Measurement of the production and lepton charge asymmetry of \(\textit{W}\) bosons in Pb+Pb collisions at \(\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{\mathbf{NN}}}})\)2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A measurement of \(\textit{W}\) boson production in lead-lead collisions at \(\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=\).76 TeV is presented. It is based on the analysis of data collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2011 corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.14 \(\mathrm{nb}^{-1}\) and 0.15 \(\mathrm{nb}^{-1}\) in the muon and electron decay channels, respectively. The differential production cross-sections and lepton charge asymmetry are each measured as a function of the average number of participating nucleons \(\langle N_{\mathrm{part}} \rangle\) and absolute pseudorapidity of the charged lepton. The results are compared to predictions based on next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. These measurements are, in principle, sensitive to possible nuclear modifications to the parton distribution functions and also provide information on scaling of \(\textit{W}\) boson production in multi-nucleon systems.