Measurement of Charged and Neutral Current $e^-p$ Deep Inelastic Scattering Cross Sections at High $Q^2$

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of charged and neutral current deep inelastic electron-proton scattering cross sections at very high momentum transfer, confirming the electroweak interaction unification and estimating the W boson mass.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurements of both CC and NC cross sections at high Q^2, including their ratio and differential distributions, and determines the W boson mass from the data.

Findings

CC and NC cross sections are comparable at Q^2 ≈ M_W^2

The W boson mass is estimated as 76 ± 16 ± 13 GeV

The data confirms the electroweak unification at high energies

Abstract

Deep inelastic $e^-p$ scattering has been studied in both the charged-current (CC) and neutral-current (NC) reactions at momentum transfers squared, $Q^2$, between 400 GeV$^2$ and the kinematic limit of 87500 GeV$^2$ using the ZEUS detector at the HERA $ep$ collider. The CC and NC total cross sections, the NC to CC cross section ratio, and the differential cross sections, $ d\sigma/dQ^2 $, are presented. For $Q^2 \simeq M_W^2$, where $M_W$ is the mass of the $W$ boson, the CC and NC cross sections have comparable magnitudes, demonstrating the equal strengths of the weak and electromagnetic interactions at high $Q^2$. The $Q^2$ dependence of the CC cross section determines the mass term in the CC propagator to be $M_{W} = 76 \pm 16 \pm 13$~GeV.