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The precision measurement of the W boson mass and its impact on physics

Nature Reviews Physics volume 6, pages 180–193 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

As a mediator of the weak nuclear force, the W boson influences many properties of fundamental particles and their interactions. Understanding the W boson as accurately as possible, including knowing its mass, has been a priority in particle physics for decades. In the past few years, in a succession of increasing-precision measurements by multiple experiments, a significant tension between the measured and predicted mass has been documented by the CDF Collaboration. Furthermore, smaller differences between different measurements exist. Because the W boson mass provides a window on new physics, a comparison between different measurement techniques can inform the path to further investigations. This Perspective article overviews the role of the W boson mass in the Standard Model of Particle Physics and its extensions, compares and contrasts its measurement techniques and discusses prospects and future directions.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of W (or Z) boson production owing to quark (q)–antiquark (\(\bar{{\boldsymbol{q}}}\)) annihilation in \({\boldsymbol{p}}\bar{{\boldsymbol{p}}}\) collisions at the Tevatron.
Fig. 2: W boson mass measurements and the Standard Model expectation.
Fig. 3: Illustration of the two most precise measurements of the weak mixing angle θeff (shown conventionally as \({\sin }^{2}{{\boldsymbol{\theta }}}_{{\rm{eff}}}\) on the vertical axis) from the large electron–positron (LEP) experiments and the SLD experiment, respectively94, and their average16.

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    Ashutosh V. Kotwal

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The author is also the corresponding author of ‘Aaltonen, T. et al. (CDF Collaboration), Science 376, 170–176 (2022)’, a member of the CDF Collaboration and the ATLAS Collaboration and a past member of the D0 Collaboration and the E665 Collaboration.

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Kotwal, A.V. The precision measurement of the W boson mass and its impact on physics. Nat Rev Phys 6, 180–193 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00682-0

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