Re-evaluation of the LHC potential for the measurement of Mw

TL;DR

This study assesses the LHC's potential to measure the W boson mass with high precision, demonstrating that systematic uncertainties can be effectively constrained through Z boson measurements, aiming for a sensitivity of about 7 MeV.

Contribution

The paper introduces a simulation-based approach to improve W mass measurement accuracy at the LHC by constraining systematic uncertainties using Z boson data.

Findings

Achievable W mass sensitivity of ~7 MeV per decay channel.

Systematic uncertainties can be constrained via Z boson lineshape analysis.

Differential cross-section analysis reduces strong interaction uncertainties.

Abstract

We present a study of the LHC sensitivity to the W boson mass based on simulation studies. We find that both experimental and phenomenological sources of systematic uncertainties can be strongly constrained with Z measurements: the lineshape is robustly predicted, and its analysis provides an accurate measurement of the detector resolution and absolute scale, while the differential cross-section analysis absorbs most of the strong interaction uncertainties. A sensitivity $\delta Mw \sim 7 \MeV$ for each decay channel (W --> e nu, W --> mu nu), and for an integrated luminosity of 10 fb-1, appears as a reasonable goal.