Measurement of the inclusive cross section of Z boson production in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13.6\,\mathrm{TeV}$

A measurement of the Z boson production cross section in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $13.6\,\mathrm{TeV}$ is presented for Z bosons decaying to a pair of muons. Data collected in 2022 and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $5.04\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ with two identified muons in the final state are used to extract a value for the product of the signal cross section and branching fraction. The measurement is done in a fiducial region defined by the kinematical acceptance of the CMS detector and extrapolated to the full phase space resulting in a total cross section for Z boson production in the muonic decay channel with an invariant dimuon mass in the range of 60 to 120$\,\mathrm{GeV}$ of $\sigma(\mathrm{pp} \rightarrow \mathrm{Z + X})\mathcal{B}(\mathrm{Z} \rightarrow \mu^{+}\mu^{-}) = (2.010\pm 0.001 (\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.018 (\mathrm{syst})\pm 0.046 (\mathrm{lumi})\pm 0.007 (\mathrm{theo}))\,\mathrm{nb}$. The fiducial as well as the extrapolated total result are both dominated by systematic uncertainties and are in agreement with theoretical predictions, calculated at next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy in quantum chromodynamics and recent parton distribution functions.