Abstract
In future measurements of the dilepton (Z/γ ∗) transverse momentum, Q T , at both the Tevatron and LHC, the achievable bin widths and the ultimate precision of the measurements will be limited by experimental resolution rather than by the available event statistics. In a recent paper the variable a T , which corresponds to the component of Q T that is transverse to the dilepton thrust axis, has been studied in this regard. In the region, Q T < 30 GeV, a T has been shown to be less susceptible to experimental resolution and efficiency effects than the Q T . Extending over all Q T , we now demonstrate that dividing a T (or Q T ) by the measured dilepton invariant mass further improves the resolution. In addition, we propose a new variable, \(\phi _{\rm \eta }^{*}\), that is determined exclusively from the measured lepton directions; this is even more precisely determined experimentally than the above variables and is similarly sensitive to the Q T . The greater precision achievable using such variables will enable more stringent tests of QCD and tighter constraints on Monte Carlo event generator tunes.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Banfi, A., Redford, S., Vesterinen, M. et al. Optimisation of variables for studying dilepton transverse momentum distributions at hadron colliders. Eur. Phys. J. C 71, 1600 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1600-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1600-y