Measurements of W/Z production with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

W and Z boson production have been measured in the electron, muon and tau decay channels at the LHC with the ATLAS detector. Total and differential cross sections, defined in terms of the decay lepton kinematics, have been measured as a function of rapidity and transverse momentum. Ratios of the cross sections demonstrate sensitivity to lepton universality. The kinematic distributions constrain parton densities and QCD calculations, including resummations of soft gluon radiation and the matching of NLO matrix elements (or high multiplicity tree-level matrix elements) to parton shower approximations. The polarization of W bosons is also measured, as, for the first time, is the polarization of the tau lepton in W → τν decays.