Recherche du boson de Higgs en quatre leptons au LHC: étude des événements avec bosons Z et jets b dans l'expérience ATLAS. Étude des performances du système de déclenchement du calorimètre électromagnétique pour les hautes énergies transverses.

The framework of the studies presented in this thesis is the search for the Higgs boson in the 4 leptons channel with the ATLAS experiment. The Higgs boson is a particle whose existence is predicted by the Electroweak theory but has not yet been observed, and its search is one of the main research subjects at the LHC, since its discovery would complete the Standard Model. First, a study of the electromagnetic calorimeter level-one trigger system is presented. Based on data recorded in 2010, it has helped improve the behaviour of the system for very high energy deposits. It has also provided trigger efficiency uncertainties for the analyses searching for W' and Z' bosons. Then the measurement with 2010 data of the cross-section of b-jets production in association with Z bosons is discussed. This measurement, which is in agreement with Standard Model computations, constrains one of the important backgrounds in the search for the Higgs boson in 4 leptons: namely the production of a Z boson and b-quark pair. In order to increase the selection efficiency for the Higgs boson decaying into four electrons, an improved electron reconstruction is studied. Its validation is presented for electrons from heavy flavour decays. The search analysis of the Higgs boson in the 4 lepton channel is then described, and several possibilities are studied, to increase the sensitivity of the analysis for low-mass searches.