LHCb Spectrometer Alignment and Verification of its Performance using the Decay $B^0_d \to K^{*0} J/\psi$

The LHCb detector is one of the four experiments located at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN close to Geneva and is dedicated to so-called $B$ physics. A good vertex and momentum resolution is crucial to this experiment. Detector alignment is an essential ingredient for obtaining the best possible measurement precision of a detector. The internal and relative alignment of the LHCb tracking subdetectors is performed using a novel method based on a Kalman filter track model. Alignment tests for the subdetector Tracker Turicensis preformed on top of the global alignment, provided important information to improve the global alignment. Flavour changing neutral currents are suppressed in the Standard Model and therefore offer the possibility to search for processes related to new physics. The angular distribution of the weak neutral current decay $B^0_d \to K^{*0} \mu^+ \mu^- $ could deviate from Standard Model predictions, since particles predicted by new physics model could encounter the process on the loop level and alter the angular distribution. The method to extract the acceptance effects of the detector of the LHCb detector on the angular distribution of the decay is based on simulation. The agreement between data and simulation is tested using the control channel $B^0_d \to K^{*0} J/\psi (J/\psi \to \mu^+ \mu^-$). The comparison is made for the 2010 and 2011 data samples and show a good agreement.