Measurement of the production cross section for a W boson in association with a charm quark in proton-proton collisions at s=13TeV

Abstract

The strange quark content of the proton is probed through the measurement of the production cross section for a W boson and a charm (c) quark in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13$\text{Te}\text{V}$. The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 138${\text{fb}}^{-1}$ collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The W bosons are identified through their leptonic decays to an electron or a muon, and a neutrino. Charm jets are tagged using the presence of a muon or a secondary vertex inside the jet. The $\text{W}+\text{c}$ production cross section and the cross section ratio $R_{\text{c}}^{\pm }=\sigma ({\text{W}}^{+}+\overline{\text{c}})/\sigma ({\text{W}}^{-}+\text{c})$ are measured inclusively and differentially as functions of the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the lepton originating from the W boson decay. The precision of the measurements is improved with respect to previous studies, reaching 1% in $R_{\text{c}}^{\pm }=0.950\pm 0.005\text{(stat)}\pm 0.010\text{(syst)}$. The measurements are compared with theoretical predictions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics.