Electroweak probes in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC with ATLAS

Measurements of vector boson production in lead-lead collisions provide essential control data for studies of jets and jet quenching in the quark gluon plasma. Because the electroweak bosons do not interact strongly in the plasma, measurements of their production rates can be predicted using standard high-energy event generators. In addition, the vector boson spectra are potentially sensitive to nuclear parton distribution functions. The ATLAS detector has proven to be an excellent apparatus in measurements involving photons, electrons and muons in the high occupancy environment produced in heavy-ion collisions. The experiment has recorded 158 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ of lead-lead and 29.85 $nb^{-1}$ of proton-lead data, both of which have similar integrated partonic luminosities. In this letter, measurements of $\gamma$, $Z$ and $W^{\pm}$ production in lead-lead and proton-lead collisions are shown and compared to predicted rates from JETPHOX (for $\gamma$) and PYTHIA/POWHEG (for $Z$ and $W^{\pm}$).