Physics of bosons W and Z in ATLAS

Investigation of W/Z physics is relevant part of the research program of experiments at any hadron collider. The range of possible measurements is very wide: inclusive W and Z cross sections, W and Z differential cross sections as a function of transverse momentum and rapidity, more exclusive final states(with jets and heavy flavour jets), low-mass and high-mass Drell-Yan distributions, forward-backward asymmetry of Drell-Yan lepton pairs, lepton charge asymmetry in inclusive W boson productions and others. These measuments provide basic and more stringent tests of Standard model. It is possible to constrain parton distribution functions of the proton and test parton emission calculations and resummation models, it is also possible to extract Standard model parameters. Some of these measurements are sensitive to the new physics. In the previous experiments W and Z bosons were identified mainly using electron and muon decay channels. In LHC first attempts were done to identify them also in hadronic decay channels.

Pavel Staroba is working within the framework of the Standard Model group of ATLAS . During the years 2003-2008 (before Run I) he worked on the investigation of the possibilities of ATLAS experiment to measure double differential cross section as a function of transverse momentum and rapidity. His results were included into the chapter "Electroweak Boson Cross Section Measurements" of paper [1] summarising ATLAS potential to measure all expected physics processes immediately before data taking.

During the years 2007 - 2013 he worked as Monte Carlo production contact of Standard Model Group. He coordinated and participated in creation of samples of generated and simulated events necessary for most physics analyses done during the Run1 period of data taking.

Starting from the year 2014, he is again doing analysis in the Standard Model group of ATLAS (in the subgroup W/Z Physics). He is working on the measurement of the inclusive cross section of W boson created in proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energy 8 TeV. He is doing this analysis using the full dataset collected during the year 2012 (20.3 inverse fb).

Publication:

[1] G. Aad, ..., ..., P. Staroba et al.(ATLAS Collaboration): Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment-Detector, Trigger and Physics. Jan 2009, e-Print: arXiv:0901.0512 [hep-ex]

Researcher:

Pavel Staroba