Study of Z boson production in the muon decay channel in pPb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 5.02 TeV

The electroweak boson production is an important benchmark measurement in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions which can provide constraints on the nuclear modification of parton distribution functions. In this paper the results from the proton-lead collision data taken in early 2013 are presented. The Z boson production is studied in the electron and muon decay channels. The cross section is measured in bins of the Z~boson rapidity and transverse momentum and compared to theoretical predictions. The Z~boson production is observed to be proportional to the number of elementary nucleon-nucleon collisions within the uncertainties. The forward-backward ratio of the measured cross section is presented.