Simultaneous measurements of the $t\bar{t}$, $W^+W^-$, and $Z/\gamma^{*}\rightarrow\tau\tau$ production cross-sections in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper reports simultaneous measurements of top-antitop, W+W-, and Z/gamma* to tau tau production cross-sections in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector, providing insights into Standard Model predictions and parton distribution functions.

Contribution

It presents the first combined measurement of these three processes at 7 TeV, including correlations and comparison with NLO and NNLO theoretical predictions.

Findings

Measured cross-sections for t-tbar, W+W-, and Z/gamma* to tau tau.

NLO predictions underestimate the data for t-tbar and Z/gamma* to tau tau.

NNLO predictions generally agree with the measured data.

Abstract

Simultaneous measurements of the $t\bar{t}$, $W^+W^-$, and $Z/\gamma^{*}\rightarrow\tau\tau$ production cross-sections using an integrated luminosity of $4.6\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7\,\mathrm{TeV}$ collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC are presented. Events are selected with two high transverse momentum leptons consisting of an oppositely charged electron and muon pair. The three processes are separated using the distributions of the missing transverse momentum of events with zero and greater than zero jet multiplicities. Measurements of the fiducial cross-section are presented along with results that quantify for the first time the underlying correlations in the predicted and measured cross-sections due to proton parton distribution functions. These results indicate that the correlated NLO predictions for $t\bar{t}$ and $Z/\gamma^{*}\rightarrow\tau\tau$ underestimate the data, while those at NNLO generally describe the data well. The full cross-sections are measured to be $\sigma(t\bar{t}) = 181.2 \pm 2.8^{+9.7}_{-9.5} \pm 3.3 \pm 3.3\,\mathrm{pb}$, $\sigma(W^+W^-) = 53.3 \pm 2.7^{+7.3}_{-8.0} \pm 1.0 \pm 0.5\,\mathrm{pb}$, and $\sigma(Z/\gamma^{*}\rightarrow\tau\tau) = 1174 \pm 24^{+72}_{-87} \pm 21 \pm 9\,\mathrm{pb}$, where the cited uncertainties are due to statistics, systematic effects, luminosity and the LHC beam energy measurement, respectively. The $W^+W^-$ measurement includes the small contribution from Higgs boson decays, $H\rightarrow W^+W^-$.