22–26 Apr 2013
Marseille, Parc Chanot
Europe/Monaco timezone

Recent STAR results on the W boson program at RHIC at BNL

24 Apr 2013, 17:30
15m
Callelongue (Palais des Congrès)

Callelongue

Palais des Congrès

Talk in Parallel Session at DIS2013 Structure functions and Parton Densities WG1/3: Structure Functions and Electroweak Physics

Speaker

Bernd Surrow

Description

The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory is carrying out a spin physics program in high-energy polarized proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200\,$GeV and $\sqrt{s}=500\,$GeV to gain a deeper insight into the spin structure and dynamics of the proton. The collision of polarized protons at $\sqrt{s}=500\,$GeV opens a new era of spin-flavor structure measurements from $W^{-(+)}$ boson production. $W^{-(+)}$ bosons are produced in $\bar{u}+d\,(\bar{d}+u)$ collisions and can be detected through their leptonic decays, $e^{-}+\bar{\nu}_{e}\;(e^{+}+\nu_{e})$, where only the respective charged lepton is measured. The discrimination of $\bar{u}+d\;(\bar{d}+u)$ quark combinations requires distinguishing between high $p_{T}$ $e^{-(+)}$ through their opposite charge sign, which in turn requires precise tracking information. Recent STAR results on the measurement of $W^{-}/W^{+}$ and $Z$ boson production at mid-rapidity will be shown.

Primary author

Presentation materials