Electroweak Boson Cross-Section Measurements

This report summarises the ATLAS prospects for the measurement of W and Z pro- duction cross-section at the LHC. The electron and muon decay channels are considered. Focusing on the early data taking phase, strategies are presented that allow a fast and robust extraction of the signals. An overall uncertainty of about 5% can be achieved with 50 pb−1 in the W channels, where the background uncertainty dominates (the luminosity measurement uncertainty is not discussed here). In the Z channels, the expected preci- sion is 3%, the main contribution coming from the lepton selection efficiency uncertainty. Extrapolating to 1 fb−1 , the uncertainties shrink to incompressible values of 1-2%, de- pending on the final state. This irreducible uncertainty is essentially driven by strong interaction effects, notably parton distribution uncertainties and non-perturbative effects, affecting the W and Z rapidity and transverse momentum distributions. These effects can be constrained by measuring these distributions. Algorithms allowing the extraction of the Z differential cross-section are presented accordingly.