W/Z boson production and properties measurements

Abstract

Observation of the electroweak gauge bosons via their decays to electrons and muons provide an important test of the Standard Model of particle physics. Inclusive W and Z boson cross section measurements provide checks of Next-to-Next-to-Leading-Order perturbative QCD calculations, while differential and double-differential Drell-Yan cross section investigate both QCD and PDF constraints. The measurement of the associated production of jets and vector bosons allows for stringent constraints of perturbative QCD calculations and is sensitive to the presence of new physics beyond the Standard Model. Measurements of jet production rates in association with W , Z/γ * , in proton-proton collisions at 7 and 8 TeV center-of-mass energy are presented, using data collected with the ATLAS and CMS detector. Measurements include inclusive jet multiplicity, differential jet cross sections, as well as associated charm-and bottom-quark jet production.

Summary of the Structure Functions Working group at DIS 2012

“…Currently the 20% total uncertainty of these results limits their constraining power but higher statistics samples will significantly improve the sensitivity to the strangeness content of the PDFs. Results on the production of b jets in association with Z/γ * were also presented by CMS collaboration [14].…”

“…Measurements of Z or W boson production associated with heavy quarks in the final state can provide important information about heavy quark densities in PDFs. The process pp → W + c + X and the cross section ratios R +/− = σ(W + c + X)/σ(W − c + X) and R c = σ(W + c + X/σ(W + jets + X) measured at CMS [14] provide information about the strange and anti-strange quark parton density functions of the proton. In these measurements muonic decays of the W -boson and lifetime tagging techniques are used to extract the charm fraction in W + jet events.…”