Measurement of the inclusive W+- and Z/gamma cross sections in the electron and muon decay channels in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper reports precise measurements of inclusive W and Z/gamma production cross sections in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector, comparing results with advanced QCD predictions.

Contribution

First measurement of W and Z/gamma cross sections at 7 TeV with detailed differential analysis and comparison to NNLO QCD calculations.

Findings

Cross sections measured with a few percent precision.

Results agree well with perturbative QCD predictions.

Differential cross sections provide constraints on parton distribution functions.

Abstract

The production cross sections of the inclusive Drell-Yan processes W to l nu and Z/gamma to ll (l=e,mu) are measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector. The cross sections are reported integrated over a fiducial kinematic range, extrapolated to the full range and also evaluated differentially as a function of the W decay lepton pseudorapidity and the Z boson rapidity, respectively. Based on an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1 collected in 2010, the precision of these measurements reaches a few per cent. The integrated and the differential W+- and Z/gamma cross sections in the e and mu channels are combined, and compared with perturbative QCD calculations, based on a number of different parton distribution sets available at NNLO.