Measurement of the production and lepton charge asymmetry of $\mathit{\text{W}}$ bosons in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathbf{N}\mathbf{N}}}=$ 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A measurement of $\mathit{\text{W}}$ boson production in lead-lead collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{N}\mathrm{N}}}=$2.76 TeV is presented. It is based on the analysis of data collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2011 corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.14 ${\mathrm{n}\mathrm{b}}^{-1}$ and 0.15 ${\mathrm{n}\mathrm{b}}^{-1}$ in the muon and electron decay channels, respectively. The differential production yields and lepton charge asymmetry are each measured as a function of the average number of participating nucleons $<N_{\mathrm{p}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{t}}>$ and absolute pseudorapidity of the charged lepton. The results are compared to predictions based on next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. These measurements are, in principle, sensitive to possible nuclear modifications to the parton distribution functions and also provide information on scaling of $\mathit{\text{W}}$ boson production in multi-nucleon systems.