Determination of the Strange-Quark Density of the Proton from ATLAS Measurements of the <i>W</i> → <i>lv</i> and <i>Z</i> → <i>ll</i> Cross Sections


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Aad G., Abbott B., Abdallah J., Abdelalim A., Abdesselam A., Abdinov O., ...More

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, no.1, 2012 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier identifier identifier

Abstract

AQCD analysis is reported of ATLAS data on inclusive W-+/- and Z boson production in pp collisions at the LHC, jointly with ep deep-inelastic scattering data from HERA. The ATLAS data exhibit sensitivity to the light quark sea composition and magnitude at Bjorken x similar to 0:01. Specifically, the data support the hypothesis of a symmetric composition of the light quark sea at low x. The ratio of the strange-to-down sea quark distributions is determined to be 1:00(-0:28)(+0.25) at absolute four-momentum transfer squared Q(2) = 1: 9 GeV2 and x = 0: 023.