Cross Section Prediction for Inclusive Production of Z Boson in $pp$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$$=14$ TeV: A Study of Systematic Uncertainty Due to Scale Dependence

Understand

Prediction of $Z\rightarrow l^{+}l^{-}$ production cross section (where $l^{\pm} =e^{\pm},\mu^{\pm}$) in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=14 TeV is estimated up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD including next-to-leading order (NLO) electroweak (EW) corrections.

• The total inclusive Z boson production cross section times leptonic branching ratio, within the invariant mass window $66<m_{ll}<116$ GeV, is predicted using NNLO HERAPDF2.0 at NNLO QCD and NLO EW as $\sigma_{Z}^{Tot}$= 2111.69$_{-26.92}^{+26.31}$ (PDF) $\pm11$ ($\alpha_{s}$) $\pm$17 (scale) $^{+57.41}_{-30.98}$ (parameterization and model).
• Theoretical prediction of the fiducial cross section is further computed with the latest modern PDF models (CT14, MMHT2014, NNPDF3.0, HERAPDF2.0 and ABM12) at NNLO for QCD and NLO for EW.
• The central values of the predictions are based on DYNNLO 1.5 program and the uncertainties are extracted using FEWZ 3.1 program.