# 8th Edition of the Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference

May 25 – 30, 2020
Europe/Paris timezone
There is a live webcast for this event.

## Z boson production in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV

May 28, 2020, 6:45 PM
1h
Experimental poster Heavy Ions

### Speaker

Sizar Aziz (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))

### Description

To compute cross sections in proton-proton collisions, parton distribution functions (PDFs) are used which describe the density of partons within the proton. In nuclear environments, such as heavy ions, these densities change and therefore PDFs must be modified to nuclear PDFs (nPDFs). Measurements of electroweak bosons help to constrain the nPDFs. This in turn allows to compute cross sections in heavy-ion collisions with higher precision.

In this poster the Z-boson production is reported in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV. The measurement is done through the muonic decay channel. The normalized invariant yield is measured for dimuons with mass $60 < m_{\mu\mu} < 120$ GeV/$c^2$ and rapidity $2.5 < y < 4$. It is presented as a function of rapidity as well as collision centrality. The results are compared to different theoretical predictions of the parton distribution functions (both PDF and nPDF). A $3.4\sigma$ deviation is seen in the integrated yield between the data and the free PDFs (no nuclear modifications), while they are in agreement with the nPDF predictions. The differential data will serve as constraints for the nPDFs.

### Primary author

Sizar Aziz (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))