Study ofW±andZboson production in proton-lead collisions at the LHC with Kulagin-Petti nuclear parton distributions

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the (pseudo)rapidity distributions of massive vector bosons produced in p+p and p+Pb collisions at the LHC within the next-to-leading order approximation in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. In particular, we discuss the impact of different cold nuclear matter effects on this process using the nuclear parton distributions calculated from the microscopic model developed by Kulagin and Petti (KP). This model was successfully applied to study nuclear effects in the deep-inelastic scattering and the Drell-Yan reactions off various (fixed) target nuclei. Results are compared with the recent CMS and ATLAS p+Pb data with \sqrt{s}=5.02 TeV per two colliding nucleons. We found an excellent agreement between the predictions of the KP model and the recent LHC data on W+- and Z0 production in p+Pb collisions, including the differential cross sections, the forward-backward asymmetries, and W charge asymmetry. We also discuss the sensitivity of the current and future LHC data to the underlying mechanisms responsible for the nuclear modifications of parton density functions.