Transverse momentum broadening of vector bosons in heavy ion collisions at the LHC

Abstract

We calculate in perturbative QCD the transverse momentum broadening of vector bosons in heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We predict transverse momentum broadening of $W/Z$ bosons constructed from their leptonic decay channels, which should be a clean probe of initial-state medium effect. We also predict the upper limit of transverse momentum broadening of J/$\psi$ and $\Upsilon$ production as a function of N$_{\rm part}$ at the LHC energy.