Measurement of the WW cross section in sqrt(s) = 7 TeV pp collisions with ATLAS

Abstract

This Letter presents a measurement of the $WW$ production cross section in $sqrt{s} = 7 TeV pp$ collisions by the ATLAS experiment, using 34 $pbi$ of integrated luminosity produced by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Selecting events with two isolated leptons, each either an electron or a muon, 8 candidate events are observed with an expected background of $1.7pm0.6$ events. The measured cross section is $41^{_s1620}_{-16}(mathrm{stat.})pm 5(mathrm{syst.})pm 1(mathrm{lumi.})$ pb, which is consistent with the standard model prediction of $44 pm 3$ pb calculated at next-to-leading order in QCD.