Productions of $Z^0$ and $W^+/W^-$ in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production of $Z^0$ and $W$ bosons in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC using perturbative QCD with nuclear PDFs, comparing theoretical predictions with experimental data and providing future predictions.

Contribution

It presents NLO and NNLO calculations of $Z^0$ and $W$ production in heavy-ion collisions incorporating nuclear PDFs, and compares results with experimental data.

Findings

Good agreement of theoretical results with experimental data within error bars.

Differences observed between EPS09 and DSSZ nuclear PDFs, especially in rapidity dependence.

Predictions provided for future measurements at the LHC.

Abstract

The productions of massive gauge bosons, $Z^0$ and $W^+/W^-$, in heavy-ion reactions at the LHC, provide an excellent tool to study the cold nuclear matter effects in high-energy nuclear collisions. In this paper we investigate $Z^0$ and $W^+/W^-$ productions in p+Pb and Pb+Pb at the LHC, at NLO and NNLO with DYNNLO incorporating the nuclear PDFs (nPDFs) parametrization sets EPS09 and DSSZ, within the framework of perturbative QCD. The numerical simulations of the transverse momentum spectra, rapidity dependence, and related nuclear modification factors for $Z^0$ and $W$ particles, as well as the charge asymmetry for W boson, are provided and tested against the latest experimental data. It is found that the theoretical results with EPS09 and DSSZ nPDFs can give good descriptions of the recent data on $Z^0$ and $W^{\pm}$ particles in p+Pb and Pb+Pb within the experimental error bars, though some differences between results with EPS09 and DSSZ can be observed, especially in the rapidity dependence of the $Z^0$ yield. Theoretical predictions for future measurements on $Z^0$ and $W$ in p+Pb and Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC are also provided.