Measurement of the ZZ Production Cross Section and Limits on Anomalous Neutral Triple Gauge Couplings in Proton-Proton Collisions at root s=7 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

A measurement of the ZZ production cross section in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.02 fb(-1) recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC is presented. Twelve events containing two Z boson candidates decaying to electrons and/or muons are observed, with an expected background of 0.3 +/- 0.3(stat)(-0.3)(+0.4)(syst) events. The cross section measured in a phase-space region with good detector acceptance and for dilepton masses within the range 66 to 116 GeV is sigma(fid)(ZZ -> l+l-l+l-) = 19.4(-5.2)(+6.3)(stat)(-0.7)(+0.9)(syst) +/- 0.7(lumi) fb. The resulting total cross section for on-shell ZZ production, sigma(tot)(ZZ) = 8.5(-2.3)(+2.7)(stat)(-0.3)(+0.4)(syst) +/- 0.3(lumi) pb, is consistent with the standard model expectation of 6.5(-0.2)(+0.3) pb calculated at the next-to-leading order in QCD. Limits on anomalous neutral triple gauge boson couplings are derived. RI della Volpe, Domenico/B-4482-2012; Wolter, Marcin/A-7412-2012; Perrino, Roberto/B-4633-2010; valente, paolo/A-6640-2010; O'Shea, Val/G-1279-2010; Doyle, Anthony/C-5889-2009; Ferrando, James/A-9192-2012; Li, Xuefei/C-3861-2012; Buttar, Craig/D-3706-2011; Pina, Joao /C-4391-2012; Takai, Helio/C-3301-2012; Jones, Roger/H-5578-2011; Robson, Aidan/G-1087-2011; Britton, David/F-2602-2010; Fazio, Salvatore /G-5156-2010; Smirnova, Lidia/D-8089-2012; Sivoklokov, Sergey/D-8150-2012; Smirnov, Sergei/F-1014-2011; Gladilin, Leonid/B-5226-2011; Barreiro, Fernando/D-9808-2012; Kramarenko, Victor/E-1781-2012; Prokoshin, Fedor/E-2795-2012; Alexa, Calin/F-6345-2010; Gutierrez, Phillip/C-1161-2011; Pacheco Pages, Andres/C-5353-2011; Moorhead, Gareth/B-6634-2009; Livan, Michele/D-7531-2012; Petrucci, Fabrizio/G-8348-2012; Wemans, Andre/A-6738-2012; Fabbri, Laura/H-3442-2012; Kurashige, Hisaya/H-4916-2012; Villa, Mauro/C-9883-2009; Delmastro, Marco/I-5599-2012

A measurement of the ZZ production cross section in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.02 fb(-1) recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC is presented. Twelve events containing two Z boson candidates decaying to electrons and/or muons are observed, with an expected background of 0.3 +/- 0.3(stat)(-0.3)(+0.4)(syst) events. The cross section measured in a phase-space region with good detector acceptance and for dilepton masses within the range 66 to 116 GeV is sigma(fid)(ZZ -> l+l-l+l-) = 19.4(-5.2)(+6.3)(stat)(-0.7)(+0.9)(syst) +/- 0.7(lumi) fb. The resulting total cross section for on-shell ZZ production, sigma(tot)(ZZ) = 8.5(-2.3)(+2.7)(stat)(-0.3)(+0.4)(syst) +/- 0.3(lumi) pb, is consistent with the standard model expectation of 6.5(-0.2)(+0.3) pb calculated at the next-to-leading order in QCD. Limits on anomalous neutral triple gauge boson couplings are derived.