CMS collaboration (2297 authors)Nayak, ArunaAraujo, MarianaBargassa, PedrameBeirão Da Cruz E Silva, CristóvãoDi Francesco, AgostinoFaccioli, PietroGalinhas, BrunoGallinaro, MicheleHollar, JonathanLeonardo, NunoSeixas, JoaoStrong, GilesToldaiev, OleksiiVadruccio, DanieleVarela, JoaoVischia, PietroDavid Tinoco Mendes, AndreSilva, PedroMusella, Pasquale2019-02-052019-02-052018-10-02http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/13/10/P10005http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/27721The algorithm developed by the CMS Collaboration to reconstruct and identify $\tau$ leptons produced in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 7 and 8 TeV, via their decays to hadrons and a neutrino, has been significantly improved. The changes include a revised reconstruction of $\pi^0$ candidates, and improvements in multivariate discriminants to separate $\tau$ leptons from jets and electrons. The algorithm is extended to reconstruct $\tau$ leptons in highly Lorentz-boosted pair production, and in the high-level trigger. The performance of the algorithm is studied using proton-proton collisions recorded during 2016 at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$. The performance is evaluated in terms of the efficiency for a genuine $\tau$ lepton to pass the identification criteria and of the probabilities for jets, electrons, and muons to be misidentified as $\tau$ leptons. The results are found to be very close to those expected from Monte Carlo simulation.engjournal article2019-02-05