Direct Measurement of the W Boson Width

Authors

V. M. Abazov, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia
Kenneth A. Bloom, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Gregory Snow, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
D0 Collaboration

Date of this Version

2009

Comments

Published in Physical Review Letters 103, 231802 (2009). Copyright © 2009 The American Physical Society. Used by permission.

Abstract

We present a direct measurement of the width of the W boson using the shape of the transverse mass distribution of W → ev candidate events. Data from approximately 1 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity recorded at √s = 1.96 TeV by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron pp collider are analyzed. We use the same methods and data sample that were used for our recently published W boson mass measurement, except for the modeling of the recoil, which is done with a new method based on a recoil library. Our result, 2.028 ± 0.072 GeV, is in agreement with the predictions of the standard model.