First Measurement of the Cross Section for the Production of Hadrons with High Transverse Momenta at COMPASS, and Developments for Particle Tracking in High-Rate Experiments

The first measurement of the luminosity for data from the muon-scattering program of the COMPASS experiment is presented. Based on this result, the cross section for the quasi-real photoproduction of charged hadrons with high transverse momenta in muon-deuteron scattering at a center-of-mass energy of 17.4 GeV is determined. Furthermore, the development of a new type of Time Projection Chamber (TPC), which employs GEM foils instead of proportional wires for gas amplification, and a novel, generic framework for track fitting in high-energy physics, called GENFIT, are presented.