Precise predictions for the angular coefficients in Z-boson production at the LHC

Gauld, R.; Gehrmann-De Ridder, A.; Gehrmann, T.; Glover, E.W.N.; Huss, A.

Abstract

The angular distributions of lepton pairs in the Drell-Yan process can provide rich information on the underlying QCD production mechanisms. These dynamics can be parameterised in terms of a set of frame dependent angular coefficients, Ai=0,…,7, which depend on the invariant mass, transverse momentum, and rapidity of the lepton pair. Motivated by recent measurements of these coefficients by ATLAS and CMS, and in particular by the apparent violation of the Lam-Tung relation A0−A2=0, we perform a precision study of the angular coefficients at O(α3s) in perturbative QCD. We make predictions relevant for pp collisions at s√=8 TeV, and perform comparisons with the available ATLAS and CMS data as well as providing predictions for a prospective measurement at LHCb. To expose the violation of the Lam-Tung relationship we propose a new observable ΔLT=1−A2/A0 that is more sensitive to the dynamics in the region where A0 and A2 are both small. We find that the O(α3s) corrections have an important impact on the pT,Z distributions for several of the angular coefficients, and are essential to provide an adequate description of the data. The compatibility of the available ATLAS and CMS data is reassessed by performing a partial χ2 test with respect to the central theoretical prediction which shows that χ2/Ndata is significantly reduced by going from O(α2s) to O(α3s).

Citation

Gauld, R., Gehrmann-De Ridder, A., Gehrmann, T., Glover, E., & Huss, A. (2017). Precise predictions for the angular coefficients in Z-boson production at the LHC. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2017(11), Article 003. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep11%282017%29003

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 24, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Nov 6, 2017
• Publication Date: Nov 6, 2017
• Deposit Date: Sep 8, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 7, 2017
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Electronic ISSN: 1029-8479
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2017
• Issue: 11
• Article Number: 003
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep11%282017%29003
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1345436
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.00008