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title: Introduction
...

Humanity has long sought to understand more fully the nature of the world around them. This journey has led to an ever increasing knowledge of the constituents of matter and how these constituents interact. This knowledge has enabled engineers and inventors to create all of the tools and gadgets that define modern society. Particle physics exists at at the frontier our understanding of the universe and this thesis describes efforts to push that frontier just a little bit further.

Following this introduction, I will describe the current most accepted theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 will describe the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector. Chapter 4 contains the methods of event simulation and reconstruction that are employed in CMS, as well as my particular contribution to the reconstruction of electrons. Chapter 5 will discuss a measurement that was done of the $t\bar{t}t\bar{t}$ production cross section at 13 TeV. The discussion will also include implications to various Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics scenarios. Finally, in chapter 6 I will talk about the Phase I CMS Pixel Detector Upgrade project and my contributions to that effort.


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