ee and µµ channels are generated at NLO using the powheg 2.0 [38–40] event generator.
A background estimate based on a control sample in data is made using jet-to-electron
misidentification rates (F ) to determine the m
eµ
contributions from W+jets and multijet
distributions. The jet-to-electron misidentification rate is measured in data, using a control
sample collected with a single electromagnetic-cluster trigger. Data sidebands are used to
evaluate the contributions to the control sample from genuine electrons and from photons
misidentified as electrons. The jet-to-electron misidentification rate is then defined as the
number of jets passing the full electron selection divided by the number of jet candidates
in the sample. The rate is quantified in bins of p
T
and η. The measured rate is used to
estimate the W+jets and multijet contributions using data containing muons that pass the
single-muon trigger and the full muon selection, and the number of electron candidates
satisfying relaxed selection requirements, but failing the full electron selection. Each event
is weighted by the factor F/(1 − F ) to determine the overall contribution from the jet
backgrounds. Contributions from processes other than W+jets and multijet sources are
subtracted from the sample, after correcting for the contribution from false events to avoid
double counting, which is done using MC simulated background events. Background from
jets mimicking muons is estimated to be only 1% of the total background, and is ignored
in the analysis.
6 Systematic uncertainties
The uncertainty in the modeling of the eµ invariant mass distribution reflects the input of
three types of systematic effects.
The first type includes those that affect the shape of the invariant mass distribution,
with the dominant uncertainty arising from the leading tt and subleading WW back-
grounds. The tt background provides an uncertainty of <30% in the total background
yield at m
eµ
≈ 1 TeV, which reduces to <10% at m
eµ
≈ 2 TeV because of the reduced
contribution of the tt process to the total background yield. The uncertainty in the WW
background is estimated to be ≈2.5% at m
eµ
≈ 1 TeV. This is estimated from the envelope
of the resummed next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm calculation of the soft-gluon contribu-
tions to the cross section at NLO, as presented in ref. [41], using changes by factors of 2
and 0.5 implemented in the renormalization and factorization scales, respectively. Other
uncertainties in the form of the invariant mass distribution are due to the uncertainty in
the muon momentum scale, which depends on the η and φ of muons, and leads to an
uncertainty in the total background yield of ≈1.1%, at m
eµ
= 500 GeV, and ≈25% at
m
eµ
= 2 TeV. Uncertainty in the muon-efficiency scale factor is 2–3% over the whole mass
range. Apart from that, a momentum-dependent, one-sided downward systematic uncer-
tainty is applied to the muon reconstruction and identification efficiency, to account for
potential differences between simulated samples and data, in the response of the muon
system to muons that interact radiatively with the detector material. This uncertainty
is –1.6% in the region |η| < 1.6, and –14.4% in the region 1.6 < |η| < 2.4, for muons
with momentum of 4 TeV. Uncertainties in the electron p
T
scale and resolution, the muon
p
T
resolution, and the pileup rate have negligible impact on the total background. Un-
– 6 –