Vector boson production in proton-lead and lead-lead collisions at the LHC and its impact on nCTEQ15 PDFs

TL;DR

This paper compares vector boson production data from proton-lead and lead-lead collisions at the LHC with predictions based on nCTEQ15 PDFs, highlighting data's potential to refine nuclear and proton PDFs, especially regarding heavy flavor components.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of LHC vector boson data's impact on nCTEQ15 nuclear PDFs using Monte Carlo reweighting, emphasizing the data's role in constraining nuclear corrections and heavy flavor PDFs.

Findings

Data can inform nuclear correction models.

Data impacts heavy flavor (strange) PDF components.

Improves understanding of proton flavor determination.

Abstract

We provide a comprehensive comparison of W/Z vector boson production data in proton-lead and lead-lead collisions at the LHC with predictions obtained using the nCTEQ15 PDFs. We identify the measurements which have the largest potential impact on the PDFs, and estimate the effect of including these data using a Monte Carlo reweighting method. We find this data set can provide information about both the nuclear corrections and the heavy flavor (strange) PDF components. As the proton flavor determination is dependent on nuclear corrections (from heavy target DIS, for example), this information can also help improve the proton PDFs.