New approaches in determining the mass of the top quark: alternative techniques and differential measurements

Measurements of the top-quark mass employing alternative methods are presented using data collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at the LHC in the years 2011 and 2012 at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. The alternative methods include the use of endpoint distributions and the use of the lifetime of the b-hadron, as well as the study of possible model dependencies of the top-quark mass measurement on the event kinematics. Measurements of the difference between the masses of top and antitop quarks are also presented. Furthermore, the top-quark mass and also $\alpha_s$ are extracted from the measured top-quark pair cross section.