Opportunities and challenges of Standard Model production cross section measurements in proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV using CMS Open Data

Abstract

The CMS Open Data project offers new opportunities to measure cross sections of standard model (SM) processes which have not been probed so far. We evaluate the challenges and the opportunities of the CMS Open Data project in the view of cross section measurements. In particular, we reevaluate the SM cross sections of the production of W bosons, Z bosons, top-quark pairs and WZ dibosons in several decay channels at a center of mass energy of 8 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 1.8 fb-1. These cross sections were previously measured by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations and are used to validate our analysis and calibration strategy. The results indicate the achievable level of precision for future measurements using the CMS Open Data performed by scientists who are not members of the LHC Collaborations and hence lack detailed knowledge of experimental and detector related effects and their handling.