Measurement of high-Q^2 charged current cross sections in e^+p deep inelastic scattering at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of high-Q^2 charged current deep inelastic scattering cross sections in e^+p collisions at HERA, confirming Standard Model predictions and extracting the W boson mass from the data.

Contribution

It provides new high-Q^2 cross section measurements and a precise determination of the W boson mass using e^+p scattering data at HERA.

Findings

Measured differential cross sections for Q^2>200 GeV^2.

W boson mass determined to be 78.9 GeV with uncertainties.

Confirmed Standard Model predictions for high-Q^2 interactions.

Abstract

Cross sections for e^+p charged current deep inelastic scattering at a centre-of-mass energy of 318 GeV have been determined with an integrated luminosity of 60.9pb^-1 collected with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The differential cross sections dsigma/dQ^2, dsigma/dx and dsigma/dy for Q^2>200 GeV^2 are presented. In addition, d^2sigma/dxdQ^2 has been measured in the kinematic range 280 GeV^2 < Q^2 < 17000 GeV^2 and 0.008 < x < 0.42. The predictions of the Standard Model agree well with the measured cross sections. The mass of the W boson propagator is determined to be M_W=78.9 +/- 2.0 (stat.) +/- 1.8 (syst.) +2.0 -1.8 (PDF) GeV from a fit to dsigma/dQ^2. The chiral structure of the Standard Model is also investigated in terms of the (1-y)^2 dependence of the the double-differential cross section. The structure-function F_2^CC has been extracted by combining the measurements presented here with previous ZEUS results from e^-p scattering, extending the measurement obtained in a neutrino-nucleus scattering experiment to a significantly higher Q^2 region.