Measurement of associated production of a W boson and a charm quark in proton–proton collisions at √s = 13TeV

Authors

CMS Collaboration, CMS CollaborationFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2019

Citation

Eur. Phys. J. C (2019) 79:269

Comments

© CERN for the benefit of the CMS collaboration 2019

https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6752-1

Abstract

Measurements are presented of associated production of a W boson and a charm quark (W+c) in proton– proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35.7 fb⁻¹ collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. The W bosons are identified by their decay into a muon and a neutrino. The charm quarks are tagged via the full reconstruction of D^∗(2010)^± mesons that decay via D^∗(2010)^± → D⁰ +π^± → K^∓ +π^± +π^±. A cross section is measured in the fiducial region defined by the muon transverse momentum p_T^μ > 26 GeV, muon pseudorapidity |η^μ| < 2.4, and charm quark transverse momentum p_T^c > 5GeV. The inclusive cross section for this kinematic range is σ(W + c) = 1026 ± 31 (stat)_−72^+76 (syst) pb. The cross section is also measured differentially as a function of the pseudorapidity of the muon from the W boson decay. These measurements are compared with theoretical predictions and are used to probe the strange quark content of the proton.