Measurement of the W and Z boson production cross sections in pp collisions at 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector.

In this document, the speaker presents results from recent measurements of the production cross sections of W and Z bosons in decays to electrons, muons, and taus, with the ATLAS detector. The general selections and methodologies for background estimation are surveyed. The results are shown to be in good agreement with NNLO predictions of the cross sections for proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. Precision measurements of the pT distribution of W and Z bosons are also reported and compared to theoretical predictions from QCD. The analyses discussed use a dataset corresponding to 30–40 pb−1 of integrated luminosity, acquired during the running of the LHC in 2010.