The production cross-sections for $W^{\pm}$ and $Z$ bosons are measured using ATLAS data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.0 pb$^{-1}$ collected at a centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ TeV. The decay channels $W \rightarrow \ell \nu$ and $Z \rightarrow \ell \ell $ are used, where $\ell$ can be an electron or a muon. The cross-sections are presented for a fiducial region defined by the detector acceptance and are also extrapolated to the full phase space for the total inclusive production cross-section. The combined (average) total inclusive cross-sections for the electron and muon channels are: \begin{eqnarray} \sigma^{\text{tot}}_{W^{+}\rightarrow \ell \nu}& = & 2312 \pm 26\ (\text{stat.})\ \pm 27\ (\text{syst.}) \pm 72\ (\text{lumi.}) \pm 30\ (\text{extr.})\text{pb} \nonumber, \\ \sigma^{\text{tot}}_{W^{-}\rightarrow \ell \nu}& = & 1399 \pm 21\ (\text{stat.})\ \pm 17\ (\text{syst.}) \pm 43\ (\text{lumi.}) \pm 21\ (\text{extr.})\text{pb} \nonumber, \\ \sigma^{\text{tot}}_{Z \rightarrow \ell \ell}& = & 323.4 \pm 9.8\ (\text{stat.}) \pm 5.0\ (\text{syst.}) \pm 10.0\ (\text{lumi.}) \pm 5.5 (\text{extr.}) \text{pb} \nonumber. \end{eqnarray} Measured ratios and asymmetries constructed using these cross-sections are also presented. These observables benefit from full or partial cancellation of many systematic uncertainties that are correlated between the different measurements.
This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of $20.2~\mbox{fb$^{-1}$}$. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.
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