A measurement of the forward-backward asymmetry of pairs of oppositely charged leptons (dimuons and dielectrons) produced by the Drell-Yan process in proton-proton collisions is presented. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$ collected with the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The asymmetry is measured as a function of lepton pair mass for masses larger than 170\GeV and compared with standard model predictions. An inclusive measurement across both channels and the full mass range yields an asymmetry of 0.599 $\pm$ 0.005 (stat) $\pm$ 0.007 (syst). As a test of lepton flavor universality, the difference between the dimuon and dielectron asymmetries is measured as well. No statistically significant deviations from standard model predictions are observed. The measurements are used to set limits on the presence of additional gauge bosons. For a Z' in the sequential standard model, a lower mass limit of 4.4 TeV is set at 95% confidence level.
Results for the measurement of $A_\mathrm{FB}$ from the maximum likelihood fit to data in different dilepton mass bins in the different channels as well as an inclusive measurement across all mass bins.
A search is conducted for non-resonant new phenomena in dielectron and dimuon final states, originating from either contact interactions or large extra spatial dimensions. The LHC 2012 proton-proton collision dataset recorded by the ATLAS detector is used, corresponding to 20 fb$^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV. The dilepton invariant mass spectrum is a discriminating variable in both searches, with the contact interaction search additionally utilizing the dilepton forward-backward asymmetry. No significant deviations from the Standard Model expectation are observed. Lower limits are set on the $\ell\ell q q$ contact interaction scale $\Lambda$ between 15.4 TeV and 26.3 TeV, at the 95% credibility level. For large extra spatial dimensions, lower limits are set on the string scale $M_{S}$ between 3.2 TeV to 5.0 TeV.
Reconstructed $A_{\rm FB}$ distributions for data and the SM background estimate as a function of dielectron mass.
Reconstructed $A_{\rm FB}$ distributions for data and the SM background estimate as a function of dimuon mass.