A Measurement of the W Boson Mass

TL;DR

This paper reports a precise measurement of the W boson mass using data from proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab, employing decay channels to electrons and neutrinos, and combining results from different data sets.

Contribution

The paper presents a new, more precise measurement of the W boson mass based on 1994-1995 data, improving previous results and constraining models of W boson production.

Findings

Measured W boson mass as 80.44 ± 0.12 GeV

Used 28,323 W candidates and 3,563 dielectron events

Combined with earlier data for a final value of 80.43 ± 0.11 GeV

Abstract

We report a measurement of the W boson mass based on an integrated luminosity of 82 pb$^{-1}$ from \ppbar collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.8$ TeV recorded in 1994--1995 by the \Dzero detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. We identify W bosons by their decays to $e\nu$ and extract the mass by fitting the transverse mass spectrum from 28,323 W boson candidates. A sample of 3,563 dielectron events, mostly due to Z to ee decays, constrains models of W boson production and the detector. We measure $\mw=80.44\pm0.10(stat)\pm0.07(syst)$~GeV. By combining this measurement with our result from the 1992--1993 data set, we obtain $\mw=80.43\pm0.11$ GeV.