Measurement of electroweak-boson production in Pb–Pb and p–Pb collisions at the LHC

Abstract

Electroweak W± and Z bosons are powerful probes of the initial stage of the heavy-ion collisions. The measurements of their production is important to disentangle the effects of initial stage from the effects of the presence of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP). The production of W± and Z bosons was measured with the ALICE experiment in p–Pb and Pb–Pb collisions exploiting the Z → μ+μ−, W+ → μ+ + νμ and W−→μ−+ν‾μ decay channels. The results and the comparison with theoretical predictions are reported in these proceedings.