Electroweak boson production in heavy-ion collisions with CMS

Abstract

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is fully equipped to measure leptonic decays of electroweak probes in the high multiplicity environment of nucleus-nucleus collisions. Electroweak boson production is an important benchmark process at hadron colliders. Precise measurements of W and Z production in heavy-ion collisions can help to constrain nuclear PDFs as well as serve as a standard candle of the initial state in PbPb collisions at the LHC energies. The inclusive and differential measurements of the Z boson yield in the muon and electron decay channel will be presented, establishing that no modification is observed with respect to pp collisions, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions.