Measurement of the $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ Production Cross Section in $p\overline{p}$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96\mathrm{TeV}$ using Dilepton Events

We present a measurement of the $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ production cross section using $184{\mathrm{pb}}^{-1}$ of $p\overline{p}$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab. Using the dilepton decay channel $W^{+}{W}^{-}\to {\ell }^{+}\nu {\ell }^{-}\overline{\nu }$, where the charged leptons can be either electrons or muons, we find 17 candidate events compared to an expected background of ${5.0}_{-0.8}^{+2.2}$ events. The resulting $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ production cross-section measurement of $\sigma (p\overline{p}\to W^{+}{W}^{-})={14.6}_{-5.1}^{+5.8}(\mathrm{stat}{)}_{-3.0}^{+1.8}(\mathrm{syst})\pm 0.9(\mathrm{lum})\mathrm{pb}$ agrees well with the standard model expectation.

Figure 1

The dilepton mass (top) and lepton transverse momentum distribution (bottom) for the candidate events in comparison with the standard model expectation. Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests of these distributions yield $p$ values of 13% (top) and 78% (bottom).