The W Boson Mass – Experiment and Theory

The open session of the W Boson Mass Hackathon brought together a set of experimentalists and theorists discussing the present and future of the W boson mass measurement with all its intricate implications on the experimental and theoretical sides. The Kolker Room of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT was bustling with activity: talks from both communities incited lively discussions and we hope to find a way forward to improve the measurement techniques and the theoretical input needed to push the envelop on the uncertainties we can achieve in the future.

After the welcome by co-organizer Johannes Michel (MIT) the session started with an experimenters wish list to the theory community by Kenneth Long (MIT), followed by two flash-presentations by Stella Schindler (MIT) and Artur Avkhadiev (MIT) showing the newest ideas and developments in non-perturbative calculations from the lattice.

The following keynote presentation by Tobias Neumann (BNL) carefully examined the interplay between theory and experiment and put the finger an a number of issues in both camps which stimulated the following fruitful discussion session. Markus Seidel (Technical University of Riga, Latvia), finished off the session with a summary of precision mass measurements in the CMS experiment, which did not include the W boson mass because no measurement has yet been published. The discussion stayed lively and the day finished with a spirited dinner at the Shy Bird restaurant.

Tuesday morning has been set aside to teach each other the newest software for the most up to date recipes and procedures to evaluate the theoretical uncertainties.

For the CMS people participating in the Hackathon, this is only the beginning. Joshua Bendavid (MIT) one of the organizers says: “The Kolker Room will be our home for the rest of the week, where we will try to make some significant progress so we can come out soon with our first W boson mass measurement.”