On the Role of Diffractive Production in Precision Studies of W and Z Bosons at the LHC
Abstract
The increasing precision of measurements at the Large Hadron Collider requires a detailed understanding of all contributions to electroweak boson production. We estimate the impact of single-diffractive W and Z production on precision observables at √s=5, 7, 8, and 13 TeV. The non-diffractive baseline is calculated with DYTurbo, while Herwig provides the relative single-diffractive contribution and its transverse-momentum dependence. Factorization breaking is incorporated through a pT-dependent rapidity-gap survival probability calculated with the dynamic multiparton-interaction model of Pythia8. The diffractive Asimov spectrum is constructed by deterministic bin-by-bin reweighting of the same high-numerical-precision DYTurbo cross section used for the non-diffractive baseline. With the non-perturbative parameters profiled, the nominal relative shifts in αs are -0.0072%, -0.043%, -0.070%, and -0.067% at 5, 7, 8, and 13 TeV, respectively. Five Pythia8 Pomeron-flux and diffractive-PDF configurations give a maximum spread of 9.4×10−6 in Δαs. In the W-mass study, the largest bias from an unmodelled survived single-diffractive contribution is 1.58 MeV, and the largest residual after applying the corresponding model-matched template correction is 1.14 MeV. These shifts are below the relevant fit precision, and no phenomenologically significant impact on mW is expected within the tested models.
Related
- Precision Studies of Boosted Polarized Vector Bosons with Energy Correlators
- Azimuthal decorrelation in diffractive dijet production
- Early Universe production of W bosons in neutrino decays
- Central exclusive production of η and η' mesons in diffractive proton-proton collisions at the LHC
- Search for the nonresonant production of a pair of additional Higgs bosons in the type-X two-Higgs-doublet model in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV
BibTeX
@misc{harris2026role,
title = {{On the Role of Diffractive Production in Precision Studies of W and Z Bosons at the LHC}},
author = {Ynyr Harris and Matthias Schott and Chen Wang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.39582},
eprint = {2609.39582},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39582},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - On the Role of Diffractive Production in Precision Studies of W and Z Bosons at the LHC
AU - Ynyr Harris
AU - Matthias Schott
AU - Chen Wang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.39582
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39582
AB - The increasing precision of measurements at the Large Hadron Collider requires a detailed understanding of all contributions to electroweak boson production. We estimate the impact of single-diffractive W and Z production on precision observables at √s=5, 7, 8, and 13 TeV. The non-diffractive baseline is calculated with DYTurbo, while Herwig provides the relative single-diffractive contribution and its transverse-momentum dependence. Factorization breaking is incorporated through a p_T-dependent rapidity-gap survival probability calculated with the dynamic multiparton-interaction model of Pythia8. The diffractive Asimov spectrum is constructed by deterministic bin-by-bin reweighting of the same high-numerical-precision DYTurbo cross section used for the non-diffractive baseline. With the non-perturbative parameters profiled, the nominal relative shifts in α_s are -0.0072%, -0.043%, -0.070%, and -0.067% at 5, 7, 8, and 13 TeV, respectively. Five Pythia8 Pomeron-flux and diffractive-PDF configurations give a maximum spread of 9.4×10^−6 in Δα_s. In the W-mass study, the largest bias from an unmodelled survived single-diffractive contribution is 1.58 MeV, and the largest residual after applying the corresponding model-matched template correction is 1.14 MeV. These shifts are below the relevant fit precision, and no phenomenologically significant impact on m_W is expected within the tested models.
ER -