The landscape of $W^{\pm}$ and $Z$ bosons produced in $pp$ collisions up to LHC energies

TL;DR

This paper compares experimental measurements of W and Z boson production in proton-proton collisions at RHIC and LHC energies with NLO QCD predictions using various PDFs, highlighting discrepancies with the statistical PDF model.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the current statistical PDF model underestimates LHC boson production cross sections, indicating a need for refitting with recent LHC data.

Findings

Statistical PDF underestimates LHC W/Z production by about 20%.

Current PDFs need updating to match LHC measurements.

Refitting PDFs with LHC data could improve predictions.

Abstract

We consider a selection of recent experimental results on electroweak $W^{\pm},\,Z$ gauge boson production in $pp$ collisions at BNL RHIC and CERN LHC energies in comparison to prediction of perturbative QCD calculations based on different sets of NLO parton distribution functions including the statistical PDF model known from fits to the DIS data. We show that the current statistical PDF parameterisation (fitted to the DIS data only) underestimates the LHC data on $W^{\pm},\,Z$ gauge boson production cross sections at the NLO by about 20\%. This suggests that there is a need to refit the parameters of the statistical PDF including the latest LHC data.