Estimating the impact of mixed QCD-electroweak corrections on the <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>W</mml:mi></mml:math>-mass determination at the LHC
Arnd Behring, Federico Buccioni, Fabrizio Caola, Maximilian Delto, M. Jaquier, Kirill Melnikov, Raoul Röntsch
Abstract
We study the impact of the recently computed mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to the production of $W$ and $Z$ bosons at the LHC on the value of the $W$ mass extracted from the transverse momentum distribution of charged leptons from $W$ decays. Using the average lepton transverse momenta in $W$ and $Z$ decays as simplified observables for the determination of the $W$ mass, we estimate that mixed QCD-electroweak corrections can shift the extracted value of the $W$ mass by up to $\mathcal{O}(20)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}$, depending on the kinematic cuts employed to define fiducial cross sections for $Z$ and $W$ production. Since the target precision of the $W$-mass measurement at the LHC is $\mathcal{O}(10)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}$, our results emphasize the need for fully differential computations of mixed QCD-electroweak corrections and a careful analysis of their potential impact on the determination of the $W$ mass.