Measurement of $\tau$ polarisation in $Z/\gamma^{*}\rightarrow\tau\tau$ decays in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper measures the polarization of tau leptons from Z/gamma* decays in proton-proton collisions at 8 TeV using the ATLAS detector, providing results consistent with Standard Model predictions.

Contribution

First measurement of tau polarization in Z/gamma* decays at 8 TeV with detailed analysis of hadronic and leptonic tau decay channels.

Findings

Tau polarization measured as -0.14 ± 0.02 (stat) ± 0.04 (syst)

Results agree with Standard Model prediction of -0.1517 ± 0.0019

Analysis demonstrates feasibility of polarization measurement in hadron collider environment.

Abstract

This paper presents a measurement of the polarisation of $\tau$ leptons produced in $Z/\gamma^{*}\rightarrow\tau\tau$ decays which is performed with a dataset of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb$^{-1}$ recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2012. The $Z/\gamma^{*}\rightarrow\tau\tau$ decays are reconstructed from a hadronically decaying $\tau$ lepton with a single charged particle in the final state, accompanied by a $\tau$ lepton that decays leptonically. The $\tau$ polarisation is inferred from the relative fraction of energy carried by charged and neutral hadrons in the hadronic $\tau$ decays. The polarisation is measured in a fiducial region that corresponds to the kinematic region accessible to this analysis. The $\tau$ polarisation extracted over the full phase space within the $Z/\gamma^{*}$ mass range of 66$ < m_{Z/\gamma^{*}} < $ 116 GeV is found to be $P_{\tau} =-0.14 \pm 0.02 (\text{stat}) \pm 0.04 (\text{syst})$. It is in agreement with the Standard Model prediction of $P_{\tau} =-0.1517 \pm 0.0019$, which is obtained from the ALPGEN event generator interfaced with the PYTHIA 6 parton shower modelling and the TAUOLA $\tau$ decay library.