Measurement of the Effective Weak Mixing Angle in pp[over ¯]→Z/γ^{*}→e^{+}e^{-} Events

Phys Rev Lett. 2015 Jul 24;115(4):041801. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.041801. Epub 2015 Jul 22.

Abstract

We present a measurement of the fundamental parameter of the standard model, the weak mixing angle sin^{2}θ_{eff}^{ℓ} which determines the relative strength of weak and electromagnetic interactions, in pp[over ¯]→Z/γ^{*}→e^{+}e^{-} events at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV, using data corresponding to 9.7 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. The effective weak mixing angle is extracted from the forward-backward charge asymmetry as a function of the invariant mass around the Z boson pole. The measured value of sin^{2}θ_{eff}^{ℓ}=0.23147±0.00047 is the most precise measurement from light quark interactions to date, with a precision close to the best LEP and SLD results.