Muon reconstruction and identification at CMS

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a general purpose detector currently being constructed for operation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. One of the main goals of the CMS design is to ensure efficient and accurate identification and reconstruction of muons. This contribution describes two software algorithms that have been developed for reconstructing muons in the CMS experiment. In one approach stand-alone muons are reconstructed in the muon system and matched to a track in the central detector. The other technique starts from central tracks and extrapolates them toward the outer detector to look for compatible muon signatures in the calorimeter and union chambers. Both approaches are complementary. The expected performance has been studied in detail using Monte Carlo simulation. During the recent Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge (MTCC) the muon reconstruction was employed successfully to reconstruct cosmic unions traversing a full slice of the CMS detector.