Study of W boson production in PbPb and pp collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

A measurement is presented of W-boson production in PbPb collisions carried out at a nucleon-nucleon (NN) centre-of-mass energy sqrt(s[NN]) of 2.76 TeV at the LHC using the CMS detector. In data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 7.3 inverse microbarns, the number of W to mu mu-neutrino decays is extracted in the region of muon pseudorapidity abs(eta[mu])<2.1 and transverse momentum pt[mu]>25 GeV. Yields of muons found per unit of pseudorapidity correspond to (159 +/- 10 (stat.) +/- 12 (syst.)) 10E-8 W(plus) and (154 +/- 10 (stat.) +/- 12 (syst.)) 10E-8 W(minus) bosons per minimum-bias PbPb collision. The dependence of W production on the centrality of PbPb collisions is consistent with a scaling of the yield by the number of incoherent NN collisions. The yield of W bosons is also studied in a sample of pp interactions at sqrt(s)= 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 231 inverse nanobarns. The individual W(plus) and W(minus) yields in PbPb and pp collisions are found to agree, once the neutron and proton content in Pb nuclei is taken into account. Likewise, the difference observed in the dependence of the positive and negative muon production on pseudorapidity is consistent with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Observation of a peaking structure in the J/psi phi mass spectrum from B-+/- -&gt; J/psi phi K-+/- decays

A peaking structure in the J/ψφ mass spectrum near threshold is observed in B ±→J/ψφK± decays, produced in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The data sample, selected on the basis of the dimuon decay mode of the J/ψ, corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.2 fb-1. Fitting the structure to an S-wave relativistic Breit-Wigner lineshape above a three-body phase-space nonresonant component gives a signal statistical significance exceeding five standard deviations. The fitted mass and width values are m = 4148.0 ± 2.4 (stat.) ± 6.3 (syst.)MeV and Γ=28-11 +15(stat.)±19(syst.)MeV, respectively. Evidence for an additional peaking structure at higher J/ψφ mass is also reported. © 2014 The Authors