Study of Z boson production in PbPb collisions at ?s NN=2.76TeV

Abstract

A search for Z bosons in the μ+μ- decay channel has been performed in PbPb collisions at √sNN=2.76TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, in a 7.2μb-1 data sample. The number of opposite-sign muon pairs observed in the 60-120GeV/c2 invariant mass range is 39, corresponding to a yield per unit of rapidity (y) and per minimum bias event of [33.8±5.5(stat)±4.4(syst)]×10-8, in the |y|<2.0 range. Rapidity, transverse momentum, and centrality dependencies are also measured. The results agree with next-to-leading order QCD calculations, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions. © 2011 American Physical Society.