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Measurement of the production cross section for a W boson in association with a charm quark in proton–proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13\phantom{\rule{0.166667em}{0ex}}\text{TeV}$

2024    CERN İşbirliği

The strange quark content of the proton is probed through the measurement of the production cross section for a W boson and a charm (c) quark in proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 $\phantom{\rule{0.166667em}{0ex}}\text{Te}\phantom{\rule{-0.80002pt}{0ex}}\text{V}$ . The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 138 $\phantom{\rule{0.166667em}{0ex}}{\text{fb}}^{-1}$ collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The W bosons are identified through their leptonic decays to an electron or a muon, and a neutrino. Charm jets are tagged using the presence of a muon or a secondary vertex inside the jet. The $\text{W}+\text{c}$ production cross section and the cross section ratio ${R}_{\text{c}}^{±}=\sigma \left({\text{W}}^{+}+\overline{\text{c}}\right)/\sigma \left({\text{W}}^{-}+\text{c}\right)$ are measured inclusively and differentially as functions of the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the lepton originating from the W boson decay. The precision of the measurements is improved with respect to previous studies, reaching 1% in ${R}_{\text{c}}^{±}=0.950±0.005\phantom{\rule{0.166667em}{0ex}}\text{(stat)}±0.010\phantom{\rule{0.166667em}{0ex}}\text{(syst)}$ . The measurements are compared with theoretical predictions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics.