Impact of lepton p _T threshold on charge asymmetry predictions for inclusive W boson production in pp collisions at 13 TeV

Abstract This paper presents the impact of the lepton transverse momentum threshold on the boson charge asymmetry predictions in perturbative QCD for the inclusive production in proton-proton ( ) collisions. The predictions are obtained at various low- thresholds 20, 25, 30, and 40 GeV in a fiducial region encompassing both the central and forward detector acceptances in terms of the lepton pseudorapidity . The predicted distributions for the lepton charge asymmetry, which is defined by ( ), at the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy are compared with the CMS and LHCb data at 8 TeV center-of-mass collision energy. The 8 TeV predictions reproduce the data fairly well within the quoted uncertainties. The predictions from the CT14 parton distribution function (PDF) model are in a slightly better agreement with the data over the other PDF sets that are tested. The 13 TeV predictions using various thresholds are reported for and the charge asymmetries that are defined in terms of the differential cross sections in bins of the boson rapidity ( ) and transverse momentum ( ). The NNLO predictions for the , , and distributions are assessed to be in close correlation with the value. The and distributions are particularly shown to be more correlated at a higher threshold. The distributions are also reported from the merged predictions with improved accuracy by the inclusion of the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithm (N 3 LL) corrections, i.e., at NNLO+N 3 LL. The predicted distributions from various thresholds represent a finer probe in terms of the capability to provide more constraints on the ratio of and quark distribution functions in the parton momentum fraction range .