Direct measurement of the W boson width

TL;DR

This paper reports a direct measurement of the W boson width using the transverse mass distribution in proton-antiproton collisions, employing a novel recoil modeling method, and finds results consistent with the standard model.

Contribution

It introduces a new recoil modeling technique for measuring the W boson width directly from collision data.

Findings

Measured W boson width: 2.028 +- 0.072 GeV

Results agree with standard model predictions

Utilized a novel recoil library method

Abstract

We present a direct measurement of the width of the W boson using the shape of the transverse mass distribution of W->enu candidates selected in 1 fb-1 of data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in ppbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV. We use the same methods and data sample that were used for our recently published W boson mass measurement, except for the modeling of the recoil, which is done with a new method based on a recoil library. Our result, 2.028 +- 0.072 GeV, is in agreement with the predictions of the standard model.