Measurement of the W ± Z boson pair-production cross section in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

The production of W ± Z events in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The collected data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb−1 . The W ± Z candidates are reconstructed using leptonic decays of the gauge bosons into electrons or muons. The measured inclusive cross section in the detector fiducial region for leptonic decay modes is σ fid. = 63.2 ± 3.2 (stat.) ± 2.6 (sys.) ± 1.5 (lumi.) fb. In comparison, the next-to- W±Z→l′νll leading-order Standard Model prediction is 53.4+3.6 fb. The extrapolation of the measurement from the −2.8 fiducial to the total phase space yields σ tot. = 50.6 ± 2.6 (stat.) ± 2.0 (sys.) ± 0.9 (th.) ± 1.2 (lumi.) pb, in W±Z agreement with a recent next-to-next-to-leading-order calculation of 48.2+1.1 pb. The cross section as a −1.0 function of jet multiplicity is also measured, together with the charge-dependent W+Z and W−Z cross sections and their ratio.