arXiv · 2603.19963
Measurement of the jet mass in hadronic decays of boosted W bosons at 13 TeV and extraction of the W boson mass
Abstract
The jet mass of W bosons decaying to a quark-antiquark pair is measured in W+jets events from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data used were collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. Hadronic decays of W bosons with high momenta produce strongly collimated decay products due to the large Lorentz boost, and are reconstructed as single large-radius jets. These jets have a characteristic substructure that is exploited to distinguish them from the large background of quark- and gluon-initiated jets. The jet mass is computed using the soft-drop algorithm, which suppresses soft wide-angle radiation that leads to a broadening of the jet mass distribution. For the first time, unfolded measurements are presented of the double-differential W+jets cross section as a function of the jet transverse momentum and soft-drop mass. From these distributions, the W boson mass is obtained, with a value of 80.83 $\pm$ 0.55 GeV, achieving the smallest uncertainty available today from an all-jets final state at a hadron collider.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
CMS Collaboration. 2026-03-20. Measurement of the jet mass in hadronic decays of boosted W bosons at 13 TeV and extraction of the W boson mass. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep07(2026)054
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.