Test of the universality of τ and μ lepton couplings in W-boson decays with the ATLAS detector
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(Published version)
Date
2021
Authors
Aad, G.
Abbott, B.
Abbott, D.C.
Abud, A.A.
Abeling, K.
Abhayasinghe, D.K.
Abidi, S.H.
AbouZeid, O.S.
Abraham, N.L.
Abramowicz, H.
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Journal article
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Nature Physics, 2021; 17(7):813-818
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G. Aad … D. Duvnjak … P. Jackson … A.X.Y. Kong … J.L. Oliver … H. Potti … T.A. Ruggeri … A.S. Sharma … M.J. White … et al. [The ATLAS Collaboration]
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Abstract
The standard model of particle physics encapsulates our best current understanding of physics at the smallest scales. A fundamental axiom of this theory is the universality of the couplings of the different generations of leptons to the electroweak gauge bosons. The measurement of the ratio of the decay rate of W bosons to τ leptons and muons, R(τ/μ), constitutes an important test of this axiom. Using 139 fb⁻¹ of proton–proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, we report a measurement of this quantity from di-leptonic tt¯ events where the top quarks decay into a W boson and a bottom quark. We can distinguish muons originating from W bosons and those originating from an intermediate τ lepton through the muon transverse impact parameter and differences in the muon transverse momentum spectra. The measured value of R(τ/μ) is 0.992 ± 0.013 [± 0.007(stat) ± 0.011(syst)] and is in agreement with the hypothesis of universal lepton couplings as postulated in the standard model. This is the only such measurement from the Large Hadron Collider, so far, and obtains twice the precision of previous measurements.
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© The Author(s) 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.