Speaker
Luis Lebolo
(Florida International University)
Description
The Z0 boson center-of-mass angular distribution is measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt{s} = 7~TeV, at the CERN LHC. The advantage of studying the angular distribution is that the partonic cross section is solely a function of s-hat and cos(theta-hat); it does not depend on the details of the parton distribution functions. The data sample, recorded with the CMS detector, corresponds to an integrated luminosity of approximately 36 pb^{-1}. Events in which there is a Z0 and at least one jet, with a transverse momentum threshold of 20 GeV and absolute rapidity less than 2.5, are selected for this analysis. Only the Z0's muon decay channel is studied. Within experimental and theoretical uncertainties, the measured angular distribution is in agreement with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD predictions. This analysis extends the phase space available to previous Tevatron studies by probing larger values of s-hat and center-of-mass rapidities.
