Measurements of WW and WZ production in W + jets final states in p-pbar collisions

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of WW and WZ production cross sections in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, confirming consistency with Standard Model predictions and demonstrating the use of b-jet discrimination to separate WZ from WW signals.

Contribution

First measurement of WW and WZ production cross sections in W+jets final states at the Tevatron with b-jet discrimination techniques.

Findings

Measured total WV cross section: 19.6 pb

Measured WW cross section: 15.9 pb

Measured WZ cross section: 3.3 pb

Abstract

We study WW and WZ production with $l\nu q{q}$ ($l=e,\mu$) final states using data collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider corresponding to 4.3 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity from p-pbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV. Assuming the ratio between the production cross sections $\sigma(WW)$ and $\sigma(WZ)$ as predicted by the standard model, we measure the total WV (V=W,Z) cross section to be $\sigma(WV)= 19.6^{+3.2}_{-3.0}$ pb, and reject the background-only hypothesis at a level of 7.9 standard deviations. We also use b-jet discrimination to separate the WZ component from the dominant WW component. Simultaneously fitting WW and WZ contributions, we measure $\sigma(WW) = 15.9^{+3.7}_{-3.2}$ pb and $\sigma(WZ) = 3.3^{+4.1}_{-3.3}$ pb, which is consistent with the standard model predictions.