Study of W and Z Boson Production in Proton-Lead Collisions at the LHC with KP Nuclear Parton Distributions

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the (pseudo)rapidity distributions of massive vector bosons produced in p+p and p+Pb collisions at the LHC within the next-to-leading order approximation in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. In particular, we discuss the impact of different cold nuclear matter effects on this process using the nuclear parton distributions calculated from the microscopic model developed by Kulagin and Petti (KP). This model was successfully applied to study nuclear effects in the deep-inelastic scattering and the Drell-Yan reactions off various (fixed) target nuclei. Results are compared with the recent CMS and ATLAS p+Pb data with \sqrt{s}=5.02 TeV per two colliding nucleons. We found an excellent agreement between the predictions of the KP model and the recent LHC data on W+- and Z0 production in p+Pb collisions, including the differential cross sections, the forward-backward asymmetries, and W charge asymmetry. We also discuss the sensitivity of the current and future LHC data to the underlying mechanisms responsible for the nuclear modifications of parton density functions.

22 pages, 12 figures, text editing, final version to be published in Phys. Rev. D

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Nuclear PDFs After the First Decade of LHC Data
• Nuclear effects in the deuteron and global QCD analyses
• Off-shell effects in bound nucleons and parton distributions from ${}^1$H, ${}^2$H, ${}^3$H and ${}^3$He data
• Probing Free Nucleons with (Anti)neutrinos
• Parton distribution functions with QED corrections in the valon model
• Nuclear Effects in the Deuteron and Global PDF Fits
• Imaging nuclear modifications on parton distributions with triple-differential dijet cross sections in proton-nucleus collisions
• Multiprocess imaging of nuclear modifications on parton distributions in proton-nucleus collisions
• Probing cold nuclear matter effects with weak gauge boson production in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Summary of Structure Functions and PDFs Working Group
• Applications of KP Nuclear Parton Distributions