework (CMSSW) were used during the event generation step and also during the subsequent analysis step. In addition, further event samples were produced by using the event generators in combination with some tools developed in our group.