High-precision measurement of the W boson mass with the CMS experiment
Nature, cilt.652, sa.8109, ss.321-327, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 652 Sayı: 8109
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1038/s41586-026-10168-5
- Dergi Adı: Nature
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts Core, EMBASE, Geobase, INSPEC, MEDLINE, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Psycinfo, zbMATH, Nature Index
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.321-327
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Çukurova Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
In the standard model of particle physics, the masses of the W and Z bosons, the carriers of the weak interaction, are uniquely related. A precise determination of their masses is important because quantum loops of heavy, undiscovered particles could modify this relationship. Although the Z mass is known to the remarkable precision of 22 parts per million (2.0 MeV), the W mass is known much less precisely. A global fit to measured electroweak observables predicts the W mass with 6 MeV uncertainty1, 2–3. Reaching a comparable experimental precision would be a sensitive and fundamental test of the standard model, made even more urgent by a recent challenge to the global fit prediction by a measurement from the CDF Collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron collider4. Here we report the measurement of the W mass by the CMS Collaboration at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, based on a large data sample of W → μν events collected in 2016 at the proton–proton collision energy of 13 TeV. The measurement exploits a high-granularity maximum likelihood fit to the kinematic properties of muons produced in W decays. By combining an accurate determination of experimental effects with marked in situ constraints of theoretical inputs, we reach a precise measurement of the W mass, of 80,360.2 ± 9.9 MeV, in agreement with the standard model prediction.