Photon-induced Background for Dilepton Searches and Measurements in pp Collisions at 13 TeV

Abstract: The production of high invariant mass opposite sign lepton pairs in proton-proton collisions at the LHC is dominated by the Drell-Yan process. In addition to this photon or Z exchange mediated mechanism, gamma-gamma collisions, where photons radiated by the incoming protons collide, can produce lepton pairs. This is an important additional source of background for high mass resonant (like Z') or non-resonant (like contact interactions) searches. In this paper detailed calculations of the Drell-Yan and photon-induced cross sections in the typical acceptance of a multi-purpose LHC detector at center of mass energy 13 TeV are presented. The hint for a diphoton excess at a mass around 750 GeV, reported by the ATLAS and CMS experiments from the analysis of the 2015 data at 13 TeV, raises the possibility that such an excess could be produced through gamma-gamma collisions. A good theoretical understanding and measurements in the dilepton channels at these energies can help to elucidate this production hypothesis.