Measurements of W and Z boson production in association with heavy flavor at ATLAS

Standard Model measurements involving the production of Z and W bosons in association with jets is a relevant part of the ATLAS physics program. The measurement of integrated and differential production cross sections constitutes a powerful tool to test our understanding of the Monte Carlo generators and of the hadronization processes, as well as a way to explore the initial state of the proton-proton interaction. In this presentation, a recent ATLAS measurement of the associated production of the Z-boson with a high-𝑝T (boosted) jet is described, both flavor-inclusive and with 𝑏-quark tagging of the jet. The measurement is performed using proton-proton collisions at √𝑠 = 13 TeV at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 36 fb−1 acquired by the ATLAS detector during Run-2. A discussion of the results and their complementarity with a previous measurement of the associated production of the 𝑍-boson with 𝑏-tagged jets in the resolved regime is given. Particular emphasis is devoted to the discussion of the modeling issues affecting the flavor-inclusive selection and of the ability of the experimental results obtained with the 𝑏-tag selection to discriminate among models implementing different flavor-number schemes to describe the initial state of the interaction.