Drell-Yan Production of W/Z at the LHC with Protons and Heavy Nuclei

Abstract

Drell-Yan W/Z electroweak boson production at the LHC is an essential standard candle which is used for calibration of beam luminosity and detector properties. In addition to proton-proton collisions, the LHC has measured heavy nuclei lead-lead and proton-lead W/Z production. Inclusion of these data sets in future fits can provide discriminating information of the nuclear modifications present in the Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs). We present an ongoing analysis of W/Z production in lead-lead and proton-lead collisions at the LHC using the \texttt{nCTEQ15} nuclear Parton Distribution Functions (nPDFs) including uncertainties. The cross sections are calculated at NLO with the \texttt{FEWZ\ 2.1} program at 2.76 and 5.02 TeV. We identify promising observables for the observation of the nuclear modifications.

7 pages, 3 figures, DPF 2015

References in corpus (8)

• New parton distributions for collider physics
• Implications of CTEQ global analysis for collider observables
• nCTEQ15 - Global analysis of nuclear parton distributions with uncertainties in the CTEQ framework
• Measurement of the production and lepton charge asymmetry of $\text{W}$ bosons in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathbf{NN}}}=$ 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• $Z$ boson production in $p+$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV measured with the ATLAS detector
• Study of W boson production in pPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 5.02 TeV
• Observation of $Z$ production in proton-lead collisions at LHCb
• Study of Z production in PbPb and pp collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV in the dimuon and dielectron decay channels