Measurement of the production and differential cross sections of $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ bosons in association with jets in $p\overline{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96\mathrm{TeV}$

We present a measurement of the $W$-boson-pair production cross section in $p\overline{p}$ collisions at 1.96 TeV center-of-mass energy and the first measurement of the differential cross section as a function of jet multiplicity and leading-jet energy. The $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ cross section is measured in the final state comprising two charged leptons and neutrinos, where either charged lepton can be an electron or a muon. Using data collected by the CDF experiment corresponding to $9.7{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, a total of 3027 collision events consistent with $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ production are observed with an estimated background contribution of $1790\pm 190$ events. The measured total cross section is $\sigma (p\overline{p}\to W^{+}{W}^{-})=14.0\pm 0.6(\text{stat}{)}_{-1.0}^{+1.2}(\text{syst})\pm 0.8(\text{lumi})\mathrm{pb}$, consistent with the standard model prediction.

Figure 1

Estimated and observed combined distributions of outputs for NNs trained to identify $WW$ events, with a higher NN output value indicating a more signal-like event. Event yields are normalized to the values returned by fitting signal and background distributions to the data.

Figure 2

Measurement and predictions of $\sigma (p\overline{p}\to W^{+}{W}^{-}+\text{njets})$. Values are given inclusively and differentially as functions of jet multiplicity and jet-transverse energy. Transverse energy ranges are (a) $15<E_T<25\mathrm{GeV}$, (b) $25<E_T<45\mathrm{GeV}$, and (c) $E_T>45\mathrm{GeV}$.