| This dissertation presents a measurement of the inclusive W boson cross section in the muon decay channel, using 7 TeV proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurement probes Standard Model QCD predictions at a new regime, at high-Q2 and low- x in the parton distribution functions. It is also fruitful in understanding the ATLAS detector response to the production of leptons and neutrinos, which are present in many other physics signals.;The dataset used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 33 pb --1, collected by the ATLAS detector during 2010. Lepton quality, kinematic, and isolation requirements, as well as missing energy and transverse mass criteria are adopted to extract the W → munu signal. The major backgrounds come from W → taunu, Z → mumu where a muon is lost, and from QCD, particularly from heavy-flavor quark decays. Cross sections and kinematic distributions are compared with Standard Model expectations using next-to-leading-order QCD calculations and several PDF sets. |
