Measurements of the electron and muon inclusive cross-sections in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of electron and muon production cross-sections in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV, comparing results with theoretical predictions and exploring effects of advanced QCD resummation techniques.

Contribution

First measurements of inclusive electron and muon cross-sections at 7 TeV with detailed comparison to NLO and NLL QCD calculations.

Findings

Good agreement with theoretical predictions after W/Z/gamma* subtraction

Sensitive to NLL resummation effects

Provides data for heavy-flavour production models

Abstract

This letter presents measurements of the differential cross-sections for inclusive electron and muon production in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The muon cross-section is measured as a function of pT in the range 4 < pT < 100 GeV and within pseudorapidity |eta| < 2.5. In addition the electron and muon cross-sections are measured in the range 7 < pT < 26 GeV and within |eta| <2.0, excluding 1.37<|eta|<1.52. Integrated luminosities of 1.3 pb-1 and 1.4 pb-1 are used for the electron and muon measurements, respectively. After subtraction of the W/Z/gamma* contribution, the differential cross-sections are found to be in good agreement with theoretical predictions for heavy-flavour production obtained from Fixed Order NLO calculations with NLL high-pT resummation, and to be sensitive to the effects of NLL resummation.