The precision measurement of the W boson mass and its impact on physics

Abstract

As a mediator of the weak nuclear force, the W boson influences many properties of fundamental particles and their interactions. Understanding the W boson as accurately as possible, including knowing its mass, has been a priority in particle physics for decades. In the past few years, in a succession of increasing-precision measurements by multiple experiments, a significant tension between the measured and predicted mass has been documented by the CDF Collaboration. Furthermore, smaller differences between different measurements exist. Because the W boson mass provides a window on new physics, a comparison between different measurement techniques can inform the path to further investigations. This Perspective article overviews the role of the W boson mass in the Standard Model of Particle Physics and its extensions, compares and contrasts its measurement techniques and discusses prospects and future directions.

References in corpus (14)

• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• Measurement of the Positive Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment to 0.46 ppm
• Measurement of the Positive Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment to 0.20 ppm
• Measurement of the anomalous precession frequency of the muon in the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment
• Production of Drell--Yan lepton pairs in hadron collisions: transverse-momentum resummation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy
• Measurement of the W Boson Mass with the D0 Detector
• Measurement of the W boson mass
• Transverse-momentum resummation: a perturbative study of Z production at the Tevatron
• Electroweak Precision Tests of the Standard Model after the Discovery of the Higgs Boson
• Measurement of the Mass and Width of the W Boson in e+e- Collisions at sqrt{s} = 161 - 209 GeV
• The MOLLER Experiment: An Ultra-Precise Measurement of the Weak Mixing Angle Using Møller Scattering
• The Higgs boson Turns Ten
• Drift Chamber Alignment using Cosmic Rays