English

W$^+$W$^-$ boson pair production in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV

High Energy Physics - Experiment 2020-11-18 v2

Abstract

A measurement of the W+^+W^- boson pair production cross section in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s} = 13 TeV is presented. The data used in this study are collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb1^{-1}. The W+^+W^- candidate events are selected by requiring two oppositely charged leptons (electrons or muons). Two methods for reducing background contributions are employed. In the first one, a sequence of requirements on kinematic quantities is applied allowing a measurement of the total production cross section: 117.6 ±\pm 6.8 pb, which agrees well with the theoretical prediction. Fiducial cross sections are also reported for events with zero or one jet, and the change in the zero-jet fiducial cross section with the jet transverse momentum threshold is measured. Normalized differential cross sections are reported within the fiducial region. A second method for suppressing background contributions employs two random forest classifiers. The analysis based on this method includes a measurement of the total production cross section and also a measurement of the normalized jet multiplicity distribution in W+^+W^- events. Finally, a dilepton invariant mass distribution is used to probe for physics beyond the standard model in the context of an effective field theory, and constraints on the presence of dimension-6 operators are derived.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.00119,
  title  = {W$^+$W$^-$ boson pair production in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV},
  author = {CMS Collaboration},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.00119},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables, including additional supplementary figures, can be found at http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/SMP-18-004 (CMS Public Pages)