W and Z Polarization Effects in Hadronic Collisions

A Monte Carlo study of the polar and azimuthal angular distributions of the lepton pair arising from the decay of a $W$ or $Z$ boson produced at high transverse momentum in hadronic collisions is presented. In the absence of cuts on the final state leptons, the lepton angular distribution in the gauge boson rest frame is determined by the gauge boson polarization. Numerical results for the lepton angular distributions in the Collins--Soper frame with acceptance cuts and energy resolution smearing applied to the leptons are presented. In the presence of cuts, the lepton angular distributions are dominated by kinematic effects rather than polarization effects, however, some polarization effects are still observable on top of the kinematic effects. Polarization effects are highlighted when the experimental distributions are divided by the Monte Carlo distributions obtained using isotropic gauge boson decay.