ATLAS measurements of vector boson production, inclusive and with associated jets

Vector boson production in pp collisions in LHC Run1 has been extensively studied by ATLAS. Charged and neutral current DrellYan cross sections are sensitive to the parton distribution functions of the proton and electroweak corrections. The measurements of the neutral current DrellYan process in three distinct kinematic regions, i.e. at the Z boson mass peak, below and above, are performed. The results are compared to NLO Monte Carlo simulations and to NNLO QCD predictions corrected for NLO EW effects calculated using various parameterizations of the parton distribution functions. The production of jets in association with a W or a Z boson is an important process to study QCD in a multiscale environment in pp collisions at the LHC. In addition, the production of heavy flavour in association with a W or Z boson is sensitive to the parton density functions and to the modeling heavyquark flavour production mechanisms. Measurement of the transverse momentum of the Z boson is sensitive to soft resummation effects for small momentum transfers and to multiple hard jet emissions for large momentum transfers, probing QCD in a unique way. The data are used to tune next-to-leading order plus parton shower Monte Carlo simulations. An overview of these results is given.